How to Organize, Segment and Improve Email List Engagement Using Tags and Segments

Imagine a tool that can:

• Organize your email list

• Create personalized experiences for your readers

• Reveals trends among your subscribers

No, it’s not magic fairy dust. It’s….TAGS!

If my excitement has you taking a step back and thinking, “That ain’t me, Allea,” I’m here to help. (And if you’re thinking, “I for sure don’t have time to learn this,” book a Discovery Call with me to chat about my email audit process.)

Tag what?

Tags can go by other names on different platforms, but here’s what they do:

Tags allow you to monitor and track the activity of each subscriber, so you can personalize their experience, based on their unique engagement.

The alternative is to gather a long list of subscribers, merely guess at what sets them apart from one another, and send them the same generic bulk email content week in and week out.

Related: Why ConvertKit is the #1 Email Marketing Platform for Online Businesses Who are Serious About Growth

And when you have an offer, you won’t know who to send it to — so you send it to everyone, even though not everyone needs it, because you don’t have a way to filter your list for the best leads to share the offer with…

But instead, there’s a tool that gives you smart control over who gets what.

Tracking subscriber details through tags lets you:

• Learn about each subscriber’s interests or preferences

• Determine what emails a reader should get and when, based on their activity

• Know which readers to include (or exclude) in a campaign

Tags are a powerful email marketing tool. They can track anything (and almost everything):

• Opt-in Source: Which form someone opted in through to join your list

• Webinar Activity: Whether they registered, attended or missed a webinar

• Preferences: Whether they want more vegan recipes or meat-lovers

• Interests: Clicks are currency, and you can track their engagement with tags set up based on different topics

• Purchase Activity: Whether a purchase was made

As you can see, tags are POWERFUL.

They direct traffic. They are what makes email marketing a scalable way to connect with your audience online — by creating a personalized journey for your readers, even as you’re emailing hundreds of people at one time.

Tags are what allow you to follow up with new subscribers — whether through your site or a webinar — in a timely way. You’re there with an email focused on their needs because you know how they entered your list and how to serve them at this point in their subscriber journey.

Even if you don’t have offers to send to new subscribers yet, like a course or paid products, tags allow you to measure your readers’ preferences and activity — what links they click on — so you can tailor your content to meet their needs going forward.

• When 80% of your readers have come in through three opt-ins that are all based on the same topic, you can consider creating content or a product just for them. Clearly, there’s a need!

• When you allow readers to self-segment, you may ask readers what’s most important to them right now — pay off debt or start buying real estate investments?

Do you see how this information would help you make smarter choices with what you send your readers?

Let’s See How to Best Use Tags

To start using tags, here are a few simple guidelines to follow. Don’t worry… it’s easier than you might think.

01 | Only tag what matters

There is no need to create a tag for everything your subscribers do.

Like with anything in running a business — your time is limited, and there’s no sense gathering data you aren’t going to use. If you’re collecting preferences, do that — and give yourself a timeline to get in there and review the activity — but only if it’ll help you serve your audience better.

Too much data only complicates things. Make sure there’s a reason behind the behavior you’re tracking.

Related: 3 Simple, Powerhouse Newsletter Strategies to Keep Your Email Subscribers Happy

02 | Keep it clean

There’s nothing worse than having a list of tags but not remembering what they’re referring to or why you created them in the first place.

If you see a tag that just says “webinar” and can’t remember what that means — did they attend it or only join the wait list? — that’s disappointingly unhelpful.

Instead, keep your tags really clear:

• Webinar: TITLE, MONTH YEAR – Registered

• Webinar: TITLE, MONTH YEAR – Attended

• Webinar: TITLE, MONTH YEAR – Missed

The fancy name for this is “nomenclature.”

Related: 7 Tech Tips to Organize and Optimize Your Email Marketing

03 | Paired well with segments

“Segments” freak people out — often because they don’t know how they’re different from tags. No worry, I’m here to sort that out for you in a way you can remember!

I always explain it like this: Tags are like ingredients. Segments are recipes.

Lemme say that again, another way:

• A recipe contains ingredients

• A segment contains tags

Like a recipe, a segment is entirely dependent on what it’s made of (tags!).

Some recipes have lots of ingredients — like zuppa toscana (yum). While others have very few — like grilled cheese.

There’s no “completely right way” to make zuppa toscana (for instance, I swap out heavy cream for coconut milk), so while two people might make zuppa toscana differently… it’s still a delicious soup.

04 | Exclude tags

When someone joins your email list and goes immediately into your welcome sequence — perhaps with a sales or nurture sequence following shortly after — consider when you want them to start getting your regular, live broadcasts.

If you want to avoid anyone who is on your list from getting your live updates until they’ve completed other sequences, you can simply implement a tag at the beginning and end of a sequence or automation:

• In sequence: NAME OF SEQUENCE

It gets added at the start, then it’s removed at the end.

Then, set up your Live Broadcast segment to EXCLUDE anyone who has a “in sequence” tag (see the next point).

You can also exclude other tags from promotions where a subscriber has already made a purchase — that way you’re not beating a dead horse with a lovely product they already bought!

05 | Create segments

Use segments to make it easy to send a broadcast, share exclusive content with clients, provide updates to course members only — the works!

This segment for sending a Live Broadcast, set up in ConvertKit, includes only subscribers who are on the list and NOT currently in a sequence or campaign:

Related: See why ConvertKit is my #1 recommended email marketing platform

Like I said, tags are powerful. And this is only scratching the surface!

With an organized email service platform and purposeful tracking, you can use tags to curate an email experience that aligns with your readers’ needs, wants and activity.

How are you — or want to be — using tags to organize your email list?

To learn how I can help you organize your email tags, messaging and connecting with your audience through an engaging welcome sequence, book a Discovery Call with me to tell me about your business.