People & billing

Suppression, and removing a prospect

The do-not-contact list is the one control that stops Kai reaching someone, whatever the source, whoever imported them. It lives under Settings > Sending. This article covers what it blocks, what fills it automatically, and how to get a single person out of a campaign that is already running.

What suppression does

Suppression is checked at intake. A suppressed email or domain never becomes a contact in the first place, so it cannot be researched, cannot be written to, and cannot be pushed to your outreach platform. It does not matter whether the address arrived from a CSV, a HubSpot list, an always-on campaign, or a rep adding someone by hand. The check happens before any of that.

This is why it is the right tool for the categories you never want to contact: competitors, existing customers handled by another team, partners, and anyone who has previously asked not to hear from you.

Suppression is not de-duplication. Kai already skips anyone who is a contact in your workspace. Suppression is for addresses that were never imported and never should be. The two do different jobs, and only suppression survives someone uploading a fresh list next quarter.

Adding entries

Open Settings > Sending. Paste emails or domains into the box, one per line, add an optional reason, and click Add to list.

  • An email blocks that one address.
  • A domain blocks every address at that domain. competitor.com stops all of them at once.

Domains are normalised as they are saved, so a scheme, a path, or a leading www. all reduce to the bare host. Pasting https://www.competitor.com/careers stores competitor.com and works as you would expect.

The reason field is optional and worth filling in. Six months later, "existing customer, owned by AM team" is the difference between trusting a rule and deleting it because nobody remembers why it is there.

What fills the list on its own

Kai adds entries automatically when a reply is classified as not interested or as an unsubscribe. That happens without anyone doing anything, and it is the main reason the list grows over time. Those entries show their source in the table, so you can tell an automatic addition from one somebody typed.

Reviewing and removing entries

The Current entries table below the box shows the most recent 500 rules with their type, reason, and source. Each row has a Remove button.

Think before removing an automatic entry. An entry added by the reply classifier means a real person said no or unsubscribed. Removing that rule makes them contactable again, which is a compliance decision as well as a sales one. Removing a domain rule you added by hand is usually fine; removing an opt-out rarely is.

Getting one person out of a live campaign

Suppression blocks contacts at intake, so it does not by itself pull someone who is already in a running campaign. Which control you want depends on where they are.

They are waiting in the approval queue

Open the three-dot menu on their row. Remove from queue parks the contact and keeps the research, so the work is not lost. Delete contact removes them and their research permanently. See The approval flow for the full comparison.

They are in the campaign but not sequenced yet

Open the campaign and use Remove on their row. They come out of the campaign without touching anything else.

They are already in sequence

This is the case that catches people out. Kai has pushed them to your outreach platform, and the sending schedule now lives there. Removing them in Kai stops Kai from doing anything further, but it does not always stop mail that your outreach platform has already queued. To be certain someone stops receiving email today, stop them in your outreach platform as well.

Two systems, two stops. For anything urgent, a legal request or a complaint, do all three: stop the sequence in your outreach platform, remove the contact in Kai, and add the address to suppression so nothing re-imports them next week. Doing only the third leaves a live sequence running.

A monthly habit worth having

  • Add your customer domains. The most common embarrassing send is a prospecting email to an existing customer. One domain rule per customer prevents all of them.
  • Add your competitors. They will find their way into sourced lists otherwise, and it is not a good look.
  • Add your own domain. Colleagues appear in enriched lists more often than you would think.
  • Skim the automatic entries. A spike in unsubscribes on one campaign is a message about the campaign, not about the list.

Who can manage it

Suppression requires a role with sending permissions: manager, admin, or superadmin. Standard seats do not see the Sending tab at all. See Users & roles.

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