How to Tag and Segment Your Contacts

Segmentation is the difference between sending everyone the same message and sending the right message to the right person. A contact who downloaded your lead magnet three weeks ago and never purchased needs a different email than a current paying client. Tags let you define those differences. Segments let you send to each group precisely.

Tags vs Segments

Tags are labels on individual contact records — descriptive, specific, applied via forms, workflows, or manual entry. Segments (Smart Lists) are dynamic groups built by filtering contacts based on their tags, fields, and behaviors.

How to Apply Tags

Manually on a contact record. Via form submission with an "Apply Tag" action. Via workflow action. Via pipeline stage movement. The most scalable approach is always automated — manual tagging does not scale beyond a few hundred contacts.

How to Segment for a Broadcast

Tag Strategy

Use a prefix system: Lead:, Buyer:, Interest:, Status:. Consistency matters more than comprehensiveness — a simple system you actually maintain is worth more than a perfect system you abandon.

Common Mistakes

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Next Steps

• Sending to the full unsegmented list when you have a specific message for a specific group.
• No tagging system at all — every contact looks identical in the CRM.
• Tagging manually at scale instead of automating.
• Creating so many tags that none of them are maintained.