Which Emails Does Spotlight.ai Analyze?

Last updated: October 13, 2026

Overview

Spotlight.ai's Email Intelligence reads buyer email conversations and connects them to the right account and deal in your CRM, so email activity contributes to your deal insights alongside meetings. Not every email is analyzed. This article explains which emails are included, which are skipped, and how to improve matching.

Which mailboxes are monitored

  • Supported providers: Gmail and Outlook. See Enabling Gmail Integration with Spotlight.ai and Spotlight.ai Outlook Connector Setup for setup.

  • Gmail: each user authorizes the connector for their own mailbox.

  • Outlook: mailboxes are included through a group configured by your administrator.

  • Folders: the connector monitors the inbox and sent folders.

  • Forwarded emails: if your organization uses a forwarding mailbox, only forwarded messages (for example, subjects starting with "Fw:" or "Fwd:") are processed from it.

Which emails are skipped

An email must pass every check below to be analyzed. If it fails any one of them, it is skipped.

  1. Already processed. Emails Spotlight.ai has already handled are not processed again.

  2. Commercial emails. Newsletters, promotions, and other bulk emails (those with an unsubscribe header) are skipped.

  3. Ignored address patterns. Emails involving addresses that match generic patterns configured by Spotlight.ai, such as no-reply style addresses, are skipped.

  4. Internal emails. If every sender and recipient belongs to your company's domains, the email is internal and is skipped. One external address is enough for the email to continue.

  5. Role or system senders. If the sender is a shared or system mailbox (for example, support@ or info@) rather than a real person, the email is skipped, even if the recipients are real people. Role-based addresses among the recipients do not cause an email to be skipped.

  6. Excluded domains. If the sender or any recipient (To, Cc, or Bcc) uses a domain on the user's exclusion list, the email is skipped. See Exclude Domains from Email Intelligence.

How an email is matched to an account and deal

Emails that pass the checks above are matched to your CRM in two steps.

Step 1: Account

Spotlight.ai looks at the domains of the external participants (sender, To, Cc, and Bcc), derives a company name from each, and looks for the closest matching account in your CRM. Spotlight.ai does not analyze the email if:

  • No company name can be identified from the external addresses

  • No matching account is found

  • More than one account matches equally well, so the match is ambiguous

Step 2: Deal

Once an account is matched, Spotlight.ai looks for the deal on that account. The Spotlight.ai users on the email must be on the opportunity team for the deal. If no deal is found, the email is saved against the account but is not analyzed.

Matching is based on the first email in a conversation. Later emails in the same thread use the same account and deal.

What happens when an email matches

  • Spotlight.ai saves the email's details, such as sender, recipients, subject, and date, against the matched account and deal.

  • External participants who are not yet known may be added as contacts on the account and deal.

  • The conversation's text content is sent to analysis. For a thread, this includes all messages in the thread, so the analysis has full context.

  • After a successful analysis, Spotlight.ai adds a green Spotlight label (Gmail) or category (Outlook) to the newly analyzed messages in the user's mailbox. Messages that were already analyzed are not labeled again.

How to improve match accuracy

  • Keep account names and domains accurate in your CRM. Spotlight.ai uses the sender's company domain to find the account, so names that clearly reflect the company help.

  • Make sure Spotlight.ai users are on the opportunity team. Emails are only linked to a deal if the Spotlight.ai users involved are on that deal's team.

  • Use company email addresses for external contacts. Personal addresses give Spotlight.ai nothing to match to an account.

  • Review your excluded domains. Make sure domains you excluded are ones you really want to leave out.

Frequently asked questions

Why wasn't an email analyzed? It most likely matched one of the skip reasons above (internal, commercial, from a role-based sender, or from an excluded domain), or Spotlight.ai could not match it to a single CRM account or a deal where you are on the opportunity team.

Does Spotlight.ai analyze emails from any folder? Spotlight.ai analyzes emails from the inbox and sent folders that the connector monitors.

Will I see a label on every email Spotlight.ai reads? No. The processed label is only added to emails that were matched to a deal and successfully analyzed.

An email was matched to an account but not a deal. Why? The account was identified, but no deal was found where the Spotlight.ai users on the email are on the opportunity team. Because matching is based on the first email in a thread, later emails in that thread use the same result.