Canada Direct Mail Automation Release

When we launched Postalytics at the INBOUND Conference in late 2017, we rented a booth on the exhibition floor. It was a great way to launch a company, as we were able to speak with a huge number of prospective customers in a compressed timeframe. While the majority of people we spoke with were from the United States, we met many prospects from Canada. Fast forward to today, we’re really excited to announce our Canada Direct Mail Automation release.

How Does the Canada Direct Mail Automation Release Work?

The big news is that now all Postalytics customers (regardless of location) can NATIVELY send direct mail marketing campaigns to Canadian addresses!

There’s no need to print in a U.S. print shop and ship over the border (imagine how well that’s working these days). The software does the work for you. We’ve integrated with a top Canadian direct mail print partner, and with Canada Post (using their Personalized Mail™ postage product), so that now Canadian marketers (and non-Canadian marketers who want to mail to Canada) can take advantage of direct mail automation in Canada.

Just Like the U.S. Version, With Some Canada Specific Modifications

Essentially, the Canada direct mail automation release works the same as the U.S. version of Postalytics. You can easily:

• Import lists
• Create templates that become reusable assets
• Integrate with HubSpot, Salesforce, Zapier, ActiveCampaign & more
• Schedule “Smart Send” campaigns to be printed and mailed in Canada
• Trigger “Triggered Drip” campaigns from automated workflows
• Get data & analytics about your campaign after it is sent

Watch This Quick Postalytics Canada Overview Video

Per Piece Fees Charged in Canadian Dollars, Subscriptions in U.S.

Since we’re printing and mailing locally in Canada (and paying our print partners and Canada Post in Canada), we’ve developed a Canada specific “Per Piece” pricing system. Since our subscriptions are being charged by us here in the U.S., all subscription fees will be charged in U.S. dollars.

Check out our Canadian pricing page here, or log into your account and choose “Change Plan” or “Direct Mail Credits”, and select Canada at the top of the page to see Canada direct mail automation pricing.

Postcard and Letter Templates Are the Same

You can use the same postcard and letter templates for both U.S. and Canadian direct mail campaigns. While the pricing is different (see below), the structure that the creative lives within, along with the proofing process, is identical!

What’s Changed? You Can Now Choose Your Country

Now, when you’re performing several different functions inside of Postalytics, you’ll be prompted to choose a country, and you’ll be able to select either U.S. or Canada. To set your default country, navigate to your Profile page and choose your default country for both Profile/System settings as well as Billing.

Send Campaigns to Either U.S. or Canadian Addresses

It’s super easy to set up campaigns that will send to either U.S. or Canadian addresses. After you’ve proofed your templates and imported your lists (for Smart Send Campaigns), you can set up your campaigns with the Smart Send or Triggered Drip campaign wizards.

For both campaign types, you’ll choose the country that you want the campaign to send to in the “Recipients” step and the software will automatically set up the rest of the steps for you. (Note, you cannot currently send a single campaign to multiple countries).

Country Specific Scheduling and Payment

The country that you choose at the “Recipients” step will dictate the “Schedule” and “Payment” selections that you’re presented with (no change to U.S. campaigns).

For Canada, we’re offering a single class of postage, Canada Post’s Personalized Mail™. After the typical 2 business day turnaround at the print partner, Canada Post will deliver the mail to most of Canada within 3-5 business days, similar to the U.S. First Class mail system. For very remote or rural addresses, it may take longer.

The payment for Canadian campaigns is being charged in Canadian dollars. We now offer Canadian pricing for all of our formats except Custom Envelopes (to come in 2022).

Triggered Drip Campaigns: Trigger Canadian Direct Mail from CRM & More

As mentioned previously, all Postalytics integrations will work in Canada the same way that they work in the U.S. Simply set up your workflows, drop your Triggered Drip campaign into it using the instructions from our Help Docs, test the campaign using “Test Mode” and start triggering automated direct mail to Canadian addresses.

If you’re a marketer with both U.S. and Canadian addresses you’d like to trigger to, just set up the workflow with logic to separate U.S. and Canadian addresses, and send them to your unique U.S. and Canadian Triggered Drip Campaigns.

Direct Mail Credits and Per Piece Fees for Canada

Since the Canadian printing and Canada Post Personalized Mail™ services are completely separate from their U.S. counterparts, we’ve built out unique Canadian per piece pricing models. As with the U.S., per piece pricing is based on the plan, and we offer Free, Marketer, Pro and Agency plans in Canada.

In order to access this pricing in Postalytics, you can click on the “Change Plan” or “Direct Mail Credits” link under your username and select “Canada” in the new Country selection.

Direct Mail Credits has separate credit queues for Canadian and U.S. formats. So, if you want to purchase credits for Canadian mailing, be sure you select Canada as the country. Credit purchases for U.S. formats cannot be used for Canada mailings, and vice versa.

The Change Plan page will show you all of the different plan options and the pricing of each format in each plan.

PRICING NOTE: We’re offering special introductory pricing in Canada for our launch. We do anticipate that Canada Post will slightly increase their pricing in early January 2022. We’ll keep you in the loop when we know more about their plans.

PRICING NOTE #2: When you look at the Canada per piece pricing, you’ll see there’s a large difference in price between the 6×9 and 6×11 formats. This is due to Canada Post postage pricing, which counts the 6×11 format as “oversized”.

List Import Now Processes Canadian Addresses

Postalytics has always included sophisticated U.S. address validation features in our List Import tools to ensure that you don’t send mail to “improperly formed” addresses, like those missing required fields or duplicate addresses. We’ve now added Canadian address logic to these features.

Now, when you import a list into Postalytics, the software will automatically check the Zip/Postal Codes and State/Province entries for each contact, and validate whether they are properly formed for mailing in either the U.S. or Canada. In any Postalytics account, you can import lists with either U.S. or Canadian Addresses.

What About Lists That Contain Contacts from Both Countries?

If you’ve got lists that you want to send mail to that include both U.S. and Canadian addresses, the software will import and automatically create a U.S. list and a Canadian list for you, each with country specific address validation.

U.S. and Canadian lists will be displayed in the new “List of Lists” view:

As you can see, if you include an address that has a postal code or state/region that is not in the U.S. or Canada, they’ll be placed in a “Not Supported Country” list.

Invalid Addresses Work the Same Way

Just like the U.S. version of Postalytics, the Canada direct mail automation release manages Invalid addresses and prevents you from wasting your time and money on them. If the List Import software discovers addresses that are not properly formed, they’ll be labeled “Invalid” and you won’t be able to mail to them unless you edit/fix them.

Additionally, when your campaign is sent to the Canadian print network, your addresses will be run through a Canada Post approved database that will standardize/correct some addresses and will identify some addresses as invalid. These are captured in your Campaign Dashboard and your list is automatically updated, similar to how the U.S. CASS system works.

Campaign Dashboard – A Slight Change from the U.S. Version

Today, Canada Post does not have a mail recipient tracking tool in place that is similar to the USPS IMB (Intelligent Mail Barcode). As a result, Postalytics is unable to present as much recipient tracking detail in the Campaign Dashboard.

Below is an example of the Canadian Campaign Dashboard. As you can see, we are able to provide recipient level event data on Mailpiece Creation, Printed, Addressed and Canada Post Received statuses. We are not able to provide any status updates after Canada Post receives the mail from the print network. When Canada Post does roll out a mail tracking system, we’ll aggressively add it into our product plan.

Persistent Shopping Cart – New for All Users

Finally, we’ve enhanced the shopping cart in Postalytics, cleaning up a few useability issues and made it “persistent”. If you’ve started a purchase, but decide to leave the shopping cart, you’ll now see a reminder that the purchase is not complete.

You also now have the ability to manage and delete multiple items from your cart.

Let’s Talk About the Canada Direct Mail Automation Release

For the many marketers who’ve contacted us over the years and requested that we offer a Canadian version of Postalytics, we’re excited to announce the Canada Direct Mail Automation release. We’d love to connect with you to discuss ways that you can generate more leads and sales by leveraging the power of automated direct mailing to Canada.