How do I use tags?

Tags are keywords or phrases that you can use to group your subscribers together and assign specific messages or content to them. In this article, we will provide an overview for tags and different ways that you can use them with your email campaigns.

How do I create a tag?

The simplest way to create a tag is to manually add it to your subscriber. If you navigate to your "Manage Subscribers" page and click on the hyperlinked name of a subscriber, you will pull up their individual profile. There is a "Tags" section in their profile. You can type out as many tags as you would like in this section, separated by commas.

There are more ways that you can use to create tags that are detailed in the sections below.

Applying Tags

You can apply a tag to multiple subscribers through our bulk tagging tool on the "Manage Subscribers" page.

If you would like all of the subscribers who sign up through a particular form to receive a tag, you can tag the entire form. This can help you understand which product or content your subscribers expressed interest in, or which page on your website they visited. You can also apply tags to your custom fields. For example, if you have a "favorite animal" field on your form, you can apply "dog" to subscribers who select dog, or "cat" to subscribers who select cat from the available options.

You can also use click or open automations to apply tags. When you hyperlink to a website URL in your message, you can have a specific tag applied when a subscriber clicks that link. You can have a tag applied when they open the message, as well. You can create these automation rules with broadcast and campaign messages.

Tags and Campaigns

Campaigns provide a lot of different possible functions with tags. To start, you can set your campaign to trigger on a specific tag rather than when a subscriber is added to the list. This allows you to specify which messages subscribers receive. As we mentioned in the section above, you can tag your custom fields. You could use those custom fields to then trigger specific campaigns. For example, you could create a campaign related to dogs and set the campaign trigger on the tag "dog." If a subscriber chose dogs as their favorite animal from the options on your form, then they would trigger that campaign and receive all of the messages related to their favorite animal.

We also mentioned that you can create click and open automations and use them to apply tags when subscribers click certain hyperlinks or open certain messages. These automations can in turn be used to trigger other campaigns. For example, if you thought the subscribers who chose dogs as their favorite animal might also enjoy content related to cats, you might want to include a link in one of your campaign messages that asks if the subscriber would be interested in learning more about cats. You could apply the tag "cats" to subscribers who click that link, and then use the tag to trigger a second campaign.

You can also use the "Apply Tag" action when creating your campaign. Although you currently can't see exactly which message a subscriber is on while they're progressing through the campaign, you could set the campaign to apply a tag after a message is sent or at the end of the campaign. For example, after the last message in your welcome campaign, you could have "finished welcome campaign" applied. This way, you would be able to know who is finished with those messages and you could send more pertinent information to them.

Lastly, you can configure your campaign for multiple entries, which means subscribers can repeat a campaign they have already completed.

Tags and Broadcasts

One of the easiest ways that you can use tags is to search your "Manage Subscribers" page based on a specific tag. For example, if you wanted to see all of the subscribers who chose dogs as their favorite animals, then you could search based on Tag > is > "dog." Once you pull up the subscribers, you can then save them as a segment and send a broadcast message directly to that segment.

You can also use your broadcasts in conjunction with campaigns. Let's say you have some inactive subscribers who haven't been engaging with your content. You could send out a broadcast to those subscribers and ask them if they're still interested in receiving your messages. You could provide them with two options, "yes" or "no," and then hyperlink those options so that you can apply a click automation. You could then trigger a campaign with the tag "yes" for all of the subscribers who click "yes." This way, you will not lose them as a subscriber and you can send them more of the content that they originally showed interest in.

Why should I use tags?

Overall, tags can help you to better manage your subscribers and curate the messages that they receive. You wouldn't want to send information about a specific topic to a subscriber who is not interested in that topic, and tags can help you make sure all of the messages you're sending are relevant to your subscribers.

Note: The examples provided in this article are general examples, but there are a lot of different use cases for tags. If you have any questions about how you can accomplish an automation using tags, you are more than welcome to contact our customer solutions team.