Personalized Mail Guidelines

You can send as few as 150 pieces for any available direct mail campaign in PostNow.

Canada Post adds a Neighbourhood Mail transportation fee to all campaigns not inducted into the exact depot(s) closest to your delivery neighbourhoods.

In other words, unless you are willing to drive your campaign mail pieces to a specific dropoff depot or depots for larger campaigns, you are covering the cost for Canada Post to distribute your campaign to the appropriate depots for final sorting/delivery.

This transportation fee is often why you will see a published Neighbourhood Mail rate of $0.18 / piece, but the final price is $0.192 when working with a mail house or Canada Post directly.

At PostNow we include the transportation fee in all campaigns automatically.

Prices for a Direct Mail audience start at “free” and increase based on the dataset being accessed. Standard options for each mail type are listed below. More advanced data sets can be accessed from 3rd party providers like Environics.

Neighbourhood Mail Audience Options:

• Canada Post Precision Targeter – free to use. Includes neighbourhood targeting based on combinations of up-to 3 demographic filters.

Personalized Mail Audience Options:

• Use your own data – free. This includes PostNow doing basic cleaning of your data and running it through the National Change of Address (NCOA) to identify any bad records.
• Canada Post Postal Code Name/Addresses – from $0.15/record. Use 6-digit postal codes to target all households within. Includes names and address data that can be printed by an Expert Partner. Not available for any other use.

Postal Code Targeting Audience Options:

• Canada Post Postal Code Data. Included in postage. Use 6-digital postal codes to target all households within. A suppression list can be provided to remove existing customers from the final data.  Data includes address only, no names.

Why Personalized Mail?

Personalized Mail campaigns are great for customer retention and building loyal relationships with existing customers through one-one-one interactions.

Did you know? 86% of Canadians open the direct mail they receive and more than half make a purchase as a result. The open rate and purchase rate increases when personalized mail is used, which makes PM one of the most effective ways to incite action among an ideal target audience.

Discounts are available. To qualify, a customer must commit to a minimum spend of $10,000 annually per service. Canada Post will look at your marketing plan and budget to see if you’re likely to achieve the minimum spend before awarding you a postage discount. There are various tiers of discounts available. Please contact us if you would like an introduction to a Canada Post sales rep.

An example of $10,000 would spend would be:

• 100,000 NM (approximately)
• 20,000 PM (approximately)

Discounts start at about 20% and increase based on total volume. The commitments are in the millions of dollars spent/year for the largest available Canada Post discounts.

When budgeting for a Direct Mail Ad Campaign you should plan for the following cost categories:

• Planning & Design Costs (labour costs, asset licences, etc. )
• Targeting/Data Costs (databases, licences, software, labour)
• Production Costs (printing, folding, inserting, bundling, etc)
• Postage/Transportation Costs

Final costs can be controlled with proper planning and targeting.