Canadians are as fond as Americans of receiving unwanted telemarketing calls and appear to be looking forward to registering on the country’s Do Not Call List (DNCL), which goes live Sept.30.
That could lead to as many as 16 million phone numbers being registered on the DNCL according to the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association (MRIA), in a story first reported by the Canadian Press.
A poll conducted for the MRIA reveals that 64 per cent of Canadians who knew about the list said they planned to register their phone numbers on it. The survey, handled by Acrobat Research Ltd, indicates 51 percent of Canadians are aware of the no-call list, up from 44 percent at the same time last year.
"Based on the experience with the do-not-call lists in the U.S. and U.K., the CRTC [Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission] is projecting that by October 2010, 60 percent of the 27 million residential telephone numbers in Canada will be registered," said Brendan Wycks, MRIA executive director.
Canadians are also not discouraged by exemptions such as for firms they do business with, charities, market research, newspapers, and political parties, which means they will still receive calls from marketers, if slightly less often.
A majority -61 percent-are confident that the DNCL exemptions—which include market research firms, pollsters, and governments—will not cripple the list's ability to limit unwanted telemarketing calls.
The MRIA said this follows U.S. experience. It pointed to a poll by Harris Interactive (News - Alert) of 2,565 U.S. adults surveyed online between Oct. 9 and Oct. 15, 2007 which indicated 72 percent of Americans had registered their telephone numbers for that country's no-call registry, with 18 percent reporting they received no telemarketing calls.
About 59 percent said they still received some calls, but far fewer than before they signed onto the list.
The loss of callable numbers will have some, but as of yet undetermined, impact on Canada’s telemarketing industry. The Canadian Marketing Association (CMA) reports that in 2006 $4.1 billion was spent on telemarketing that generated $26.1 billion in sales, and created 155,000 jobs. Telemarketing is profitable, with an overall ROI of $6.24 per $1 spent.
The CMA points out there will be some initial adjustment to the new rules. In Australia, a survey done after one year found that most large telemarketers reported a minimal impact on their operations.
The Canadian rules are largely based on U.S. legislation and American practices with some key differences:
* The DNCL requires Canadians to re-register every three years while registration on the federal U.S. list is permanent
* The existing business relationship exemption from the last interaction is six months whereas in the U.S. it is three months
* There is only one jurisdiction: the Canadian federal government, responsible for the DNCL. In contrast marketers selling to Americans must also see if there are state DNC lists to be scrubbed against as well as the federal registry
Canada also has different calling hours than the U.S.: 9am to 9:30pm local time Monday-Fridays and 10am-6pm Saturdays and Sundays as opposed to 8am to 9pm, which can be shorter in different states.
Predictive dialer abandonment rates also differ. In Canada, it is no more than five percent while in the US it is no greater three percent.
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has been watching the Canadian regulations very closely.
Jerry Cerasale, senior vice president, government affairs, points out that there have been problems with maintaining a clean DNC list in the U.S. The government gets lists of abandoned numbers from the local phone companies and then scrubs the DNC registry for them.
Unfortunately in too many instances ‘abandoned’ doesn’t mean that at all. When a carrier disconnects a customer’s number for nonpayment but is reconnected when the customer pays up that number is still abandoned even though it is the same number.
“Canada was following the U.S. with these regulations as our marketers have had to live with them,” says Cerasale. “There are two main positive approaches in Canada and they are one national standard and the shortened registration period that avoids the list cleansing issue. Time will tell if the latter is a better solution than cleaning the list. In the long run the Canadian approach will probably be the better one rather than a permanent filing as the U.S. list may turn out to be full of errors.”
Brendan B. Read is TMCnet’s Senior Contributing Editor. To read more of Brendan’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi
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