How to Test with Seed Segments

A seed segment is a small, trusted group of contacts — typically members of your marketing team or internal stakeholders — used to preview and validate scheduled emails and text messages before they reach your full audience. By sending to a seed segment first, your team can review content, check personalization, verify links, and catch errors before a message goes live.

What is a seed segment?

A seed segment is a static segment containing a handful of known, internal contacts. These are people on your team who can review the message as it will appear to real recipients — including subject lines, personalization merge tags, images, and call-to-action links.

Seed segments serve two purposes:

1. Pre-send review: Schedule the message to your seed segment first. Team members receive the actual message in their inbox or on their phone and can flag any issues before you send to the full audience.
2. Ongoing monitoring: Include the seed segment on every send so your team always has a copy of what went out. This is useful for compliance, record-keeping, or simply keeping stakeholders informed.

Step 1: Create a seed segment

To create your seed segment, navigate to Contacts > Create Segment or use the + Create button on the Segments page.

1. Give your segment a descriptive name, such as "Seed - Marketing Team."
2. Optionally add a description so other team members understand its purpose.
3. Click Save to create the static segment.

Next, add your team members as contacts to this segment. These should be real contacts in DailyStory with valid email addresses and/or mobile numbers, depending on the channels you plan to test.

Step 2: Add the seed segment to your campaign

Before you can schedule a message to your seed segment, the segment must be assigned to the campaign containing the message you want to test.

Navigate to your campaign and add the seed segment to the campaign's segment list. This makes the seed segment available in the scheduler's segment dropdown when you go to schedule a send.

Step 3: Schedule a test send to the seed segment

With your seed segment assigned to the campaign, you are ready to send a test. Open the email or text message you want to test and click Schedule to open the message scheduler.

1. In the Segment dropdown, select only your seed segment.
2. Set the date and time. For an immediate test, choose a time a few minutes from now.
3. Verify the approximate recipient count matches the number of contacts in your seed segment.
4. Click Schedule.

Your seed segment contacts will receive the message exactly as your full audience would — with all personalization, merge tags, and formatting applied. For details on scheduling, see Scheduling an Email or Sending and Scheduling Text Messages.

Step 4: Review and approve

Once your team receives the test message, review the following:

• Subject line and preview text (email)
• Personalization and merge tags — confirm they rendered correctly
• All links — click each one and verify the destination
• Images — confirm they load and display as expected
• Overall formatting and readability on both desktop and mobile
• Message content and copy accuracy

If any issues are found, make the necessary edits to the message and schedule another test send to the seed segment before sending to your full audience.

Step 5: Send to your full audience

After your team has reviewed and approved the test, schedule the message to your full audience segments. Open the scheduler again and select the segment(s) for your intended recipients.

Including a seed segment on every send

In some cases, you may want your seed segment to receive every scheduled message — not just test sends. This is common when stakeholders or compliance teams need a copy of every communication that goes out.

To do this, simply include the seed segment alongside your audience segments when scheduling. Select both your seed segment and your target audience segment(s) in the scheduler. Your internal team will receive the same message at the same time as your customers.

Best practices

• Use real contact records: Seed contacts should be actual contacts in DailyStory with valid, working email addresses and phone numbers.
• Test across devices: Have team members check the message on desktop, mobile, and different email clients when possible.
• Test personalization: Ensure your seed contacts have realistic data in their contact profiles so merge tags render meaningful values instead of blanks or fallback text.
• Keep the segment maintained: Update your seed segment when team members join or leave. An outdated seed segment defeats the purpose of testing.
• Name it clearly: A naming convention such as "Seed - [Team Name]" makes it easy to identify in the scheduler dropdown across all campaigns.

Frequently Asked Questions

Below are some frequently asked questions about seed segments.