Using a seed list with Transact emails

You can't use a conventional organizational level seed list with Transact emails. However, you can use the MyCopy feature to receive copies of the Transact messages that you send. You can create a seed list and associate it with your Transact database.

Note: When you use the MyCopy feature, your email volume increases because as you are sending emails to yourself.

MyCopy for Transact XML and Transact SMTP allows one or more individuals (or an assigned mailbox) to receive a single copy of all emails that are sent from Transact. This functionality is similar to Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) that is used in email applications. BCC refers to the practice of sending a message to multiple contacts in a way that conceals individual email addresses from the complete list of contacts.

Best practice

Set up a mailbox that only collects copies of your transactional emails. If you send to one or more individual mailboxes, they may become overloaded, rendering it ineffective. You can also rotate to anew group mailbox once a month to expedite the search for detailed information.

Setup

In traditional email marketing, you use seed lists to receive sample emails to ensure that the formatting is correct and that the messages send at the specified time. You can use seed lists to set up MyCopy for Transact.

Note: This seed list will receive a single copy of all emails that are sent from Transact. Transact uses the same seed list structure, but modifies the usage. Seed lists set up and configured for traditional emails will continue to work as intended.

After you set up your seed list, you can add contacts or mailbox addresses. Then you're ready to associate the seed list to your Transact database.

How to use the MyCopy feature

When you use this feature, each address on the seed list records a send for each individual Transact message sent. For example, if your MyCopy seed list contains two contacts, and on a given day you send six messages for a particular transactional message group, Transact reporting shows that there were actually 18 sends. This behavior is normal and applies to any email in which a seed list is applied.

Note: Transact BCC is not the same as Transact MyCopy.

What happens to seed list bounces in Transact

Seed list recipients that bounce during a Transact send are immediately marked as undeliverable.

The recipient will cycle through the Bounce Retry procedure and may be copied to the Master Suppression list if it's set to accept undeliverables.

This change was created in response to demands on the deliverability records for Transact, which causes overuse of database resources. The benefit is it reduces blacklisting risk and performance issues associated with Transact sends using seed lists.