Tagging Strategies: How They Maximise Your Marketing Campaigns

Tagging Strategies: How They Maximise Your Marketing Campaigns
tagging strategies in digital marketing
By Daniel Ricardo Email Marketing PPC SEO Social Media January 7, 2025

If you have been involved in digital marketing for more than a day, you will have come across this word too many times….Tag or tagging. Whether it’s SEO guys talking about Meta Tags, Web developers talking about Alt Tags, or your social media manager debating about what hashtags to use. So why have we decided to write a blog about it? Because they are very important and not everyone uses them to their full potential.

Modern marketing is all about delivering relevant and personalised experiences to your audience. To tailor your messages and offers effectively, you first need to understand how each contact engages with your business and what piques their interest. This is precisely where tagging comes in.

Tagging is the practice of assigning specific labels (or “tags”) to a contact, prospect, or customer based on their behaviours, demographics, or interests. By adding—or sometimes removing—these tags, you can track how people interact with your brand and which content resonates with them the most. Ultimately, this helps you deliver the right message to the right person, exactly when they need it.

In this article, we will look at various types of tags and offer practical steps for creating an effective tagging strategy that will transform your marketing campaigns.

Why Tagging Matters

  1. Personalisation
    Knowing an individual’s behaviour—such as which emails they open or which products they browse—enables you to tailor your marketing campaigns to suit their preferences.
    Tip: To learn how personalisation can boost your marketing success, you might want to read this guide by Campaign Monitor on email personalisation.
  2. Segmented Marketing
    Properly tagged contacts can be grouped into specific segments. For instance, you could create a list of contacts who have clicked multiple ads for “winter gear” or those who have visited product pages for “running shoes.”
  3. Better Data Analysis
    Tags help you compare how different groups behave. By tracking their performance, you can learn which campaigns work best for each type of customer.
  4. Efficient Resource Allocation
    With tagging, you’ll focus your marketing efforts exactly where they matter, rather than sending generic promotions to everyone.

Common Types of Tags

When you start using tags, it helps to follow a consistent naming convention. Here are a few types of tags you might find most useful:

1. Interest-Based Tags

  • Description: Indicate a prospect’s interest in a particular product, topic, or category.
  • Examples: “Interest: WinterGear,” “Interest: RunningShoes,” “Interest: EmailMarketingTips.”
  • Usage: Applied when someone visits product pages, clicks on certain links in emails, or downloads a relevant lead magnet.
  • Implementation Steps:
    1. In your marketing platform (e.g., ActiveCampaign or HubSpot), set up automation to apply these tags whenever a user clicks a link or visits a page on that topic.
    2. Use a website analytics tool (like Google Analytics) with your CRM’s tracking code to trigger an interest tag when a visitor repeatedly views related pages.

2. Engagement or Behaviour-Based Tags

  • Description: Focus on a contact’s level of engagement, such as how often they open emails, attend webinars, or answer surveys.
  • Examples: “Engaged: WebinarAttendee,” “Action: FilledOutSurvey,” “Action: RequestedDemo.”
  • Usage: Ideal for identifying highly engaged leads or for retargeting contacts who have gone quiet.
  • Implementation Steps:
    1. Create email automation that apply a tag when a contact opens a certain number of emails in a row or clicks on key links.
    2. If you’re running webinars, make sure your webinar platform tags attendees and no-shows.
    3. In your CRM, set up workflows that tag contacts who request demos or quotes.

3. Lifecycle or Stage Tags

  • Description: Categorise contacts based on where they are in the customer journey (e.g., prospect, first-time buyer, repeat customer).
  • Examples: “Stage: Lead,” “Stage: FirstPurchase,” “Stage: RepeatBuyer,” “Stage: VIP.”
  • Usage: Enables you to see who needs nurturing, who is ready for an upsell, and which customers require special care.
  • Implementation Steps:
    1. Use your CRM’s pipeline stages or lifecycle stages to update a contact’s tag as they move from “Lead” to “Opportunity,” or from “Customer” to “VIP.”
    2. Once someone makes a purchase, your eCommerce integration (e.g., with Shopify) can remove “Stage: Lead” and add “Stage: Customer.”

4. Source/UTM Tags

  • Description: Track where a contact originated (e.g., from Facebook Ads, Google Ads, a specific blog post, or a referral link).
  • Examples: “Source: FacebookAdCampaign1,” “Source: Google: KeywordX,” “Referral: PartnerXYZ.”
  • Usage: Ideal for measuring the ROI of various marketing channels.
  • Implementation Steps:
    1. Use UTM parameters in all your marketing URLs (e.g., ?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=ad&utm_campaign=Campaign1).
    2. Configure your marketing automation platform to automatically apply tags based on UTM values.

5. Event-Specific Tags

  • Description: Mark contacts who showed interest in or attended a unique event, such as a seasonal sale, a live webinar, or a workshop.
  • Examples: “Event: BlackFridaySale2025,” “Event: Webinar_SocialMediaBasics,” “Event: LaunchWeekInterested.”
  • Usage: Helps you follow up with participants and measure the success of specific promotions.
  • Implementation Steps:
    1. Set up your event registration forms or webinar sign-ups to apply the relevant event tag automatically.
    2. Consider removing or updating these tags post-event to distinguish between those who registered and those who actually attended.

Practical Steps to Implement a Tagging Strategy

1. Define Your Objectives

Decide what you want to achieve with tagging. Do you need better lead qualification? Are you aiming to identify your top spenders? Clarity on your goals will guide which tags to create.

2. Choose a Tagging Structure and Naming Conventions

  • Keep tag names concise and meaningful.
  • Use prefixes like “Interest:”, “Action:”, “Stage:”, or “Source:” so you can easily spot the tag’s purpose.
  • Consider keeping a master document or spreadsheet that lists all your tags and outlines when each one should be applied or removed.

3. Set Up Tracking and Automation

  • Website Tracking: Install your marketing automation or CRM’s tracking code (for instance, HubSpot’s tracking code) on your site to trigger tags based on page visits.
  • Email Integrations: Configure link tracking in your email service provider so that whenever a subscriber clicks on a specific link, the correct tag is added.
  • UTM Tagging: Consistently use UTM parameters in your URLs and integrate them with your platform. For instance, if you’re using Google Analytics, ensure you’ve linked it properly to your CRM to track these parameters.

4. Regularly Review & Update Tags

  • Schedule routine audits to remove or merge outdated tags. For example, if you had an event tag for a webinar in 2022, consider whether it still serves a purpose in 2025.
  • Update your tagging strategy if your marketing or business objectives change.

5. Use Tags to Segment & Launch Campaigns

  • Segmentation: Build segments based on key tags. For example, a campaign might target those who are tagged “Stage: Lead” and “Interest: RunningShoes.”
  • Personalised Messaging: Use dynamic content in your emails or on your website to display messages tailored to a specific tag.
  • Automation: Set automations that trigger whenever certain tags are added or removed. For example, if a lead is tagged “Stage: Customer,” automatically remove “Stage: Lead” and launch a welcome sequence.

6. Measure, Optimise, and Scale

  • Monitor key metrics such as conversion rates and engagement for each tag or segment.
  • If certain tags correlate with higher conversions, you might tailor more content around those topics.
  • Keep experimenting with new tags and refine your strategy as you learn more about your audience’s behaviours.

Conclusion

A well-organised tagging system can be a game-changer for your marketing campaigns. By effectively tagging your contacts according to their behaviours, interests, lifecycle stage, and source, you’ll have the insights you need to create targeted, personalised messages.

For the best results, maintain consistency and invest time in planning your tagging approach. Clearly define your objectives, keep a close eye on your tags, and let your data guide you towards continuous improvements. By doing so, you’ll develop a marketing strategy that feels tailor-made for each contact—boosting engagement, conversions, and long-term loyalty in the process.

Ready to put your tagging strategy into action?

With the right tags and a thoughtful approach, you’ll be well on your way to maximising every opportunity your marketing campaigns have to offer!

Tagging Strategies: How They Maximise Your Marketing Campaigns 1
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