Direct mailers generally add seed names to their mailing list that are mailed to themselves and other members of their company or organization. Other than to see for themselves that the mailing was conducted with the quality they expected, many use seeds as a barometer of the timing of the mail delivery. This philosophy is generally flawed for several reasons:
1. When a mailing is drop shipped, many times seeds are not drop shipped.
2. On carrier route mailings, many times seeds are not carrier routed because of density.
3. On regular mailings, many times the seeds are in residual trays that are worked at the entry point instead of full trays being transported to destination postal units to be worked. These residual trays would then have to be reworked.
For seeds to truly represent the mailing they must be presorted along with the other mail and be to an address in the area where the main file has density.
Instead of using seeds to measure the delivery of your mailing, use online mail tracking to give you the real picture.
