Want Insights into New Canadians? Here’s Why You Need the Latest Data
CiG rolls out a new quarterly data update methodology that delivers more insights than ever.
Tim Leys
CEO & Partner at Consumer Intelligence Group (CiG)
As summer fades into fall, marketing teams are ramping up as they begin their planning for 2024. For many teams, understanding and targeting new Canadians is a priority in their acquisition plans. However, a significant gap exists in identifying and reaching our newest Canadians, lack of recent data.
Most traditional Canadian data products are both siloed and often twelve to eighteen months old. With Canada set to welcome nearly 500,000 new immigrants annually (Canada Visa), that’s a lot of prospects marketing teams won’t be able to effectively reach in 2024.
The good news is that over the summer, the data team at CiG has been hard at work on developing new methodologies on how to deliver quarterly data updates to our entire data ecosystem of 30,000+ consumer attributes.
We sat down with our CEO, Tim Leys to better understand what’s changed and how these changes will help CiG’s clients reach new Canadians.
We all excitedly watched the population count tick over 40 million Canadians on June 16, 2023, but what does this historic milestone mean for marketers?
It’s a major milestone for sure, but Canada’s population is always growing, what’s relevant today is where this growth is coming from. Since the mid 1990’s immigration has been the main source of population growth and now it is approximately 75%. For marketers, this represents tremendous opportunity, but opportunity that needs to be capitalized on immediately.
Think about it, 500,000+ people are making their homes here, setting up bank accounts, getting cell phone plans, building brand affinity, and product preferences. If a marketer uses data that is twelve months or older, they’re missing these prospects at a critical milestone, but we can help you leverage these opportunities.
Our team has been working on a new data updating methodology throughout 2023 and we’ve been refining it throughout the summer. What thrilled me when we hit 40 million Canadians is that projections from our latest data release closely matches the results published by Statistics Canada. This means that our data ecosystem is one of the most up-to-date sources of insights to reach new Canadians.
What is the impact of the new data methodology?
We now project more data attributes for the entire Canadian population several times a year. This greatly increases the speed in which we add new attributes to our reports, from media consumption to detailed shopping by department stores. A process that typically takes the industry months, we can now do in hours.
It’s important to note how we’re unique in the Canadian insights landscape. Most traditional data products are siloed and contain outdated data by up to 12-24 months that hinders targeting the full market. Fortunately, we don’t create data products; we have a data ecosystem.
Our ecosystem is regularly updated and connects to various privacy-compliant data sources for effective profiling and targeting in intelligentVIEW that provides detailed insights into Canadians from all backgrounds.
With these changes completed, I am impressed by how our data and development teams made breakthroughs in projection methodologies at a faster and accurate rate. We’ve overcome prior limitations and can now project thousands more data attributes into our reports.
Overall, we can create extremely detailed national, regional, and local profiles and target audiences. So, marketers will have a much deeper understanding of their audiences and can reach them accurately.
Learn how CiG is driving innovation with our unique data ecosystem.
How do these changes help marketers?
It’s all about finding, understanding, and reaching these audiences effectively. In certain verticals, such as banking, telecommunications, and shopping, long-term customer relationships are built in the first few months.
To build relationships with newcomers, you need to understand them first, from where they live, their ethnic background and household size, to what they buy, listen to, and watch. The more insights marketers have about the rapidly changing make-up of new Canadians, then this leads to better creative they can develop, media they can buy, and overall impact and ROI on their acquisition programs.
The first way our data helps marketers is by understanding audiences. Take our segmentation solution, intelligentSEGMENTS, in almost real-time you can see how the Canadian population is changing across multiple attributes:
- Demographics
- Shopping behaviours
- Financial information
- Lifestyles and recreation
- Languages spoken at home
- Media consumption and more
Our approach to developing intelligentSEGMENTS is unique in Canada.
Read more about intelligentSEGMENTS.
The second way it helps marketers is in finding and reaching these diverse audiences. We know most new immigrants tend to settle in large urban centres such as Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, but a growing portion are choosing smaller urban centres in Eastern and Western Canada and even rural settings.
IntelligentVIEW not only enables you to understand the dynamic Canadian population in almost real-time, but it also lets you build and activate these exact audiences through media partners. Tactically, this means that you can identify, profile, target, and reach a specific group of new Canadians in Halifax or Fort McMurray with precision.
Data and insights are just the start. Learn more about our media activation tools.
Get Closer to Canadians Everywhere with intelligentVIEW
As the Canadian population continues to grow and change, marketers will need access to the latest insights to drive effective campaigns toward diverse audiences and we have the tools to help you achieve that success.
With 30,000+ data attributes and 94 segments, consumer insights and precision targeting are at your fingertips with intelligentVIEW. Streamline your marketing and easily build, profile, and activate audiences all in one platform.