With over thirty years of experience in geocoding Canadian data, our analysts get it right using street-based, PCCF or rural geocoders—all tools that we’ve developed or licensed and then enhanced. We will help you clean and standardize your data in order to get the best hit-rate. And we can do the work for you or give you the tools to do it yourself.
As a result of our innovations, our geocoding techniques let you build effective marketing lists to reach potential customers with different messages. And we provide varied approaches to solving your geocoding challenge—whether it’s coding a data file to integrate into your data warehouse, executing over-the-counter processing of your file or supplying a desktop tool that codes data on the fly and can be used by non-technical analysts.
We have improved postal-code geocoding! By matching both the postal code and locality name in rural areas (postal codes with a zero as the second digit), we can precisely identify where in a rural postal code a customer lives, which means we can more accurately attribute neighbourhood-based demographic and lifestyle data to that customer. The map below shows how large a rural postal code can be (blue boundary), including several localities (red text) and census dissemination areas (grey boundaries). Without our Enhanced Rural Geocoding, all customers in this large postal code would have been assigned to the same location!
There are many census dissemination areas inside a rural postal code. Geooding with the basic PCCF will not provide differentiation based on demographics or lifestyle.
Due to the sheer magnitude of the file, the size of Canada, the creation of new postal codes and the fact that Dissemination Areas change every five years, it is very difficult to maintain a perfect PCCF. While Statistics Canada uses best practices and works hard to provide an accurate file, there are still known errors and challenges with the file that cannot be corrected in their process. Because we work with the file extensively with data from hundreds of customers, often creating maps and manually verifying locations, we are able to correct locations and DA assignments for many, many postal codes. We share our findings with Statistics Canada and we also produce our Enhanced Postal Code Conversion File in a timely fashion to ensure that our geocoding services are as accurate as possible.
Many marketers (and all US marketers) are used to geocoding using street network files and a GIS system or customized street based geocoder. We can do this for Canada where required using the high quality street files from TeleAtlas. This type of geocoding is more accurate in urban areas where the difference of location within a blockface matters (e.g. call-before-you-dig) but is not required for most marketing applications. It does not address the rural challenge since the street and address ranges available for the non-urban parts of Canada are not comprehensive. Our experts are happy to assess your application and recommend the approach based on your requirements and budget.