Dos and Don’ts in Today's Canadian List Market

Marketing into Canada can mean adding an ideal test market to your direct mail efforts. With a population of over 30 million people – the majority of whom are located close to the U.S. border and who spend over $12 billion annually on direct response – Canada can be a great market opportunity for US marketers.

But as always, the truism carries a range of caveats. So whether it be the differences in list availability or the disparate regulatory and cultural environments, it makes sense to get smart about Canada before trying this potentially lucrative, California-sized market on for size.

DO Anticipate a Less Saturated Marketplace – and Better Response Rates


The facts about the American direct mail market are well known. As the most intensive, developed and sizeable consumer market in the world, marketers in the U.S. also deal with the most extreme competition as product and service offers crowd American mailboxes.

So what's happening north of the border? Well, it's quite a different scenario.
One would expect Canada to have a proportionately similar ratio of offers and mailings to households as in the US – in the order of a dozen or so mail offers per day.

In actual fact, Canada Post delivers an average of just two items of addressed mail and one item of unaddressed mail daily to each Canadian household. Cornerstone's experience tells the same story – Canada is an under-exploited market. Canadian list rental numbers invariably show list usage rates are lower here than in the US. And anecdotally, managers and list brokers confirm that this comparative offer-scarcity in Canada can and often does translate into better results.

DON'T Expect the Same Regulatory Environment

Do you consider the U.S. direct response marketing regulatory landscape difficult to navigate? Don't expect it to be easy in Canada either, although there is a bit more consistency across the country in terms of privacy and marketing legislation. Here is a snapshot of some Canadian privacy facts to get you started.

The most significant law to direct marketers, which governs the areas of privacy, telemarketing and consumer protection regulations, is the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) introduced in 2004. PIPEDA applies in seven out of 10 provinces. While British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec opted to pass their own legislation, it is substantially similar to PIPEDA.

Among other requirements, PIPEDA requires organizations to obtain consent for the collection, use and disclosure of personal information in the course of commercial activity. Unlike most US privacy laws, however, PIPEDA is a principle-based legal framework, whose chief administrator, the Privacy Commissioner Canada, takes action based on complaints with the objective of arbitrating conflict and disciplining marketers who fail to use compliant business practices.
The Canadian National Do Not Call List became operational in September 2008 to carry out the same mandate as the US Do Not Call registry: to reduce unwanted telemarketing calls by allowing consumers to register their phone number with the service. Enforceable under the Telecommunications Act, there are significant financial penalties for non-compliance; again, very similar to the US system.
Obviously it's critical for US firms marketing into Canada to comply with applicable laws, particularly in the area of privacy, in order to protect their organizations from both legal and reputational risk. A recent study showed that in Canada, corporate reputation is nearly as important as product price for many shoppers. Moreover, nearly half (49%) of Canadians surveyed said they are likely to refuse to buy a product from a company they’ve heard negative news about.

DO Modify Your Offer to Capitalize on Differences in Culture

You should anticipate major differences in values when you mail across the border. A key point is that Canadians tend not to respond to appeals with a strong patriotic focus, thanks to an evolutionary versus revolutionary origin as a country. Further, a history of democratic socialism means that appeals to liberal social values such as wealth redistribution, universal health care and multiculturalism can work well in Canada while they may not in the US.

As so much of the Canadian population lives close to the United States with exposure to significant amounts of US media, Canadians are not averse to US marketers. However, those US marketers that can demonstrate respect for Canadian differences through their creative, offers and customer care generally achieve greater success and avoid being seen as culturally myopic.

Return mail should be sent to a Canadian address. If you're including Quebec, consider establishing a separate Quebec address for Quebec orders and hiring a bilingual customer service center.

Rest assured that there are still more similarities than differences when you compare the U.S. list market to the Canadian one. Your list of best practices and learnings apply equally when mailing in Canada—no need to rethink the basics of success, like rigorous customer profiling and knowledge, offer relevancy and test-and-learn techniques.

Stuart Young (syoung@cstonecanada.com) is vice president of list brokerage, list management and the data products divisions at Cornerstone Group of Companies.