Today we meet Camille Yusuf, account supervisor at the Cornerstone Group of Cos. in Toronto where she has been for nearly six years. Yusuf sees some opportunity for mailers into Canada right now because of the recession and the very different nature of the market there.
“What I’m seeing, even in the first half of the year, is that budgets are a lot less than they used to be as companies are cutting back on their spending,” she says, noting that this can work well for both Canadian and U.S mailers prospecting into the country.
“It’s a good opportunity because with the fewer and fewer people leaning toward direct mail, your piece is more predominant. Let’s take advantage of it,” she says.
Why is now a good time to venture northward?
“First of all, Canadians do not receive as much mail as Americans do so there’s a lot less in the mail and that’s why we’re considered a premium market,” Yusuf says.
Part of that is because Canadian list quantities are a fraction of those in the U.S.
“A list that may be 50,000 records is nothing in the U.S. where here its ‘50,000 records, oh my goodness, 50,000 records,’” she says.
Despite the opportunities or mailers in Canada, U.S. mailers should be cognizant of the country’s privacy law – the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) which was passed in 2001 and is generally stricter than U.S. laws.
Yusuf primarily brokers lists from Canadian magazine publishers, financial institutions as well as files from U.S. mailers prospecting into her country.
Before coming to Cornerstone, Yusuf was a marketing coordinator over at a Toronto restaurant-lounge called Ricochet and held a similar post at President’s Choice Financial, a Canadian financial services firm. Thanks to a former colleague there, she heard about an opening for an account executive at Cornerstone and got hired nearly six years ago.
Why did she make the switch?
“She had given me a call because she knew that I was looking to broaden my experience in the direct marketing industry,” she recalls. “And she mentioned the posting to me and she said ‘check it out- you might be interested.’”
Yusuf acknowledges that the Canadian economy is closely linked to its U.S. counterpart.
“Of course we hope that [the recession] does end and we’re keeping our fingers crossed,” she says. “I think that for sure this fall we’ll see a lot of our clients who have cut back in beginning of the year and the end of last year are all good to go for fall and winter.”
When not brokering lists, Yusuf admits she likes to travel “wherever it’s hot.”
