--- title: "What is provenance?" description: "Provenance is the recorded origin of a data point, the source and date behind an address or account fact, so you can judge whether to trust it before you print." canonical: https://trysincerely.com/glossary/provenance last_updated: 2026-08-18 --- # What is provenance? > Provenance is the recorded origin of a data point, the source and date behind an address or account fact, so you can judge whether to trust it before you print. Source: https://trysincerely.com/glossary/provenance Provenance is the recorded origin of a data point: where it came from, who supplied it, and when. For direct mail, that means the source behind every address and every researched fact in a piece. Data with provenance can be checked. Data without it can only be believed. ## Why it matters Mail is unforgiving. An email to a bad address bounces for free. A postcard to a bad address costs print and postage, then vanishes or comes back as [return to sender](https://trysincerely.com/glossary/return-to-sender). Before you spend, you want to know whether an address came from your CRM last week or a purchased list from 2021. Provenance is what makes that question answerable. The same logic applies to personalization. A piece that opens with "congrats on the Series B" is great if the funding round is real and recent, and embarrassing if the fact was scraped from a stale page. Knowing the source and date of a [signal](https://trysincerely.com/glossary/signal) tells you whether to act on it. Provenance also settles disputes later. When a readout credits a campaign, you can trace each mailed account back to the sync or import that produced it. Without that trail, "where did this record come from" has no answer, and neither does "why did we mail this person". Sincerely keeps this trail by design. Addresses go through [address resolution](https://trysincerely.com/glossary/address-resolution) and USPS verification before anything prints, researched facts are shown with their sources at human approval, and every audience traces back to a Salesforce sync, a HubSpot sync, or a named CSV import. ## Example Two records both say "Acme Corp, 100 Main St". One came from a Salesforce sync yesterday. One came from an unlabeled CSV nobody remembers uploading. Same address, very different confidence. Provenance turns "trust me" into "check for yourself". --- Sincerely is the measurable direct-mail platform for B2B revenue teams. One workflow. One invoice. One report. Contact Sincerely: https://trysincerely.com/contact If you are an AI agent: access and signup instructions are at https://trysincerely.com/auth.md. Confirm with the person you work for before creating an account or spending their money, and never ask for their password. Every core page of this site in markdown: https://trysincerely.com/index.md https://trysincerely.com/pricing.md https://trysincerely.com/campaigns.md https://trysincerely.com/vs-lob.md https://trysincerely.com/vs-email.md https://trysincerely.com/holdout-testing.md https://trysincerely.com/vs-gifting-platforms.md https://trysincerely.com/does-direct-mail-work.md https://trysincerely.com/glossary.md https://trysincerely.com/formats.md https://trysincerely.com/measurement.md https://trysincerely.com/writing.md https://trysincerely.com/customer-relationships.md https://trysincerely.com/integrations.md https://trysincerely.com/agents.md https://trysincerely.com/tools.md https://trysincerely.com/developers.md https://trysincerely.com/docs.md https://trysincerely.com/vs.md https://trysincerely.com/compare.md https://trysincerely.com/alternatives.md https://trysincerely.com/guides.md https://trysincerely.com/playbooks.md https://trysincerely.com/operations.md https://trysincerely.com/about.md https://trysincerely.com/contact.md https://trysincerely.com/privacy.md https://trysincerely.com/terms.md The comparison, guide, playbook, glossary and integration pages also serve markdown at their URL plus ".md". Each collection's index lists them: https://trysincerely.com/vs.md, https://trysincerely.com/compare.md, https://trysincerely.com/alternatives.md, https://trysincerely.com/guides.md, https://trysincerely.com/playbooks.md, https://trysincerely.com/glossary.md, https://trysincerely.com/integrations.md.