Why Exclusions Matter
Excluding companies is essential for maintaining highly targeted and professional outreach. It ensures that your campaigns never contact current clients or critical accounts.
Prerequisites
An active profile connected to Spear
Have a finalized exclusion list ready for upload or manual input.
Who can manage exclusions
Admins and super-admins can add or remove companies at the organization level (applies to every profile) or at the profile level, and can copy an exclusion list to other profiles.
Users (non-admin) can only manage exclusions on their own profile. They can't edit or remove organization-level exclusions, and can't copy their list to other profiles.
There are several ways to exclude companies
Option 1: Manual Exclusion
Step 1: Go to your Profile settings
Step 2: Access the 'Excluded companies' setting.
Step 3:
1. Exclude the company. Click the 'Add companies' button.
2. Write the name of the company you want to exclude in the dropdown list.
3. Select the domain of the company and click the 'Add' button.
Option 2: Upload a CSV List
Go to Profile Settings → Excluded companies → Upload CSV
2. Click inside the box to search for the CSV in your files.
3. Select the company name column and the domain column. Then, click 'Upload'.
Option 3: Sync from HubSpot (recommended)
You can also sync the list of Excluded companies from HubSpot.
1. Click the 'Sync from CRM' button.
2. Click the 'Manage Integration' button.
3. Click the 'Excluded companies' button.
4. Activate the 'Sync companies' toggle.
5. Enable the integration
Select the company object – Choose the object in HubSpot that represents a company (e.g, 'Deal' object).
Set exclusion filters – Add filters to specify which companies should be excluded (e.g., exclude all active customers by setting Deal Stage = Closed won). You can add multiple filters.
Add additional objects (optional) – If companies are represented by more than one object type in your HubSpot, click Add object to include them.
Tips & Best Practices
Prioritize Manual Exclusion: Use manual addition for critical companies or your top accounts to ensure immediate, error-free exclusion.
Evaluate CRM Integration: Consider configuring the HubSpot integration (found under Integrations) to automatically exclude companies based on their "Deal Stage" in your CRM.
Review Periodically: Regularly check the exclusion list to remove companies that are no longer in an active deal process, making them available for future campaigns.
How the Excluded Companies List Works
The list displays the company domain instead of the name. Hover over a domain to see the company name.
If a company doesn't have a domain (or Spear couldn't extract one), it will not be excluded. Behavior depends on how it was added:
From CRM: The company will appear in the error message at the bottom of the page, and a banner will show at the top of the platform.
Manual: The company will not enter the list and will not be shown.
If you notice a company is missing from the exclusion list, go to your CRM and add the domain to that company record. Once the domain is added, it will be excluded correctly.
What Happens to Prospects When You Exclude a Company
When a company is excluded (manually or via CRM), all monitored prospects from that company are automatically denied.
Existing monitored prospects belonging to an excluded company are also denied as a one-time action when this feature is launched.
This applies only to companies with defined domains. Companies without an assigned domain are not effectively excluded.