Are your brick and mortar retail stores are located in Canada? Or are you an e-tailer looking to engage with Canadian customers through your online shopping site? The Stemless marketing platform can help you achieve your marketing list growth goals.
If you Google ‘marketing platforms’ in Canada, you’ll find a smattering of advice. Some of it may even be specific to texting services. Our blog post on best text message marketing practices in Canada can serve as the digital marketer’s guidebook you need. As far as social media posts, this may not be the most interesting, but it is valuable content that will help you grow your brand with a Canadian digital audience.
Acquiring Marketing Consent
Regardless of what country you’re in, safety and legality is where every platform vetting process should begin. In Canada, that means making yourself familiar with Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL).
CASL applies to any marketing or promotional material sent digitally to a digital receiver. Digital receivers can be email, phone numbers, push notifications or blue-tooth. It was important to point this out. We’ve heard from owners of brick and mortar stores that don’t realize that they’re also subject to CASL rules.
With fines of up to $1 million for individual spammers and $10 million for corporate scammers, it pays to pay attention. And unlike TCPA, CASL’s American cousin, company officers and managers can personally be held liable for any imposed fines.
Canada has rules regarding messaging to consumers who provide you with express consent versus those that provide you with implicit consent. Express consent means that consumers have opted in with their phone number to receive promotional messaging from you. Texting your promotional line specific SMS keywords to receive personalized messaging is an example of explicit consent.
Implicit consent can be extended if a consumer has done business with you in the past two years. An example of implicit consent can be a customer answering your company’s mission oriented call to action. They’re not specifically saying yes to your marketing, but they are saying yes to you as an entity.
While obtaining implicit consent is easier, express consent does not have a time limit. If a customer provides you with their express consent, you can market to them for life, unless they opt-out. A customer’s implicit consent, however, has a lifetime of two years.
Avoid Price Gouging
Growing your text messaging list should be as simple and straightforward as it is to grow your email list. And no matter where your physical locations reside, your pricing should be straightforward and transparent. Unfortunately, some of our competitors have been the biggest offenders.
Text messaging services don’t need to be expensive, especially in Canada, where commercially available 800 numbers extend their service areas. Even US short codes extend their service coverage to Canada. Beware of hidden fees and unexpected costs.
Carrier specific termination fees from Bell, Rogers and Fido are to be expected. These fees should always be clearly labeled and available to you in real time.
Any platform you work with should offer you rates in CAD and be set up to accept Canadian forms of payment. There shouldn’t be any fees or location specific penalties associated with operating in the Canadian market.
Integrations matter
One of the biggest roadblocks with text message marketing companies offering their services to Canadian retailers is that they don’t offer any technical support to the Canadian tech eco-system.
Essentially, this leaves Canadian retailers in a place where they can technically reach their target audience via email or text messaging campaigns – but they don’t have access to the same robust data segmentation and reporting as their American retail counterparts do.
We knew that if we were to enter the Canadian market, we needed to have a set of integrations that would be valuable to Canadian retailers. That’s why we pursued integration opportunities with noted Canadian point of sales systems like GlobalTil and GreenLine.
We wanted to ensure that no part of our platform was off limits to our Canadian retailers and brands. We needed to provide Canadian businesses with the same level of analytics, automations, and segmentations in real time. Otherwise, there was no point in offering our services to Canadian businesses.
“As a Canadian citizen, the Canadian retail market is close to my heart. It was always important to me to ensure that Canadian based retailers have the same opportunity to reach their potential customers and drive traffic to their physical stores and sites that American retailers did. And it was important to me that they be able to do that easily, and in a cost efficient manner.
I am so proud of the platform we’ve built and how it serves all of North America. We’ve built with special features and considerations to those retailers specifically targeting the Canadian market.
We understand the legal landscape and have safeguards in place to protect our retailers and brands. We’ve put together pricing that makes sense and is easy to follow along. We’ve taken into account the different tech stacks Canadians use. And we’ll continue to do so in the pursuit of being the most perfect marketing partner to any Canadian company we’re lucky enough to call our client.”
Koushi Sunder, CEO and founder of Stemless
Are you a Canadian retailer interested in growing your reach domestically or internationally? Book a time to speak with a member of our customer success team and learn how Stemless can help you today.