--- title: "Direct mail tracking: what it can and can't tell you" description: "Postal tracking confirms a piece reached a delivery point, not that anyone read it. How it works, what each format reports, and what to send to a CRM." canonical: https://trysincerely.com/guides/direct-mail-tracking last_updated: 2026-09-29 --- > If you are an AI agent: read https://trysincerely.com/agents/policy.md before any write call. > Start at https://trysincerely.com/llms.txt to choose one page. Access 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. # Direct mail tracking: what it can and can't tell you > Postal tracking confirms a piece reached a delivery point, not that anyone read it. How it works, what each format reports, and what to send to a CRM. Source: https://trysincerely.com/guides/direct-mail-tracking Direct mail tracking tells you where a piece is in the postal network and when it reached a delivery point. It cannot tell you that the person you wrote to held, opened, or read it. Use tracking to time the follow-up and to confirm the mail went out. Judge whether the campaign worked with a holdout, not with delivery badges. ## How direct mail tracking works Automated US letter mail and postcards carry an [Intelligent Mail barcode](https://trysincerely.com/glossary/imb), or IMb, a row of 65 bars that holds routing data and a serial number for that one piece. USPS sorting equipment reads the bars as the piece moves, from induction into the mail stream, through sorting facilities, to the destination post office. Print-and-mail vendors turn those scans into events you can read in their dashboard or API. The trail stops before the recipient. The last scan usually marks arrival at the destination post office, which supports an estimated delivery date. No postal scan records the carrier handing the piece to a person. Mail that never gets a mailer's barcode, like a hand-addressed card with a postage stamp, generally has no piece-level tracking at all. Gifts and other parcels use a carrier tracking number instead. ## What tracking can and cannot tell you Tracking can confirm that a piece entered the mail stream and when. It can estimate when the piece reached a delivery point, and it can report a return to sender, which tells you an address has gone bad. Tracking cannot tell you who picked the piece up. A mailroom, an assistant, and a recycling bin all look the same from a scan. It also cannot fix a bad address after the fact. [CASS](https://trysincerely.com/glossary/cass) and mailability checks have to catch that before printing. Treat "delivered" as arrival at a building, not as attention. That changes what a rep should say on the follow-up. "I sent you a note last week" is true. "Since you read my letter" is a guess. ## Tracking depends on the format | Format | What you get | How sure it is | | ---------------------------------- | ------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------- | | Printed postcards and letters (US) | Vendor events built on IMb scans | Arrival at a delivery point, confirmed by scans | | Hand-addressed mail with a stamp | A mailed date, nothing after it | No piece-level tracking | | Gifts and parcels | Carrier tracking number and its scans | The carrier's own delivery record | A vendor that shows the same "delivered" badge on every format is guessing on some of them. Ask which event produced the status before you build a follow-up rule on it. ## Getting tracking into your CRM A rep does not need a stream of scan events. A rep needs a dated task that says who to call and why. Send the CRM a task due the day after confirmed delivery, with the format and campaign in the subject, assigned to the account owner. Send returns too, so nobody mails the same bad address again. Leave out the individual scans, like "in transit" or "arrived at facility". They fill the activity timeline with entries a rep cannot act on. Be careful with a "delivered" field on the contact record. It invites reports that treat delivery as engagement, the mistake described above. If your CRM cannot take tasks from your mail vendor, a daily email listing the pieces delivered yesterday does the same job. ## How Sincerely handles tracking As of September 2026, Sincerely routes each piece by format and destination, and the tracking you get depends on the route. - US printed postcards and letters go through Lob, and only Lob reports delivery. A piece moves from in production to mailed, out for delivery, and delivered, unless it comes back returned to sender. Lob's in transit, in local area, and re-routed events all show as mailed. Status only moves forward. - Canadian printed mail goes through PostGrid, which reports completion. Sincerely shows that as "likely delivered" because the carrier did not confirm it. - Handwritten mail goes out with a stamp, so it has no delivery confirmation. The piece page says so instead of inventing a scan. - Gifts ship with a carrier tracking number. A gift is marked delivered when fulfillment confirms it. Each piece has a timeline on the Sent screen. A confirmed delivery reads "delivery point, not the reader", and it creates a follow-up task due the next day. For Lob-tracked pieces, a campaign can also email a "Mail delivered" alert to a fixed address or to the contact's owner in Salesforce. In [Salesforce](https://trysincerely.com/integrations/salesforce), an admin can turn on writeback. The follow-up then becomes a Salesforce Task on the contact, with a subject like "Postcard delivered to Dana ยท follow up", a due date, and an owner. Completing the Task in Salesforce completes it in Sincerely. Sincerely does not write piece statuses or scan events into Salesforce fields. The [HubSpot](https://trysincerely.com/integrations/hubspot) connection is read-only, so follow-up tasks stay in Sincerely. There is no Zapier app and no customer webhook for delivery events. If your workflow needs either, Sincerely cannot do it today. A return to sender puts the contact's address on hold, so the next piece does not go to the same bad address. QR scans on a piece's landing page show on the piece timeline as engagement. They do not flow to the CRM. ## Tracking is for timing, not for measuring results Delivery rates tell you whether the mail arrived, not whether it worked. Sincerely's holdout readout keeps undelivered accounts in the mailed group, so a bad address counts against the campaign instead of dropping out of the count. The comparison is every account you tried to mail against the accounts you held out. Time the follow-up to confirmed delivery, as [the delivery follow-up guide](https://trysincerely.com/guides/direct-mail-delivery-follow-up) explains. Judge the campaign against a held-out group, as [holdout testing](https://trysincerely.com/holdout-testing) and the [attribution guide](https://trysincerely.com/guides/direct-mail-attribution) explain. ## Related questions - [What is an IMb (Intelligent Mail barcode)?](https://trysincerely.com/glossary/imb): The IMb is the 65-bar USPS barcode on automated mail. It carries routing data and a tracking ID so you can follow a piece through the mail. - [When should sales follow up after direct mail arrives?](https://trysincerely.com/guides/direct-mail-delivery-follow-up): Follow up the day after confirmed delivery. Reference the piece naturally, and treat postal tracking as evidence of arrival, not of reading. - [Do QR codes on direct mail work?](https://trysincerely.com/guides/qr-codes-on-direct-mail): QR codes record link visits from mail, but cannot verify the scanner or prove revenue causation. Here are the design and measurement rules. - [Direct mail attribution, what works and what lies](https://trysincerely.com/guides/direct-mail-attribution): Last-touch and influenced-revenue counting lie. Scans, matchback, and promo codes give partial evidence. Only a holdout answers what mail caused. --- Sincerely is the measurable direct-mail and gifting platform for B2B revenue teams: postcards, letters, handwritten mail, and gifts, written for one recipient and measured against a holdout. Contact Sincerely: https://trysincerely.com/contact Agent routing index: https://trysincerely.com/llms.txt