One of the most confusing yet useful aspects of any email software like Constant Contact, Mailchimp, or HubSpot are what are known as “Tags”. Tags are used by many businesses to denote important info about specific contacts or segments within their email lists. The issue for many people is email tagging can quickly become counter intuitive. If you use tags incorrectly it will result in a confusing mountain of “important information” you and your team will have trouble understanding. 

This defeats the purpose of email tags and tagging in general. Tags are meant to give you a better understanding of each client so that you can personalize your emails to their unique pain points or needs. If this doesn’t sound like the effect you are getting from your tagging methods, here’s how to fix that.

How to Add Tags to Contacts Effectively

Usually for most small businesses, the root of the problem lies in overtagging in the wrong way. Some tags I have seen include:

• Personal information like kids names or favorite sports teams unrelated to the clients business.

  • “Likes the Atlanta Falcons”, “Wife is named Karen”

• Actual meeting notes. Entire paragraphs or sentences.

  • “We talked about the upcoming service. He said it’s out of his budget. Countered with promo A”

Don’t do this. Rather, tag based specifically on actions they have taken related to the business. More specifically, in the channels set up within your email software like emails, sign up forms, landing pages, etc.

I use tags to mark new information in two situations.

1. To mark specific engagements they took on campaigns or captured in sign ups such as clicks on buttons, images, fields, CTAs, etc.

2. To denote important specific information about the content behind those engagements that improves your knowledge about contacts. What interest does this reflect? What type of content (image, video, etc) is this? What campaign is it?

The rule of thumb I would recommend is: If this information about your clients/customers factor into how you’ll send them emails/campaigns/content in the future, it’s worth tagging. 

This way, you’ll be able to use these tags to make your campaigns more personalized to their needs, which results in more engagements and sales. 

Email Marketing Contact Tag Examples

When creating a new tag, it helps to think of tag categories. These larger categories can make creating individual tags much easier. Here are some ideas you can base your tag categories on:

• Engagement: Sign up, Click, Completed

  • Why? This shows you what types + formats of CTAs they are responsive to. If they don’t click buttons but click images, it may be worth taking buttons out to shorten the email

  • Examples: High, Medium, Low, No

• Pieces of Content: 

  • Why? This shows what types of content that each contact engages with so you can repeat it in future campaigns.

  • Examples: Image, Podcast

• Product Category: 

  • Why? If they are looking at a particular product and haven’t completed the sale, chances are they may make the purchase decision if you give them more options.

• Groups/Networks: 

  • Why? If you understand the part of the audience they are part of, you can segment them properly or offer products/services that correspond to that group.

• Interests: 

  • Why? This may be the most important tag as there are so many options to it. Tagging based on interests allows for a better understanding of each customer/client. Get to know them first and you’ll be glad you did.

• Pain Points:

  • Why? The core of sales opportunities. See what types of calls to actions and prompts your audience reacts to and find new campaigns to capitalize on it. 

• Roles: 

  • Why? Understanding the role they have in their company can help you focus on marketing to the decision makers to save time and energy.

  • Examples: Employee, Manager, CEO

Anything else that may make sense can be a tag. It’s important to be creative. Tags will help your team understand each of your customers as a separate person so you do the best possible job to market to their pain points and interests. 

Within some tag categories, tags may be mutually exclusive. Others you may want to use a few tags. This is your opportunity to build customer personas in your email marketing.

Keeping Your Tags Organized

Making sure you can easily read and access your tags is essential to making sure your contact tagging system works. The easiest way to do this is to take advantage of the tag display that every email marketing platform includes. 

There is no search functionality in many of the most advanced email marketing software. However, you can sort the full list of your contacts using one method that is accessible in all platforms, alphabetically. 

When creating your tags, keep this in mind. Keeping your tags organized is reliant on the first letter of your tag. 

When creating tags, think of their category as well as the specific tag name. With this layout, you can name each tag similarly. 

Use this structure:

Tag Category - Tag Name

For example,

Role - CEO

Role - Manager

Tagging Your Email Contacts

Now you have an easily navigable database of tags you can use when you send new campaigns, publish new sign up forms, gather ad landing page data, or import new contacts.

It is always better to OVERTAG than UNDERTAG. 

When adding new contacts to your list, go through your categories and select the tags based on the information you know about each of your contacts.

You can also make it easy on yourself and “bulk tag” contacts during the import process in most email platforms. When uploading a new list, you will be prompted to enter tags for the list. Use your new tag list, search up the right tags, and apply them to your uploaded list!

If you have Constant Contact and want to know how I manage entire email accounts, check out the Constant Contact Trail Guide.

For more help with email marketing software management, reach out to my team!