A Guide to Direct Mail in Canada

Direct Mail strategies that work consistently in the US tend to work in other Western societies. But the implementation process takes a different route. Canada is an example of different implementation processes that experienced direct marketers should consider before undertaking any mailing in this country.

At the time of this writing, high tariffs to produce mail in the US encourages mailers to print and mail in Canada. This is one reason why local direct mail houses and large US firms like RR Donnelley do a significant volume of direct mail in Canada. 

There is a national goods and services tax of 5% and a Provincial Sales tax 7% on production in British Columbia. No Provincial sales tax is charged on postage, but there is a 5% GST tax con postage.

One advantage to mailing in Canada is the exchange rate. At this time, every $US is worth $1.32 Canadian. Spending $100,000 Canadian dollars on mail equals $75,000 US Dollars. 

The first thing to consider is that all compiled names in Canada emanate from Canada Post. The strict privacy laws and their unique access to the Canadian census forms the nexus of available compiled names.

Canada Post offers an internal targeting service that was established about 5 years ago. For a fee, they create customer profiles using client databases to target names using demographics and Prizm 5 analytics. Home ownership, annual income, household composition, type of dwelling and so on are indexed for accurate targeting. There are well over 100 data points for each address for a file totaling 14 million address in the country.

Response lists are small and often not worth testing for some mailers due to inadequate scalability. Compiled names from Canada Post offer the primary list source for Canadian prospect mailings

When working with US or Canadian based printers, they should have a strong working relationship with Canada Post. Some large printers in Canada actually perform their own analytics having direct online access to the Canada Post files.

Another difference between US and Canadian mail are the three categories of available postage in Canada. Here are the three types of Canadian bulk mail.

1. Neighborhood mail (NM) that distributes mail without a name or address. The price per piece is C$ .092 per piece. Postal code selection is available with clusters of 20 addresses per code in urban areas and up to 2000 addresses in rural areas. Targeting consists of all the same variable as the more expensive mailing categories listed below. But the targeting is done at the postal code level and not per household. the lack of addresses and names means that these files are not purgeable or able to delete no mail names or existing customers.

2. Postal Code Targeting (PCT) allows the use of addresses but no names. The cost per piece is C$ 0.281 per piece. The advantages over neighborhood mail other than an actual address is the ability to make selections at the household level. The improves targetability and makes the list purgeable by deleting customers from prospect mailings and other house file names such as inquiries that require a different treatment than prospects.

3.  Personalized Mail (PM) offers the same benefits as standard mail in the US with names and addresses. The cost per piece is C$ 0.3638 per piece. As with PCT, the names are targetable at the household level and purgeable.

There are other interesting aspects beyond the Canadian list selection processes. For example, the postage meters are customizable at no added cost with the sender’s company logo. One additional benefit is that compiled list rentals are included in the postage costs.

As for the creative executions, the formats, offers and language are identical to the US. the only exception are the spellings that follow European English norms such colour instead of color. If mailing in Québec, of course, the creative should be sent either as English with French running parallel or French only.

I hope you found this Canadian mail primer helpful Please let me know if you have questions or need support with your direct mail planning and creative development.