An outbound calling campaign is a planned run of calls to a defined list (quotes that went quiet, patients due for a recall, invoices that were simply forgotten), measured against one outcome instead of dialled whenever somebody has a spare ten minutes. For a Canadian business the thing that decides whether it works is rarely the script. It is whether the list is clean, whether you are calling inside the hours the CRTC allows (9:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. on weekdays, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on weekends, in the local time of the person you are calling), and whether anyone picks up when those people call you back.
The rules below are the ones that apply to a business with one to ten people making its own calls. They differ by situation and by province, and this is not legal advice. If your campaign is large, automated, or aimed at consumers you have never done business with, have a lawyer read your process once before you launch it.
What a campaign looks like when you have five employees
Most writing on this topic assumes a floor of sales development reps, a predictive dialer and a quota. That is not the shape of the opportunity for a plumbing company with three trucks or a two-operatory dental clinic. At that size an outbound calling campaign is smaller and considerably more profitable: a defined list, a specific reason to call, a window of a week or two, and one number you watch.
Four campaigns that reliably pay for themselves in a small Canadian business:
- Dormant quotes. Everyone who asked for a price in the last 90 days and never booked. These people have already told you they want the work.
- Recalls and service intervals. Hygiene visits, annual furnace service, six-month wellness exams, winter tire swaps. The date is known in advance, which makes the list build itself.
- Payment reminders. Past-due invoices where the relationship is fine and the invoice was lost in an inbox.
- Reactivation. Customers who bought twice and then stopped. Cheaper to call than to replace.
Every one of those lists has an existing relationship behind it. That is not a coincidence. As the next section explains, it is also what keeps you on the comfortable side of Canada's do-not-call rules.
Who you are actually allowed to call
Canada's National Do Not Call List (DNCL) is administered by the CRTC. If you make telemarketing calls, you are required to register as a telemarketer, subscribe to the list, and remove registered numbers from your calling list before you dial. Subscribers must download the updated list at least every 31 days, and the practical version of that rule is simple: suppress against the current list immediately before each campaign launch, not once when the spreadsheet was first built.
Several categories of caller are exempt from the national list. The one that matters most to a small business is the existing business relationship (EBR): broadly, a purchase, contract or lease within the previous 18 months, or a written inquiry or application within the previous six months. Registered charities, political parties and candidates, newspapers calling about subscriptions, and survey organizations conducting genuine research are also treated differently.
Being exempt from the national list is not the same as being exempt from the rules. Every telemarketing caller, exempt or not, still has to do the following.
| Obligation | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Keep an internal do-not-call list | Your own list of people who told you to stop. It applies even to customers you could otherwise call under the EBR exemption. |
| Act on an opt-out request within 14 days | Calendar days, not business days. The request stays in force for three years. |
| Identify yourself on the call | The name of the business on whose behalf you are calling, and a way to reach it, at the start of the call. |
| Display a working number | Caller ID has to show a number that reaches you. No spoofing, no unreachable trunk line. |
| Keep records | Consent basis, consent date, and opt-out requests, in a system you can query. Not in someone's notebook. |
The full obligations are set out in the CRTC's Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules, which is the document to read before you scale anything up.
Calling hours, and the time zone trap
The permitted windows are national, and they run on the local time of the person being called, not yours.
| Day | Permitted window (recipient's local time) |
|---|---|
| Monday to Friday | 9:00 a.m. – 9:30 p.m. |
| Saturday and Sunday | 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. |
Weekend calling is permitted, on a shorter window. A surprising amount of online advice gets that wrong. Some provinces layer additional consumer-protection restrictions on top, so check your own province before building a schedule around the outer edges of these hours.
The time zone detail is where small campaigns quietly break the rule. A Toronto office working a list at 8:15 a.m. is calling Calgary at 6:15 a.m. and Vancouver at 5:15 a.m. If your list spans more than one time zone, sort it by zone and call each block in its own window. If it does not, say so in the campaign brief so nobody improvises.
If a machine does the dialling, one more rule applies
Two technologies carry extra obligations. An automatic dialing-announcing device (a recorded voice broadcast with no live person on the line) generally requires express consent for solicitation, which is why "blast a recorded message to our customer list" is a bad idea unless you have that consent on file.
A predictive dialer, which dials ahead of your available staff, is allowed but capped. Under the Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules, a call is abandoned when it is answered but no live agent is on the line within two seconds, and abandoned calls may not exceed 5% of calls in any calendar month. A sensible internal target is below 3%, which leaves headroom before you approach the limit. For a team under ten people, the honest answer is usually that you do not need a predictive dialer at all. The throughput it buys costs you the personalization that makes a small-business call work.
Your text and email touches follow a different law
The DNCL rules cover voice calls. The moment your campaign adds an SMS or an email, Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) applies to that message. In short: you need express consent (they clearly agreed) or implied consent (an existing business relationship, generally two years from the last transaction or six months from an inquiry). Every commercial message needs sender identification and a working unsubscribe, and an unsubscribe has to be honoured within 10 business days.
If you record calls for training or documentation, consent and retention are governed by privacy law: PIPEDA federally, with Quebec's own regime applying to businesses operating there. Tell people at the top of the call that it is recorded, and keep the recordings only as long as you have a reason to.
Build the list before you write the script
List quality moves results more than anything you can say. Before a campaign starts, every row should carry:
- A name and a direct number that has been verified in the last few months.
- The city or postal code, so the calling window can be worked out.
- Why this person is on the list (quote, recall, overdue invoice) and the date of that event.
- The date of last contact, so nobody gets called three times in a week.
- An opt-out flag that the person dialling actually sees.
Then a short brief: one sentence on the goal, two opening variants to compare, one objection you expect and the answer to it, and the single number you will judge the campaign on. Keep the opener under about 20 seconds before you ask your first question.
A five-touch plan a small team can actually run
| Touch | Day | Channel | Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Phone | Live call. No voicemail on the first attempt. |
| 2 | 2 | Phone + email | Second attempt at a different hour; if no answer, voicemail plus a short email. |
| 3 | 4 | SMS | One line referencing the specific quote or appointment, with an easy reply option. |
| 4 | 8 | Phone | Final live attempt, different day of week from touch 1. |
| 5 | 12 | Close the loop politely and leave the door open. Then stop. |
Varying the hour and the day of the week matters more than adding attempts. Five well-spaced touches and a hard stop will out-perform twelve at the same 2:00 p.m. slot, and the hard stop is what protects the relationship you are trying to reuse.
Three numbers worth tracking
- Reach rate: live conversations divided by attempts. If it is low, the list is stale or the hours are wrong. Fix that before touching the script.
- Outcome rate: booked appointments, or invoices paid, divided by live conversations. This is the one the script moves.
- Return-call rate: how many of the people you called ring you back later, and what happens when they do. This is the number nearly every small campaign forgets, and it is where campaigns leak.
That third number is the one to sit with. A campaign that works generates callbacks. They arrive on the number displayed on caller ID, at the worst possible moment, often while the person who made the original call is on a roof or in an operatory. Every one of those unanswered callbacks is a result you already paid for and then dropped.
Where AlmaTalk fits
To be direct about it: AlmaTalk is not a dialer, and it will not run the campaign for you. What it does is answer the half of the campaign that happens after you hang up.
AlmaTalk answers your business line 24/7 in over 30 languages with automatic language detection, with Canadian English and Quebecois French as the core pair. When a callback comes in, it books the appointment into Google Calendar, Outlook or Cal.com during the call, follows up by SMS and email, and remembers returning callers so someone you phoned on Tuesday is not asked to explain themselves again on Thursday. If a call needs a person, it transfers with ranked backup numbers. You get the recording and a daily summary, so you can see what the campaign actually produced. It works from a knowledge base you write for your own business, and there is a browser widget for the people who would rather click than dial.
Across a recent 90-day window, the average answered call ran 80 seconds over 2,639 answered calls. That is a scale that suits a callback, a booking or a reminder rather than a long consultation.
Starter is $97.97 CAD a month for 150 minutes; Pro is $247.97 CAD for 400 minutes. Time is billed by the second, not by the minute, with no setup fee and no per-call fee. The demo line is open to anyone who wants to hear it before deciding: 1-888-775-9770.
If you want the detail by use case, see AI phone answering in Canada, booking appointments over the phone, and bilingual English and French reception. Clinics running recall campaigns will find the specifics on the dental clinic page, and the general overview lives at AI receptionist Canada.
This article summarizes publicly available Canadian regulatory requirements as a starting point. Rules differ by situation and by province, and this is not legal advice.
Frequently asked questions
Can I legally call my past customers in Canada?
In most cases yes. The National DNCL rules include an exemption for an existing business relationship: broadly a purchase, contract or lease in the previous 18 months, or a written inquiry in the previous six months. That exemption does not override your own internal do-not-call list, so anyone who has asked you to stop stays off the list permanently.
What hours can I make outbound calls in Canada?
The CRTC's Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules permit telemarketing calls from 9:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. on weekdays and from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. The times are measured in the local time of the person being called, not the caller, so a list that spans time zones needs to be sorted by zone before you start dialling.
How quickly do I have to honour a do-not-call request?
You must add the number to your internal do-not-call list within 14 days of the request. Those are calendar days, not business days, and the request remains in force for three years. Record who asked, and when, somewhere you can search later.
Do the do-not-call rules cover text messages and email?
No. Those follow Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation instead. CASL requires express or implied consent, sender identification, and a working unsubscribe that is honoured within 10 business days. A campaign that mixes calls with SMS and email has to satisfy both frameworks at once.
Does AlmaTalk make outbound campaign calls for me?
No. AlmaTalk is not a dialer and does not run campaigns. It answers the callbacks a campaign produces: 24/7, in over 30 languages, booking appointments into Google Calendar, Outlook or Cal.com during the call and following up by SMS and email. You can hear it on the demo line at 1-888-775-9770.
