Mail Tracking: The Data Survey Researchers May Be Overlooking

On September 9, 2026September 9, 2026 By MSG BloggerIn Research Assist

You designed the sample. You tested the questionnaire. You carefully considered the incentive, envelope, cover letter, and every other element of your survey package. The mailing goes out on Monday.

Now what?

For many research projects, this is where we start counting days. We assume the mail will arrive within a certain window and begin evaluating response based on the date the survey was mailed.

But valuable information is generated between “we mailed it” and “they responded.”

Mail tracking can give researchers a much better picture of what is actually happening in the field. It can help us understand when mail is reaching different parts of the country, identify unexpected postal delays, better interpret response patterns, and even see completed paper surveys making their way back.

And much of this information is already available through the Intelligent Mail barcode (IMb) printed on the mailpiece.

First, What Do We Mean by “Mail Tracking”?

There are a few USPS terms that are easy to confuse.

Informed Visibility (IV-MTR) is the USPS system that provides tracking information for commercial mail. As barcoded letters and flats move through automated USPS equipment, scan events show where and when pieces are processed.

For researchers, this data is often accessed through a third-party mail-tracking provider that turns those individual USPS events into much more useful reports: delivery curves, geographic reports, expected delivery information, and individual-piece tracking.

Informed Delivery is something different. It is the consumer-facing USPS service that allows participating customers to digitally preview incoming mail. For automation-processed letter-size pieces, the recipient can see a grayscale image of the address side of the envelope in an email, app, or online dashboard.

So one tells us how mail moves through the postal network. The other potentially shows the respondent their incoming mail before they ever open their mailbox.

Both can be valuable to survey researchers, but in very different ways.

“Delivered” Doesn’t Necessarily Mean What You Think It Means

This may be the most important thing to understand about mail tracking.

USPS mail tracking is not the same as tracking a FedEx or UPS package. A mail carrier doesn’t scan each individual survey invitation when it is placed in the respondent’s mailbox.

The tracking information comes primarily from automated USPS mail-processing operations. USPS is very clear that Informed Visibility does not provide proof of delivery, and complete tracking information is not guaranteed for every mailpiece.

That distinction is important when interpreting a tracking report.

A missing delivery event does not mean a mailpiece wasn’t delivered.

Tracking is best viewed as another source of information about field performance, not definitive proof that a particular respondent did or did not receive a survey.

Flats Can Be Particularly Challenging

Tracking limitations become especially apparent with oversized mailpieces.

While Informed Visibility supports tracking of automation-compatible letters and flats, our experience has been that tracking for flats can be considerably less complete than tracking for standard letter-size pieces. We also frequently see flats taking longer to reach their destinations.

And the completeness of the tracking can vary substantially from one mailing to another.

In one oversized survey mailing of more than 35,000 pieces, only 15.2% ultimately showed a delivery event in the tracking report. We knew that couldn’t represent actual delivery because respondents were completing and returning the surveys.

The mail had clearly arrived. The tracking data simply hadn’t captured the complete journey.

Figure 1 – No scan doesn’t mean no delivery

In this oversized mailing, only 15.2% of more than 35,000 tracked pieces showed a delivery event. Survey responses confirmed that substantially more mail had actually reached respondents.

This doesn’t mean flat tracking is always that incomplete. In another First-Class flat mailing, nearly 90% of the pieces eventually showed a delivery event.

Tracking performance for flats can vary considerably, so researchers should be cautious about treating the absence of a scan as evidence that a piece wasn’t delivered.

A useful rule to remember is:

Tracking data is evidence of postal processing. A missing scan is not evidence of nondelivery.

There is also an important Informed Delivery difference with flats. The familiar grayscale images consumers see are generated from automation-processed letter-size mailpieces. Flats do not receive that same automatically generated grayscale image.

Including an Informed Delivery campaign can provide a Representative Image for a flat, but that is different from USPS capturing and displaying an image of the actual mail piece.

That difference is worth considering when researchers evaluate formats. An oversized envelope may have advantages when it physically lands in someone’s mailbox, but a standard letter-size piece has an additional opportunity to be seen digitally through Informed Delivery.

Stop Assuming When Your Mail Arrived

This is where tracking becomes particularly useful for research.

Suppose you mail 20,000 survey invitations on Monday.

It’s tempting to think those 20,000 households have essentially the same opportunity to respond beginning a few days later.

They don’t.

Some pieces may move very quickly. Others may take several additional days. Occasionally, a particular region or processing facility may experience a delay that becomes obvious when you look at the tracking data.

A cumulative delivery report lets us see that pattern.

The example below is particularly striking. The mailing entered the mail stream on July 10. Four days later, only about 12% of the pieces showed a delivery event. Two days after that, the cumulative percentage jumped to more than 81%, and the following day it was nearly 94%.

Figure 2 – Mail date isn’t delivery date

More than 80% of the tracked pieces in this mailing reached their logical delivery event on a single day, six days after the mailing entered the mailstream.

Now think about how that changes the interpretation of response.

If we say someone responded on “Day 7,” we’re measuring seven days from the mail date. But one respondent may have had the survey for five days while another had it for only two.

For some studies, that distinction may not matter.

For others, particularly experiments involving contact strategies, incentives, reminders or short field periods, it could matter quite a bit.

Mail tracking effectively gives us another form of paradata: information about the process by which the survey data was collected.

Tracking Can Help Explain Unexpected Results

Imagine that response from one part of the country is noticeably lower than response elsewhere.

Is there something different about those respondents?

Or did their mail arrive four days later?

Without tracking data, we may never even ask the second question.

The same applies to experiments. Suppose Condition A initially appears to outperform Condition B. Before concluding that the treatment caused the difference, it can be useful to know whether the two groups experienced similar delivery patterns.

Tracking won’t explain every response-rate difference, but it can identify an operational factor that otherwise might remain invisible.

Geographic reporting can make these patterns especially easy to spot. In the example below, pieces going to the WestPac postal area began showing delivery events before most of the pieces going to the Atlantic, Central and Southern areas.

Figure 3 – Geography matters
Mail doesn’t necessarily move at the same pace everywhere. Breaking tracking data out geographically can help identify regional differences that may otherwise be mistaken for differences in respondent behavior.

This can be particularly important when researchers are monitoring response rates during the field period. A slower response rate in one geographic area may reflect something about the population, or it may simply mean those respondents haven’t had the survey as long.

Tracking Can Help You Time the Next Contact

Tracking can also have a very practical use during fieldwork: deciding when to send the next communication.

If the protocol calls for a reminder mailing, postcard, email or text message, the timing is often based on the date the original mailing was sent.

But what if the first mailing took longer to arrive than expected? You could end up sending a reminder almost immediately after some respondents receive the original invitation.

Conversely, if mail moved faster than anticipated, you may be waiting longer than necessary.

Tracking gives the research team actual field information to consider rather than relying entirely on an assumed USPS delivery schedule.

That doesn’t mean every study needs to dynamically change its contact schedule based on postal tracking. But it does mean researchers can know whether their assumptions about delivery actually matched what happened.

Tracking Doesn’t Have to Stop at the Respondent’s Mailbox

For paper surveys, one of my favorite uses of mail tracking is on the Business Reply Envelope (BRE).

A uniquely serialized Intelligent Mail barcode can also be placed on the return envelope. When a respondent completes the questionnaire and puts the BRE into the mail stream, USPS automation can begin generating tracking information on its trip back.

Think about what that means operationally.

You may be able to see that hundreds, or thousands of completed surveys are making their way back before they physically arrive at your processing facility.

The return pattern can also be interesting in its own right. Paper responses don’t necessarily arrive in one neat wave. There may be a strong initial response followed by a long tail of respondents returning questionnaires days or even weeks later.

Figure 4 – Tracking can work in both directions
Tracking a uniquely barcoded BRE can provide visibility into paper surveys entering the return mailstream, including the initial response wave and the longer tail of returns that follows.

There is a research benefit here as well.

Traditionally, the date a paper questionnaire arrives at the processing facility may be the closest approximation we have for when a respondent completed and returned it.

BRE tracking can potentially give us an earlier data point: when the return envelope first appears in USPS processing.

That isn’t the same as knowing exactly when the respondent completed the questionnaire or placed it in a mailbox. But it can provide a better picture of response timing by separating at least some of the respondent’s action from the time the completed survey spends traveling through the postal network.

For studies with multiple waves, there can be another practical benefit. If a subsequent mailing is approaching, BRE tracking may indicate that a respondent’s completed survey is already on its way back even though it hasn’t physically arrived yet.

Depending on the study design and suppression rules, that information may help avoid sending an unnecessary follow-up to someone who has already responded, reducing respondent burden.

Your Envelope May Make Its First Impression Before It Reaches the Mailbox

This is where Informed Delivery becomes particularly interesting.

As of May 15, 2026, USPS reported that more than 74.8 million customers were enrolled in Informed Delivery. USPS also reports that Informed Delivery Daily Digest emails have an average open rate exceeding 60%.

This isn’t a niche postal service anymore.

For researchers sending letter-size survey invitations, a substantial number of potential respondents may see the outside of the envelope digitally before, or around the same time as the physical piece reaches their mailbox.

That means the envelope isn’t necessarily making its first impression when someone pulls it from the day’s mail. It may already have appeared on their phone or computer.

For researchers, that raises some interesting design questions.

Is the sponsor clearly identifiable? Does the envelope look legitimate and important? Does the return address mean something to the respondent? Does teaser copy help or hurt? And how does an envelope designed in color translate into the grayscale image normally shown through Informed Delivery?

Researchers spend a great deal of time thinking about what will encourage someone to open a survey invitation. Informed Delivery adds another environment in which that decision may begin.

It also creates an interesting difference when comparing letter-size and oversized formats. A large envelope may command more attention in the physical mailbox, while an automation-processed letter-size piece may have the advantage of creating a digital impression as well.

Neither is necessarily better, but researchers should know the difference exists.

Mail Doesn’t Have to Disappear into a Black Hole

Researchers routinely collect paradata about web surveys: when someone opened an invitation, when they started the questionnaire, how long they spent completing it and when they submitted it.

With mail, we often accept a much larger blind spot.

We know when we mailed something.

We know when someone responded.

And historically, much of what happened in between was an assumption.

It doesn’t have to be.

Mail tracking isn’t perfect, and it shouldn’t be treated as proof of delivery. But it can tell us when a mailing moved faster or slower than expected, whether certain geographic areas experienced delays, whether delivery patterns may have influenced an experiment, and when completed surveys are already making their way back.

Informed Delivery adds yet another dimension by reminding us that the respondent’s interaction with a physical mailpiece may actually begin digitally.

None of this requires researchers to become postal experts. It simply requires us to recognize that the journey between “we mailed it” and “they responded” is producing useful information.

The next time your survey mailing goes out, don’t just mark the mail date on the calendar and start counting days. Take a look at what the tracking data is telling you.

The time between “we mailed it” and “they responded” doesn’t have to be a black hole.

USPS Resources

For additional information:

USPS Informed Visibility Mail Tracking & Reporting (IV-MTR)
Information about USPS mail tracking, scan data and Informed Visibility.

USPS Informed Delivery
Information about the consumer-facing service that provides digital previews of incoming mail

Beyond the Voter File: Why Verification Matters More Than Ever

On June 23, 2026July 7, 2026 By MSG BloggerIn MSG, Verified Voter Graph™

Access to voter data has never been easier. But access alone doesn’t guarantee quality.

For researchers, public affairs professionals, advocacy organizations, and data-driven organizations, the real challenge isn’t simply finding voter records, but ensuring those records are accurate, contactable, and enriched with the information needed to support informed decision-making.

As communication channels evolve and consumer information changes over time, traditional voter files can quickly become outdated. Contact information becomes stale, records become fragmented, and valuable context is often missing. The result is lower contact rates, inefficient outreach, and reduced confidence in the data being used.

The Limits of Traditional Voter Data

The national voter file remains one of the most valuable datasets available for understanding and engaging populations. However, voter records alone often provide only a partial view of an individual.

Common challenges include:

Inaccurate or outdated contact information
Limited insight beyond registration and demographic attributes
Difficulty determining whether phone numbers are active and reachable
Fragmented data across multiple sources
Reduced efficiency caused by disconnected or unusable records

When data quality suffers, every downstream activity—from research recruitment to constituent engagement—becomes more difficult.

Building a More Complete View

Modern data strategies require more than a standalone voter file. They require a connected, verified view of the individual.

MSG’s Verified Voter Graph™ was developed to address this challenge by combining the precision of the national registered voter file with the depth of a multi-source consumer intelligence platform. By linking voter records with verified contact information and consumer insights, the Verified Voter Graph creates a richer and more complete view of the people behind the records.

Rather than relying on a single source of information, records are validated across multiple trusted data assets to improve accuracy, consistency, and confidence.

Verification Makes the Difference

One of the most significant challenges in any outreach or research effort is determining whether contact information is actually usable.

The Verified Voter Graph addresses this through phone connectivity verification, ensuring that phone records are validated for active connectivity before they are used. This helps organizations reduce wasted effort, improve efficiency, and focus resources on records that are more likely to result in successful contact.

The result is a cleaner dataset designed to support better outcomes and stronger return on investment.

Smarter Data Through Intelligent Linkage

Verification is only part of the equation.

Advanced identity resolution techniques connect voter records with household-level and behavioral information to create a unified view of individuals and households. This intelligent data linkage helps eliminate duplication, improve record quality, and provide a more complete understanding of populations.

The outcome is not simply more data—it’s better-connected data.

Supporting Research and Data-Driven Decision Making

High-quality data serves as the foundation for high-quality insights.

For researchers and analysts, access to verified and enriched records can improve sample quality, increase reachability, and support more effective recruitment efforts. For organizations seeking to better understand communities and populations, a more accurate view of individuals leads to more informed decisions.

In every case, success begins with confidence in the underlying data.

The Future of Voter Data

The future of voter intelligence isn’t about accumulating more records. It’s about creating more accurate, connected, and actionable records.

By combining verified contact information, multi-source enrichment, intelligent identity resolution, and rigorous validation practices, the Verified Voter Graph helps organizations move beyond names on a list to a more complete understanding of the people they seek to reach and understand.

Because better data leads to better decisions. See the people behind your voter file. Contact us to learn more.

Boost Response Rates with Clear, Concise Mailer Designs

On March 3, 2025March 13, 2025 By MSG BloggerIn Research Assist

In a world flooded with advertising and marketing messages, getting your mailer noticed and read is a challenge. A well-designed, concise mailer can significantly improve response rates, ensuring your message resonates with recipients.

Here’s how you can craft compelling mailers that capture attention and drive engagement:

1. Prioritize Clarity and Brevity

The key to an effective mailer is delivering your message quickly and clearly. Avoid excessive text and complex language. Use simple, direct statements that immediately convey the value proposition. A good rule of thumb is to keep key messages within a few short sentences and use bullet points for easy readability.

Appeal to the desire of respondents to feel important by explaining how their feedback will change the status quo and why it is important to have their feedback.
Clearly and concisely explain who is conducting the study, how their address was chosen, and assurance of privacy and security regarding their data.
Include a website or contact information for recipients who have questions or need assistance.

2. Use Eye-Catching Visuals

Visual appeal plays a critical role in engagement. High-quality images, bold typography, and strategic use of colors can draw attention to your mailer. However, don’t overload it with too many design elements — maintain a balance between text and visuals to ensure readability.

3. Use Incentives

Rewards and incentives have been proven time and again to increase survey participation – boosting the likelihood of response and completion. Offering even a small incentive can significantly improve engagement rates.

4. Include a Strong Call-to-Action (CTA)

Your mailer should have a clear purpose, whether it’s joining a panel, signing up for an event, or completing a survey. Use a strong, action-oriented CTA like “Claim Your Reward Now” or “Scan the QR Code to take the Survey” to guide recipients toward the desired action.

5. Optimize Layout and White Space While Maintaining Professionalism

A cluttered design can be overwhelming and reduce readability. Utilize white space effectively to create a clean and organized look. Ensure that the most important information is prominent, official, and that the layout naturally guides the reader’s eye from one element to the next while maintaining a professional appearance.

6. Personalization for Greater Impact

Personalized mailers that address recipients by ‘Dear “Town/County” resident’ on letter and “Town” resident on envelope, can make a significant difference in response rates. Tailor your content to specific audience segments to create a more meaningful connection. When you haven’t heard from a recipient, send between one and three reminders, using refreshed language but remaining consistent with original messaging. Being consistent helps instill trust and legitimacy in your message.

7. Create a Great Design while Portraying Credibility

The design of your mailer is the visual gateway to success. It’s the first thing recipients see and sets the tone for your message. Larger postcards and envelopes are more likely to grab attention and avoid immediate disposal. Use high-quality images that are relevant to your message. Incorporating the branding of well-known institutions will enhance the credibility and legitimacy of your project.

Final Thoughts

A well-designed and concise survey invite packet can significantly boost response rates. Prioritize clarity, consistency, and brevity to create mailers that are visually appealing and easy to read. With countless bills, marketing messages and flyers competing for attention in mailboxes, making your mailer stand out is essential. Use high-quality images and logos to instill a sense of professionalism and trust.

A compelling and thoughtfully crafted design can grab attention, encourage participation, and effectively convey your message. And remember, too much clutter can be overwhelming, making your mailer difficult to read and reducing engagement. A clean, streamlined design ensures your message is clear and effective. Sometimes, less is more! For inquiries or a quote on our Research Assist Services, feel free to contact us here.

Sample Stratification: Key Benefits and Challenges to Stratifying Your Sample

On July 17, 2024October 11, 2024 By MSG BloggerIn Genesys, MSG

One of the most important tools in survey sampling is stratification, whereby the sample selection process takes place separately within different subgroups (strata). In practice, surveys rarely adopt simple random sampling and instead often rely on some form of stratification for sample selection. Just like any other tool, however, stratification must be employed for the right reasons and implemented properly for its dividends to be realized. Briefly, there are three instances when a stratified sampling design would be preferred over simpler options:

When simple random sampling may fail to provide adequate representation and diversity.
When for analytical reasons, certain small subgroups need to have boosted representations.
When for cost optimizations, units that are “cheaper-to-survey” need to be oversampled.

For any of the above three reasons, instead of selecting a random sample across the entire sampling frame, stratification enables researchers to manage the sample selection process while maintaining the probabilistic nature of the resulting sample. When applied effectively, stratification can also increase the efficiency of a sample by localizing the selection process within subgroups comprised of similar units. In contrast, simple random samples can require a larger size to achieve a comparable level of precision. Effective sample stratification requires three basic elements:

Availability of reliable frame data for all units for creation of sampling strata.
Optimal allocation of the total sample across all strata.
Efficient selection of sampling units within each stratum.

Despite the above attractive features of stratification, it is important to be cognizant of the potential drawbacks of this sampling methodology when it is applied ineffectively or for the wrong reasons. As such, the following cautionary points are noteworthy when considering the pros and cons of stratification:

Effective Stratification

Critical to the creation of effective strata, for any of the three reasons numerated earlier, is the availability of reliable data for all units on the sampling frame. Construction of poor strata, those comprised of heterogenous (dissimilar) units, due to poor frame data can backfire and obliterate all benefits of stratification. Effective sampling strata must include homogeneous (similar) units that are mutually exclusive (have no overlap) and collectively exhaustive (cover the entire frame).

Design Effect

When by design certain units of the population are selected at higher or lower rates, such departures from equal probability of selection method (EPSEM) must be corrected by application of design weighs that reflect selection probabilities. Since unequal weights reduce the effective sample size of a survey, as measured by the following statistic, it is important for stratification to be employed judiciously and for the right reasons. This means excessive departure from an EPSEM design via superfluous stratification can severely reduce the efficiency of a sample.

*_{Departure from an EPSEM design requires design weighting as seen in the image above.}*

Optimal Sample Allocation

In addition to construction of effective sampling strata, the total sample must be optimally allocated across the resulting strata. While proportional allocation is statistically most optimal, disproportional allocation should be justified by the analytical and cost saving needs of a survey. Again, it is important to remember that any departure from a proportional allocation of the sample across strata will have precision costs vis-à-vis the incurred design effect.

Selection of Sampling Units

The final stage of sample selection occurs within each stratum. While an EPSEM option can minimize the sampling error margins associated with the resulting survey estimates, intentional departure from this option should have valid reasons. Unequal selection probabilities, which can have perfectly justifiable reasons, will further decrease the effective sample size of a survey. Lastly, it is imperative to ensure that all eligible units would have known and nonzero (not necessarily equal) chance of selection to preserve the probabilistic nature of the employed sample.