What's the difference between segments and tags?

Segmenting your database allows you to send campaigns to only an audience that is interested in that specific subject/topic. This will lead to higher conversion rates, an increase in open rates and provide a more personalised experience for each of your users. 

When it comes to organising your contacts & database, there are a number of different options available to you. By default, all accounts have access to Tags and Segments. You can also create additional contact fields that can be used to categorise and group your data. 

Tags are labels that you apply to contacts. They generally add additional data to contacts to help you categorise based on the information you have about them. It allows you to highlight contacts that have certain attributes that you wish to target. Due to their flexibility, tags can be used very quickly when making changes or adding new contacts. 

For example, you could use tags such as:

Each contact can have multiple tags associated with their profile and when sending a marketing campaign, you can choose to send to multiple tags at once. 

Tags can be added manually, in bulk (via Contact Search), when uploading a spreadsheet of data or automatically assigned (and removed) via automations. 

Simply put, Tags contain a collection of contacts whereas Segments contain a collection of criteria/filters. 

Unlike tags or contact fields, Segments do not add additional labels or data to your contact profile. Instead, segments use the information that you do have to create groups.

Since segments contain a collection of filters, it means that they are dynamic and automatically update whenever the profile of a contact changes or if a new contact is added.

Segments also allow you to bring in data from all parts of the platform to tie everything together. This allows you to specify criteria from:

For example, if the information was available in the account, you could create a segment to find all contacts that have a birthday this month, are aged above 25, have previously dined at the venue in the last 7 days, have spent over $500 in the last 6 months and are not currently VIPs.

As data about each of your contacts updates, so do your segments. This makes them very powerful as they will always return the most up to date results based on the filters and criteria specified. 

Segments can be used for reporting, sending campaigns and to trigger automations (example: when somebody enters the 'Spent More Than $500' segment, send them a thank-you email).