Piggybacking on our last blog let’s talk about organizing your audience. Tags, groups and segments are the best way to do that. 

Tags: what are they?

Tags are simply labels that can be applied to your contacts, and they are one of the best ways to organize your audience. These are custom and can be whatever you want them to be. Tagging helps you note personal preferences or data that you have learned. 

Let’s run that down.

For example, if you run an e-commerce clothing store and a customer, Kristin, buys multiple sweaters, tag Kristin as ‘sweater lover’. The next time you run a sale on sweaters, make an accompanying email campaign. You can target Kristin and anyone else tagged as ‘sweater lover’ to directly target them. 

Key takeaway: Tagging allows you to send targeted campaigns while keeping your audience organized. 

Groups: how are they different from a tag?

Groups work very similarly to tags, except they are categories that your contact selects for themselves. Groups can be a great starting point for your contacts when they sign up for your newsletter. When setting up your sign-up form, make sure to have some options for groups that you think will help keep your audience organized. 

Your contacts can select them and will automatically be added to that group. When you already have people in your audience, you can go back and add them to groups as well. 

Let’s talk about Kristin again. Kristin has been in your audience for a while now, but you just found out about groups. Run an ‘update your profile’ campaign. This will allow Kristin to fill out her interest from the groups you created. You may discover she likes sweaters and scarves.

Using groups this way keeps your audience up-to-date while organizing it at the same time. By allowing contacts to reengage and self-select their interests, you may learn exactly what your contact wants. 

Key takeaway: Groups, like tags, keep your audience organized and help run targeted campaigns, but people can choose their interest themselves. 

Segments: can they actually be different from tags and groups?

The answer is yes, and let me tell you why. 

Segments are sections of your audience with something in common. They act as filters to quickly select contacts from your audience that share similar attributes. This helps break out of that one-size-fits-all approach that is so easy to fall victim to. 

Let’s refer back to Kristin one last time. If you are running a sale on swimsuits during a southern heatwave, you may not want to send emails to contacts in Alaska like Kristin, for example. Segments allow you to select which locations you wanted to send your campaign to. 

There are many different types of segments that range from engagement, location, language and more that further the ability to target your audience. 

Read more in our next Mailchimp blog – personalization and merge tags.

Feeling overwhelmed? We can help!