Fetures by Screen: Tagging and Groups

Tagging - An Overview

You can create several different kinds of tags: contact tags, message tags, and sequence tags. They're all used the same way, to organize the respective data, and so you can do certain things to the contacts (or messages) that are tagged in a specific way. You will use contact tags the most, however, and the following explanation is primarily about tagging contacts.

Tagging contacts is a simple feature that will set you up to use more advanced features like segmenting your list into groups and, in turn, being more organized and able to communicate with greater pertinence to different groups. It’s best to get started on this right off the bat so you’ve got it handled as you begin to grow your database!

Here’s the basic idea

Every Contact you have in your database is related to you in at least one way, and sometimes in many ways.

For example, you may have contacts in your database that you know from a Chamber of Commerce event, some who are friends from church, a bunch that simply filled out a form on your website…and still others who’ve bought a certain kind of product from you.

We allow you to ‘tag’ your contacts according to their relationships with you/your company, according to their interests, or however else you want. This allows you to treat each contact differently, according to those tags. Though they're certainly not the only criteria, tags are one of the most commonly used characteristics that people use to create distinct groups. 

Additionally, different contacts may have different interests that you have identified: one person may be interested in product A, another in product B, while someone else is looking to get a job with you after college. There are all kinds of ways to use tags. It’s a good idea to start good tagging habits early. Once you’ve got thousands of Contacts in your database, tagging them, well, can be quite a project.

Tags can be added to Contacts in several ways. You can do it one at a time, or in big groups, or even have them automatically tagged when they fill out a SmartForm.

Creating New Tags

You can create new tags in two ways:

1. In the 'Tags and Sequences' section in the 'contact record', which is the very same place you go to add tags to an individual contact.
2. In the admin menu there's a link for the 'Manage Tags' screen where you can create and delete tags. 

Tagging Contacts

Tagging Contacts One-by-One

1. Open the person's contact record by clicking anywhere on the line for that contact on the 'Contacts' screen.
2. Once their contact details screen is open, scroll down to the section called 'Sequences and Tags.'
3. Click on the 'Contact Tags' title.
4. If you want to create a brand new tag at this time, simply click the little yellow 'post-it' note icon and you can create a new one. Learn about best practices for naming conventions before you begin creating tags.
5. Then, once you've created the tag you want to use, or to tag them with an existing tag, simply click on the 'Contact Tags' title.
6. Click the green '+ sign' to reveal a list of all available tags.
7. Choose which tags you'd like to have added (or removed, for that matter) to the contact.
8. Click 'Accept.'
9. Click 'Save.'

Tagging Numerous Contacts at Once

(or doing any of a number of other actions to a group of contacts at once).

Tagging Via Active Response Rule

[Note: OfficeAutopilot customers only] You can set up an 'Active Response Rule' to tag contacts automatically as a response to certain behaviors (maybe they visit a certain page on your website, or buy a certain product). Learn all about creating Active Response Rules.

Tagging Automatically Via SmartForms

When you create a SmartForm there's a place for you to select what tag(s) you want people who fill out that form to be tagged with. This helps you segment your list automatically right as new contacts come into your database!

Segmenting and Groups

An Overview of List Segmentation

List segmentation is a beautiful thing because it allows you to send more highly targeted, relevant emails AND postcards to sub-groups within your list. We just call these segments “Groups.”

Your segmenting criteria can be based on ANY data in your database. For instance, you might want to create list segments based on demographics, like which state contacts live in, so you can view, and market distinctly to people, who live in, say, California. Or, perhaps for your business, it’s useful to view and market differently to people based on their gender, job title, income, or whether they’re a client, a past client, or a prospect.  It’s EXTREMELY useful to create “groups,” based on the lead source of a given contact. This allows you to communicate distinctly, and in a more relevant way with contacts that come into your system via different lead sources.

You don’t have to be a big shot, smarty-pants marketer to create list segments! We make it drop dead simple for anyone to segment their list of contacts…yes, even you…so you can send more highly targeted campaigns that yield far better results!

One way many SendPepper users segment their lists into groups is with contact tags. Learn about how to create new tags, and how to tag contacts.

Segmenting Your List Automatically via Rules

OfficeAutopilot users can also use rules to segment their lists automatically! This automated segmentation can be done both via Active Response rules, and with rules within sequences. You’d just decide what you want the rule to do, then create it.

Say for instance you want to make sure that anyone who’s visited my pricing page two or more times gets tagged as a “Hot Lead” and ends up in a group called "Hot Leads".  Well, you could easily set that up by creating a rule called, say: “If visits pricing page 2+ times, tag as “Hot Lead.” You'd then set up a group that includes all those with the tag, "Hot Lead." This is just meant to serve as an example, not as detailed instructions. Learn all about how to create an Active Response Rule here and how to create a group here.

Know that you can also use this same functionality to REMOVE contacts from a given tag based on their behaviors or the data in their contact record and do a ton of other automated actions.

Groups

Groups are a great way to organize your contacts into segments that you’ll want to look at or perform certain actions upon regularly. For example, you may often want to send an email to a particular group of contacts or simply have a quick way to see every contact that’s tagged in a particular way.

To See a Saved Group

Simply select the name of the Group in the dropdown box at the top of the 'Contacts' screen.

Creating Groups

A good way to think about Groups is as if they were "saved searches." You're basically setting up a search for all contacts that meet certain criteria, then saving that search so you can go back to it whenever you like.

1. Just click the ‘Create Group’ link next to the 'Current Group' dropdown box at the top of the contacts screen.
2. Name the Group.
3. Set the search criteria.
4. Click 'Save.'

Your new Group is now available from the dropdown box on the main 'Contacts' screen.

For example, if you want to see a list of everyone in your database that’s from Canada, and is not a client (and you’ve already tagged all your clients with the tag ‘client’) simply set the first row of drop down fields so they read “Country is equal to Canada” and the second line to read “Contact Tags does not contain Client.” Click 'save,' and you’re done.

Note that at the end of each line is an ‘AND.’ If you click that ‘AND,’ it’ll turn into an ‘OR.’ This feature allows you to create groups like: “Contact tags contains client or past client or prospect.”

Group Actions

Creating groups allows you to perform certain actions on the entire group at once. Learn all about group actions.

Naming Conventions

In order to keep your system well organized, we highly recommend using standardized naming conventions right from the start, for all your tags, groups, sequences, rules, trackers, tasks, emails, postcards, landing pages, and forms.

For instance, if you're making tags for different lead sources where your contacts come from, you would want to start each of those tags with: "Lead Src:" So, you might end up, for instance, with the following tags:

• Lead Src: Adwords Ad 2
• Lead Src: Chmbr Commerce Mtng 11/09
• Lead Src: Facebook PPC Ad 4
• Lead Src: Referral

...instead of merely:

• Adwords Ad 2
• Chmbr Commerce Mtng 11/09
• Facebook PPC Ad 4
• Referral

In the first way, all the tags will be easily identifiable, searchable, and useable by you and other members of your team because they will show up in drop down menus together, rather than all spread out (since items in drop down menus are listed in alphabetical order). This example is about creating tags, however, you can (and SHOULD) apply this kind of standardized naming conventions to everything you name throughout the system. 

FAQs

Some questions we've heard...

"I'm confused. What's the difference between tags and groups?"

"Can I edit tag names without having to create new ones?"

"I have several contacts who represent the same company or organization? Can I make one contact record that encompasses all these contacts?"

"How can I create a group of my subscribers that have no tags?"

"I created a group based on tags but all of the contacts that are supposed to be in there aren't. Why?"

"How can I make a group of people that do not have tags?"

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