Canada Post Corp.

Q: “What are some best practices around shipping orders to Canada? What practices ensure optimal customer service, and what shipping services, methods or providers do you use or recommend? Thanks!”
— Nicholas Cole, vice president of e-commerce, Trinity Road

Due to the expectation by Canada Post officials that the strike by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers will last until at least sometime next week, the U.S. Postal Service will suspend accepting mail destined to Canada, with the exception of Global Express Guaranteed shipments.

Last fall, we launched a reader poll on our Web site, CatalogSuccess.com. If you’re a cataloger/multichannel marketer and you’ve never seen it or voted (anonymously, of course), I encourage you to do so. You’ll find it on the top-right corner of our home page. As I thought about what to write in this edition of The Corner View, it dawned on me that we’re sitting on some pretty useful information. So I decided to take a look at some of our past poll results and offer my two cents on what they mean to you — and how you might want to

TORONTO — For a good many years, I’ve periodically covered the Canadian catalog/direct/multichannel market — all, of course, from a U.S. perspective. Dating back to the early 1990s, I reported on catalogers’ experiences in expanding into Canada, usually focusing on brand-new efforts. More often than not, the results looked encouraging, the outlook appeared great. Most surveys showed that Canada was the number 1 logical choice for international expansion among catalogers. Yet, here we are in 2007, and finding catalogers that do any sort of truly significant business in Canada is just about as challenging as getting a ticket to a Stanley Cup playoff hockey

The Canadian dollar’s strength makes marketing by catalog to Canadians a prime expansion opportunity for U.S. catalogers these days. For many, it’s a logical way to grow, provided the prospecting universe is sufficient for the offer. Mailing and distributing merchandise into Canada has become almost seamless thanks to services such as the one offered by Canada Post Borderfree. Here’s what you can expect, and how you can get started test marketing and building a Canadian housefile as part of your overall circulation strategy. Sizing Up the Market There are approximately 33 million people and 12.5 million consumer households in Canada. Similar to the