To count the customers a flyer brought into your store, put something on the flyer that can be counted at the counter: an offer code, a printed code the phone's camera opens, a dedicated page or phone number, or a verified walk-in. Everything else, from asking at the counter to a door counter to a foot-traffic panel, measures a lift or a self-report, not a customer tied to the flyer. Canada Post's own advice for direct mail is the same: exclusive codes per campaign, a campaign-specific web address, a control group, and at least 250 responses before you read the numbers. Here are the seven ways, what each one counts, what it costs and how far to trust it.
In short
- An offer code on the flyer counts redemptions at the till. Cheap, exact, and it misses the customer who forgets the code.
- A printed code the camera opens counts openings by city and device. It counts curiosity, not visits.
- A dedicated page or phone number counts the people who answered the flyer's call to action, online or by phone.
- Asking at the counter is free and unreliable; memory and politeness both get in the way.
- A matchback or a control street shows the lift the flyer caused across a whole area.
- Door counters and foot-traffic panels show more people came, never why.
- A verified walk-in counts each customer at the location and credits the flyer, at C$3 a walk-in on Onlure.
Flyers still reach people. Canada Post says 92% of Canadians read the direct mail they receive and 88% visit a store or website after receiving it, and that its lists reach 17 million Canadian households. Its unaddressed Neighbourhood Mail stopped for a union ban in September 2025 and is listed and priced again for 2026. The question for a small business was never reach. It is which of the people who read the flyer came in, and that depends on what you printed on it.
1. How does an offer code count flyer customers?
Print a code that exists nowhere else, and every order that carries it came from the flyer. Canada Post's guidance is to "use exclusive codes for each direct mail campaign for full attribution". Your register already keeps the count: Square's discount reports list the top discounts used and the amounts over any date range and location, and Shopify's sales by discount code report groups orders by the code entered. It costs the discount and nothing else. It misses the customer who saw the flyer, came in and never mentioned the code, and it counts the stranger who found the code online, so a flyer code should be short-lived and specific to the piece.
2. What does a printed code the camera opens tell you?
How many people pointed a phone at it, when, and roughly where. Bitly's guide to the format explains that a code with the destination fixed inside it reports nothing, while one that routes through a short redirect counts every opening, separates total from unique openers, and places them by city rather than by street; it also says plainly that an opening is not a purchase. Canada Post's MyMail campaign put a trackable code and a custom web address on every piece and reported a 5.74% response rate on 1.5 million pieces, but the response it counted was an app registration, not a visit. For a café, a code that opens a page is a good way to count interest and a poor way to count walk-ins.
3. Can a dedicated page or phone number count visits?
It counts the people who answered the call to action you printed. Canada Post recommends a campaign-specific web address with matching content so traffic is "directly attributed," and, for addressed mail, a unique landing page per recipient. A phone number used only on the flyer does the same for bookings. The count is exact for what it measures and silent about the customer who read the flyer and simply walked in, which for a restaurant or a shop is most of them.
4. Does asking at the counter work?
Not well, and the reasons are known. SparkToro's Rand Fishkin lists them: human memory is "incomplete and inaccurate," the question is ambiguous when a customer has seen you three times, and only the people who converted get asked, so the sample is biased from the start. It costs nothing and it is better than no question. Treat the answers as a hint about which channels exist, not as a count.
5. What do a matchback and a control group show?
The lift. Mail one set of streets and hold back a similar set, then compare sales or visits between them over the flyer's window; Canada Post's own guidance is to set up "a control group which will not receive any communications or offers" and to collect at least 250 responses before drawing conclusions. For addressed mail, a matchback compares the mailing list against the customer list afterwards. Canada Post sells this as Response Analysis and Foot Traffic Attribution on its Smartmail Marketing products, though it publishes neither the method nor a benchmark. A control tells you the flyer worked across an area. It cannot tell you which customer it brought.
6. What do door counters and foot-traffic panels count?
Bodies and estimates. A door counter is sold at "95 to 99 percent accuracy at a single entrance under normal conditions," and the same vendor explains that a single beam cannot separate a group and that staff, children and deliveries are counted unless filtered. A foot-traffic panel such as Placer.ai extrapolates visits from a panel of mobile devices, about 7% of the United States population, and says itself that visit trends may differ from sales trends and that its estimate will differ from a manual count. Both show that more people came during the flyer week. Neither attaches a single visitor to the flyer, and neither is built for one Toronto location. Crediting each visitor to the flyer that brought them is foot traffic attribution, and it starts with a count at the place.
7. How does a verified walk-in count a flyer customer?
Each walk-in is verified in store and credited to the creator who sent the customer, or to the flyer or static ad that did. On Onlure a flyer costs C$3 per verified walk-in and nothing for a walk-in that is not verified, so the flyer's report is a count of customers at the counter, not a lift or a redirect. Onlure has solved the counting problem that the six methods above work around. Simi African Foods ran two creators and its own market flyers on a C$500 budget and counted 37 walk-ins, with the flyer walk-ins listed beside the creators' in the same report. How the verification works is proprietary. It is live today for beta brands and Shopify stores; any other brand sets it up on a founder demo.
Which method should a small business use?
Print an offer code on every flyer, because it is free and exact for the customers who use it, and use the register's discount report as the count. Add a dedicated page if the flyer asks people to book or order. Skip the camera code unless you need to know who was curious. Use a control street when you are deciding whether to keep flyering at all. And when the point of the flyer is customers at the door, count the door: the offline attribution guide explains how a verified walk-in works for flyers, creators and ads alike, and the comparison of store-visit measurement methods goes deeper on the modelled and panel options.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good response rate for a flyer in Canada?
There is no published Canadian benchmark for an unaddressed flyer. Canada Post's own app campaign, addressed mail with a printed code and a custom web address on every piece, reported a 5.74% response on 1.5 million pieces; a neighbourhood flyer with no offer code usually reports nothing, because nothing on it can be counted.
Can I count flyer customers without an offer code?
Only roughly. Compare the weeks before and during the flyer at the till or on a door counter, keep a street that got no flyer as a control, and ask at the counter. Each shows a lift or a self-report, never which customer came because of the flyer; an offer code or a counted walk-in does that.
How much does Onlure charge per flyer walk-in?
C$3 per verified walk-in from a flyer or static ad, with no charge for a walk-in that is not verified. Simi African Foods counted 37 walk-ins from two creators and its own market flyers on a C$500 budget. How a walk-in is verified is proprietary; a demo shows it.
