Seed placement testing — will my campaign hit the inbox?

Seed placement testing

The reputation dashboard shows whether ISPs accepted your email. Seed placement testing shows where it landed — Primary Inbox, Promotions tab, Spam, or silently dropped.

The two metrics often disagree. An email can be delivered according to SES and still land in Gmail Spam. Seed testing is the only reliable way to know.

How it works

WRRK maintains 10 seed mailboxes across the major providers:

• 4× Gmail Workspace (covers gmail.com + G Suite)
• 2× Microsoft 365 (covers outlook.com + corporate MX)
• 1× Yahoo
• 1× iCloud
• 1× Apple Mail
• 1× Fastmail

When you trigger a seed test from the campaign builder, WRRK sends a real copy of your campaign to all 10 seeds simultaneously. A background poller connects to each mailbox every minute via IMAP and classifies where the message landed.

Classifications:

• Inbox — Primary Inbox (Gmail) or regular inbox (others).
• Promotions — Gmail Promotions tab. Not spam, but lower engagement.
• Spam — Junk/Spam folder. Reputation problem.
• Missing — never arrived within 15 minutes. SES accepted but the ISP silently dropped (usually the harshest spam signal).

Triggering a test

In the campaign builder, click Test deliverability before scheduling the send. Results arrive in 2–10 minutes.

Monthly limits

The counter resets on the 1st of each month. Running out mid-month means waiting until the reset — we don't sell additional tests à la carte to avoid incentivizing spam.

Reading the results

The results card shows a 10-tile grid, one tile per seed mailbox, colored by placement. A summary at the top gives you:

• Inbox rate — % of seeds that hit Primary Inbox. Aim for >80% on Gmail.
• Spam rate — % in junk folders. Over 20% means your reputation or content has a serious issue.
• Missing rate — % silently dropped. This is the most damaging metric; over 10% means Gmail is filtering hard.

What to do with poor results

High Promotions placement on Gmail — your copy reads as marketing. Soften the CTA density, drop "FREE" / "limited time" language, reduce image-to-text ratio.

High Spam placement — your reputation or content has a problem. Check the reputation dashboard for a bounce/complaint spike, then test the same content from a warm sender to isolate the cause.

High Missing rate — Gmail has a strong filter on your domain. This usually means a prior reputation incident. Pause campaigns for 48 hours, send a few low-volume transactional emails, then re-test.

Why not test before every campaign?

The seed test burns quota and takes 2–10 minutes. Use it for:

• New content templates.
• After a reputation recovery.
• Before a high-value campaign (product launch, big announcement).

Day-to-day sends you trust can skip the test — the reputation dashboard will catch drift.