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Have you ever walked into a cluttered room and felt overwhelmed by the chaos? Or looked at your email marketing software and thought it looked like a storage unit filled with boxes that are either junk or gold, but you have no way of knowing which is which?
Many of us can relate to this experience, whether it’s in our physical spaces or our digital lives.
It can feel especially overwhelming when it comes to organizing your tags inside of your email marketing software. I’ve seen countless clients feeling embarrassed or stressed about their hot-mess lists of tags.
(By the way, if you’re feeling overwhelmed by your tags, know that you’re not alone, and there’s no judgment here!)
Why Organizing Your Email Subscribers Matters
Having a well-organized system for your email subscribers isn’t just about tidying up. It’s about creating an intentional and values-aligned email segmentation strategy that ensures you’re sending the right messages to the right people, and it’s the first step in the Email Automation Framework.
When you take the time to organize your email subscribers, your business benefits in several ways:
Improves Email Deliverability and Engagement
When people receive relevant, targeted emails with messaging that resonates they’re more likely to open, click on, reply, and/or forward your emails. That tells the Google and Microsoft and Yahoo gods that you’re sending quality emails, which in turns improves your email deliverability rate, meaning your emails are much more likely to end up in your subscribers’ inboxes (instead of the dreaded Spam folder)
Prevents Sending Irrelevant Emails
By ensuring that each subscriber is tagged correctly, you avoid sending them emails that don’t align with their interests or needs. This reduces the risk of your emails being marked as spam or ignored and keeps your audience engaged.
Enhances Personalization and Customer Experience
An organized tagging system enables you to tailor your communication and messaging to different subscribers, making your messages more relevant and valuable.
Reduces Confusion Inside of Your Email Marketing Software
When your tags are well organized, your team members or virtual assistants understand what everything means. This clarity reduces time spent deciphering tag meanings and allows you to focus on what matters: sending out the right emails to the right people and making more sales!
Creating a System for Organizing Your Subscribers through Tagging & Naming Conventions
To transform your email marketing from chaotic clutter to a smooth-running operation, you need a system for organizing your subscribers that allows you to Automate with Heart – to automate your emails while also maintaining a human connection.
What does it look like in practice? When I do an Email Automation Audit, I look for the following:
Step 1: Audit Your Current Tags
Start by reviewing your existing tags. List out all the tags you currently use and identify any duplicates or tags that are no longer relevant. Group similar tags together and consider consolidating them where possible. Also, check where and how your tags are being used to trigger automations. Ensure they’re not unintentionally triggering something you didn’t intend!
Step 2: Plan Your Tagging Strategy
Before creating new tags, decide what information you actually need to track. For example, you might track purchases, which automated email sequences your subscribers receive, whether they’ve consented to receive sales emails, opted out of a launch, or expressed interest in a specific service or product. Knowing which automated actions are connected to specific tags is also helpful. Write everything out to create a clear plan.
Step 3: Categorize Tags by Purpose
Create categories for your tags based on their purpose. Common categories might include customer status, interest topics, engagement level, or specific actions taken. This helps in organizing and filtering subscribers effectively.
Step 4: Use Clear Naming Conventions
Establish a naming system that makes it easy to understand what each tag represents at a glance. For example, use prefixes like “Interest: Cooking” or “Customer: Purchased Course A” to categorize tags by type. Avoid vague tags like “Interest” without additional context.
Step 5: Regularly Review and Update Tags
Organizing your tags isn’t a one-time task. Schedule regular reviews – after a launch, for instance – to ensure your tags remain relevant. Remove any outdated tags, but check where they’re being used before deleting to avoid disrupting automations, journeys, or workflows.
Best Practices for Email Tag Management
Keep Tags Simple and Specific: Use clear and straightforward tag names that indicate their purpose. The more specific, the better. The next time you go to create a new tag, use that naming convention you already created!
Limit the Number of Tags: While it’s tempting to create a tag for everything, over-tagging can lead to confusion and clutter. Focus on tags that have a clear, strategic purpose.
Don’t Use Tags to Track Every Single Link Click: Tags can be great for tracking certain link clicks, such as when you’re running a launch. But I’ve seen people set this up for everything with no clear reason behind it, and it gets confusing and messy real fast.
Yes, there are instances where you’ll want to set up a link trigger so that you can automatically have an action happen if someone clicks on that link. For example, if you’re running a launch and you want to identify if someone clicks on the link to the sales page but doesn’t make a purchase. In that case, you can create temporary tags that you use during this launch period and then delete later.
Otherwise if you want to get super granular about every single link clicked from your emails, consider use UTM codes instead.
Creating Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for your Tagging System: If you work with a team, ensure everyone understands your tagging system and naming conventions. This consistency is crucial to prevent misunderstandings and maintain an organized system. (I’ve seen several instances where a VA set up tags and the business owner had no idea what they’re for.)
The Role of Tags in Sending Personalized & Segmented Emails
Organized email marketing tags play a super important role in allowing you to send personalizing your email marketing efforts.
Think of email segmentation as the “who” – determining who receives which emails – and personalization as the “what” – deciding what content or messaging your subscribers see.
Tags allow you to segment subscribers based on behaviors (like signing up for waitlists, attending live events, clicking links, or making purchases) and preferences (such as topics of interest, launch exclusions, or where they are in their customer journey).
For instance, you might use tags to create a launch segment that includes subscribers who have completed your welcome sequence and excludes those tagged as having purchased a product or opted out of the launch. That’s the “who.”
Then, you can use conditional messaging to personalize the content these subscribers see.
Using Tags to Incorporate Conditional Messaging
Once you have a solid tagging system, you can give your email marketing an extra boost by personalizing the message using what’s called conditional messaging. This feature, which most but not all email marketing softwares have, allows you to customize the content of your emails based on what you know about your subscribers (such with tags) making your communication even more targeted and relevant.
Depending on your email marketing software, this feature might be called:
- ConvertKit: Liquid
- Drip: Liquid
- Mailerlite: Dynamic Content
- Mailchimp: Conditional Merge Tags
- ActiveCampaign: Conditional Content
- Kartra: Dynamic Variables (you’ll have to check if it supports tags along with field names)
- Note: Flodesk and some basic email marketing tools within website builders like Squarespace do not have this feature.
(As far as I could tell, Flodesk does not have this feature. And the more basic email marketing feature that comes with some website builders, including Squarespace, does not have this feature.)
Here’s some examples of how I’ve set up conditional messaging using tags for my clients in ConvertKit:
- Tweaking welcome sequences to show different links based on what their subscribers signed so that they can refer back to a resource (and avoid confusing subscribers who didn’t sign up for a particular resource)
- Customizing calls-to-action in their newsletter templates based on client status. Non-clients see a call-to-action to book a call, and clients see nothing or a special message.
- Showing quiz results & custom links that align with the results.
Case Study: Using Tags to Get the Right Content to the Right Subscribers
Steve, a dedicated coach for K-12 teachers and creator of a popular math lesson blog, found himself and his email subscribers facing a similar challenge: fatigue.
His robust email list was growing, but so was the pressure to constantly produce new content. At the same time, engagement from his subscribers was waning, with teachers showing less interest in his emails as the school year went on.
Steve soon realized the problem. His one-size-fits-all approach to email content that began at the start of the pandemic when he was looking to support struggling teachers meant that high school teachers were receiving first-grade math lessons, while kindergarten teachers were being sent materials on algebra and geometry. With no way to distinguish between different teaching levels, Steve was unintentionally overwhelming his subscribers with irrelevant content.
(And if you know Steve, you know that’s the opposite of what he wanted to do!)
That’s when I introduced a simple yet powerful solution: tags.
I worked with Steve to create a tagging system within his ConvertKit account, categorizing subscribers by the grade levels they taught. We established a straightforward naming convention for these tags, making it easy for Steve and anyone else on his team to understand what each tag represented at a glance.
We then updated his ConvertKit opt-in form to include a check-box for grade levels, allowing new subscribers to select their teaching grade right from the start. This way, as soon as someone signed up, they were automatically tagged with the appropriate grade level. For Steve’s existing subscribers, we created a landing page on ConvertKit asking them to update their preferences and indicate the grade they taught. To encourage participation, Steve offered an enticing incentive, ensuring teachers took the time to update their information.
Now, when Steve sends out lesson plans, they’re tailored to the specific needs of his subscribers. High school teachers receive advanced math lessons, while kindergarten teachers get materials suited to their young learners. Not only has this approach reduced Steve’s workload and content fatigue, but it’s also significantly boosted engagement rates. His subscribers appreciate receiving relevant, targeted content, and Steve can focus on creating high-quality lessons rather than worrying about a declining engagement rate.
Tools and Resources to Help You Organize Your Subscribers
Email Marketing Platforms: Many popular email software providers, such as ConvertKit, Mailerlite, Mailchimp, Flodesk, ActiveCampaign, Kajabi, Drip, Brevo, and beehiiv, offer robust tagging systems to help you organize and segment your subscribers.
Unfortunately, some website builders’ built-in email providers, such as those in Squarespace, do not offer this feature. For this reason, I recommend using a dedicated email marketing software.
Subscriber Strategy Training: This video training guides you through the process of setting up your tagging system effectively, ensuring you don’t miss any critical steps. Improve email engagement, deliverability, and conversions by creating a system for organizing your hot mess list of tags.