Excluding existing customers before launch

Before you start your first search, it is worth excluding your existing customers: it is awkward for a customer to receive a letter that introduces your company as if they were hearing about it for the first time. One file does it, if you have their details to hand. In the example, an office supplies wholesaler excludes a few hundred repeat customers before reaching out to new offices in its own region.

This is for you if…

you are about to start your first search, and you have existing customers;
your customers are in an invoicing program, a CRM or a spreadsheet;
you do not want a customer to receive an introductory letter from you.

What will be ready at the end

Your existing customers are in as , no campaign writes to them, and you know how to add new customers and how to release those who are no longer your customers.

Five steps

Each step comes with the sentence you can copy into Apex, and what Apex does with it.

The export from your own system
Exclusion works by , so first you need an export that shows each customer's website or company email address. Most invoicing programs and CRMs can export a spreadsheet; if it only has email addresses, the domain is the part of the address after the @. Set aside the customers who write from Gmail and other free addresses: they cannot be added as a domain.
Where: your own invoicing program or CRM; the exported spreadsheet as CSV
Ask ApexApex tells you
What format should I send our existing customers in so they don't get campaign letters?
The file for Apex
Once you have the spreadsheet, you just need to hand it over: accepts it as a CSV or TXT file, one domain per row, up to 10,000 rows and 2 MB. A header row, "www" and "https://" are fine: Apex reads the first column and cleans it up. After the upload, it tells you how many domains would be newly excluded, how many are already excluded and how many are invalid; the exclusion starts only after you approve it, and runs in the background.
Where: the conversation with Apex, the file upload card
Ask ApexApex does it, with your approval
Here are our existing customers, add them as protected customers.
Invalid rows and free addresses
After the numbers, check what was left out. An invalid row is usually a typo or a company name instead of a domain: correct it and send it to Apex again, or type it in on the page. Customers who write from free addresses can be protected address by address, from your own system, through the API, on a paid plan; the Alongside your own CRM guide describes how.
Where: Customer acquisition › Excluded domains, the Exclude button
Ask ApexApex does it, with your approval
sample-office.example and sampleoffice-shop.example were left out, add them as protected customers too.
Checking
When you are done, make sure all your customers have been added. On the Excluded domains page, the filter shows how many of your customers are there, and you can also search for a single domain. If you are unsure about a company, ask Apex.
Where: Customer acquisition › Excluded domains, the reason filter and the domain search
Ask ApexApex tells you
Is sample-office.example excluded? If so, why?
New customers, former customers
This is not a one-off job: as new customers come in, add them too. If a company from one of your campaigns has become a customer, you can also ask Apex from the company's record to take it out of every campaign; if you do not say why, Apex asks for the reason. If someone is no longer your customer and you want to reach out to them again, restore them. If your customers change often, your own system can also keep your protected customers up to date through the API.
Where: the company's record, the Summary tab; Customer acquisition › Excluded domains, the row's Restore button
Ask ApexApex does it, with your approval
sample-office.example has become our customer, take it out of every campaign.

What it costs

An example of the monthly fee. Plans are personal, per month, plus VAT.

On the page, excluding and restoring are not 's work and do not use the . Whatever you have Apex do (loading the file, its questions) comes out of the allowance; the allowance has a 5-hour part and a weekly part, and both refill on their own. You can send campaign letters from the Start plan (€99) up, per month, plus VAT.

Frequently asked questions

What most people ask in this situation.

Can I exclude a customer from just one campaign?

No: the exclusion applies to every campaign. If you want to write to a customer, see Protect or reach out?.

Who can exclude and who can restore?

Any colleague at the company. If another handles a company, only an or the Superuser can exclude or restore it; the others do not even see that on the page.

If a protected customer writes to me, can I reply?

Yes, the protection applies only to campaign letters.

Pitfalls

What most people run into, and how to avoid it.

The second domain

If a customer writes from several (for example a separate web shop), add each one; a subdomain is a separate domain too.

After the first campaign

If you only get round to the exclusion after the first campaign, a customer may already have received a letter by then. Exclude them before the first search.

Basics for this situation

If you want to look behind a step.

Protected customer

A domain in Excluded domains, and no campaign writes to that company, while replies and manual letters still work.

Open

Protect or reach out?

Protected customer or a campaign for existing customers: one rules out the other.

Open

Set it up with Apex.

Tell Apex how many of you there are and how you work. Apex tells you which guide fits and, wherever it can, sets things up with your approval.

Free account, no card details · monthly fee, no minimum term