Canada’s postal service aims to make gains in flyer business

Canada’s publicly owned postal service aims to make gains in the newspaper industry’s advertising flyer business, the Chronicle Herald reports. 

The Chronicle Herald (Halifax, Nova Scotia) has gotten hold of an internal Canada Post Corporation document called Neighbourhood Mail 2.0 Launch that explains the effort. “This is a direct mail campaign targeting CPC’s top 100 retail customers ... The new NM (Neighbourhood Mail) is very specific to retailer(s) who use flyers, so we are focusing on our biggest bets to see if we can convert them from newspaper to CPC distribution.”

The document is dated Jan. 15, 2018.

One post office move is offering discounts of between 24 and 34 percent off non-contract, standard per-unit prices, according to the paper.

Chronicle Herald parent company Saltwire Network is the top flyer distributor in Atlantic Canada.

“Yes, Canada Post has been in the flyer business forever,” John Hinds, president and CEO of Toronto-based News Media Canada, which represents 800 outlets across Canada, said. “But, over the past three-to-five years they’ve been doubling down in their efforts to target flyers, direct mail and parcel delivery as their core business in personal and letter mail drops.

“It’s really not a level playing field. Their flyers go into lock boxes in any condo or any apartment in Canada. We have no access to those,” he said.

Simultaneous with this reported plan from the postal service, Canada’s government has a CAN$595 million ($443 million U.S.) plan to boost the country’s media sector.

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