10 Ways to Use Subscriber Tags to Get More Opens, Clicks and Sales with Email Marketing

Quality email marketing requires quality list segmentation. Although I'm a huge believer in the idea that less is usually more, list segmenting is an exception. You should get a bit extra when it comes to your email list.

If you don't tag your email subscribers properly, you'll never truly reach your full earning potential with email marketing. You'll continually send emails to people who don't want them and miss out on sending emails to the people who do. 

Failing to properly tag your subscribers leads to unnecessary unsubscribes, lost sales, and a damaged reputation to boot. 

Putting proper systems into place might seem like a daunting and complex task at first, but trust me, it's well worth the time and effort upfront. That is, of course, if you really want to make email marketing work for your business. Which you do, right?

So, what are email tags?

Tags are the fundamental form of list segmentation. They're attributions assigned to specific emails on our mailing list that let us know more about who a subscriber is. 

Things like what they've purchased, what they're interested in, or what caused them to join the mailing list in the first place.

Proper tags allow us to...

• Reduce unsubscribes
• Reduce complaints
• Better understand our subscribers
• Increase click through rates
• Increase conversion rates
• Improve overall deliverability 
• Improve our relationships with our subscribers

Although you can get away with poor segmentation early on in your career when your list is small, as your list begins to grow and the number of ways you collect leads diversifies, you'll be in serious trouble if you don't tag properly. 

If you haven't been tagging your subscribers, it's ok. It's not too late to start. 

So, without further ado, here are 10 of my favorite tagging strategies. 

#1 Tag Buyers

Example: 💰Bought: My Really Cool Software

If you sell a product, always tag your subscribers once they've purchased.

This is much more important than many people realize.

Here's why...

Have you ever received an email trying desperately to sell you something that you already bought?

It's extremely annoying. It makes you feel like the brand doesn't really care that much about you. 

Past buyers are your best future customers.

Here are some important stats you should be aware of...

• Repeat customers refer 50 percent more people than one-time buyers.
• Repeat buyers spend 300% more on average than new buyers.
• It costs 5x more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one.

This is the LAST segment of subscribers you want to ignore. We want to turn one time buyers into repeat buyers ASAP. However, during this process it's important to make sure you're sending messages to a valid email address, and that past buyers haven't changed their email.

Even worse than the mild annoyance of being resold something, have you ever received an email with a special discount offer on something you paid full price for?

That is a nightmare for email marketers.

"Hey, I paid $149 last year, I see you're doing a $50 off deal...Can you honor that and refund me the $50?"

^I used to get this type of email quite often when I wasn't properly tagging buyers.

You should be able to run promotions from time to time, but there's no need in rubbing it in the faces of people who already paid regular price. And I'm sorry, you can't go and refund everyone the difference; that's not in the spirit of promotions and would make them entirely pointless.

Here's an (made up) example of an email promoting my software EntreTimer.

Notice how I was able to target people who were interested in email marketing (more on interest based tags shortly) but had NOT purchased the software already. 

Again, this is very important. 

#2 Tag Abandoned Carts

Example: 🛒💨Abandoned Cart: My Really Cool Software

• They might have been called away by something. 
• They might not have had their credit card handy.
• They might have needed to wait for pay day.
• They might have wanted to compare a few alternatives first.
• They might have been on a mobile device (85.6% abandoned cart rate averages) and wanted to wait until they got to desktop.

The list goes on and on. 

The long short of it is that you need to continue to sell to these potential buyers with at the very least a polite reminder email.

Abandoned cart subscribers are the epitome of hot traffic, and your conversion rates on your abandoned cart emails should be some of your highest. 

However, if you aren't tagging these folks, you aren't going to be contacting them!

I use ThriveCart for my sales funnels, and it integrates very easily with ConvertKit, so I can add a tag whenever a cart is abandoned. 

From here, I create an automation that sends them a follow-up email reminding them to come finish their purchase. 

There are dozens of strategies for creating great abandoned cart follow ups, but here is the one I made this week for one of my products. 

Oh, and don't forget to create a removal rule that tags off the abandoned cart tag once someone has purchased.

Mine looks like that. ⤴️

Abandoned carts are estimated to cost companies $18 billion dollars annually.

Minimize the amount of that lost revenue that comes from you with great tagging and follow-up and your bank account will thank you.

#3 Tag Refunds

Example: 💔Refunded: My Really Cool Software

Another important yet often overlooked segmentation method is tagging people who refund your products. 

Just like with abandoned carts, this doesn't have to be the end of your relationship with a subscriber. You just need to know how to cater to them better. 

Triggering follow up automations to refunded customers can be very helpful in understanding how to improve your product or, even better, draw them back to another purchase. 

Sending the email above via an automation would allow us to do two things.

1. Get feedback so we can improve.
2. Offer a coupon code to encourage the customer to come back. 

Be careful with the coupon offer. The last thing you want is word getting out that everyone who refunds can get 20% off!

Side note, this isn't an offer I'm running, so don't try it 😂

Every business is different, and this is just a broad example, but there is something that can be done with refund triggered automations for every type of business. 

#4 Tag Community Members

Example: 🌐Member: FBA Today Facebook Group

#5 Tag People with the Lead Magnet they Downloaded

Example: 🧲 Lead Magnet: Evening Reflections

One of the things that I love to do is send my new subscribers as much free value as possible. 

Typically, these are things that I also use as lead magnets elsewhere.  I have a lot of different freebies I give, and it's not possible for a subscriber to subscribe to all of them, so I use them as bonuses in my email follow-ups. 

If I know that a subscriber joined this list by downloading, for example, Lead Magnet A, I can give them Lead Magnet B as a value add in a follow-up email and vice versa.

If you want to learn more about this concept of feeding your new subscribers with value right out of the gate, check out the book The Invisible Selling Machine by Ryan Deiss.

#6 Tag Competitors

Example: 👽👽Other: Competitors 👽👽

This one really isn't that important, and it's not like you can really keep someone from getting your emails if they really want to, but why not at least try a little if it gives you an edge?

I always recommend that people spy on the emails of their competitors to see what strategies might be working for them. If they compete directly with you though, they'd be wise to make it harder for you to see their content. 

Again, really not a big deal, but I do it 🤪

#7 Tag Subscribers Based on Interest

Example: 🤔Interest: Productivity

If I made this list in order of importance, this one would have been #1.

This is the foundation of segmentation. Your interest tags can be narrow and broad, but you should always have them for every single interest your brand targets.

I typically create narrow interest tags and then organize those interests into more broad segments (ConvertKit terminology, your software's terminology might differ).

In ConvertKit, I make sure that every lead magnet or source of subscribers has a rule set up that auto-applies a tag. 

In this example, I tag the following forms (which are your opt-ins) with the tag that shows they are interested in Amazon FBA.

I get even more granular and break up the forms into more narrow tags for hyper-targeted broadcasting and segmentation. 

#8 Create Temporary Tags with Link Triggers

Example: 🚫 Don't Contact: Book Promotion

ConvertKit (and most other email marketing softwares) allow you to assign tags with something called link triggers.

Here's an example of a link trigger I created recently to tag people who were interested in an affiliate product I promote called Bench book keeping

When they click on the link, it automatically tags them with "Bench Interest."

I will now send an additional email to these subscribers, since they've shown they're more interested. After all, most sales won't happen on the first impression (see The Rule of 7).

Another great temporary tag I use is a "Don't contact me regarding" tag. These are tags that allow subscribers to tell me they don't want to hear anymore about a specific offer or topic without completely unsubscribing from my list. 

Again, this is very important because to really close sales you'll need to send more than one email. If I'm doing a large scale promotion, I always include this link trigger at the bottom of each email. 

For future broadcasts regarding that offer, I'll make sure to create a rule that excludes everyone on this specific tag. 

These tags can (and should) be deleted once you've completed a promotion and no longer need them. 

#9 Tag Subscribers for Re-Engagement

Example: ☠️DELETE ☠️

It's important that you delete inactive subscribers from your email list regularly.

Regularly running re-engagement campaigns to cold subscribers will help your list tremendously.

It might sound counter-intuitive, but deleting cold subscribers will actually lead to better results in the long run, since it will improve the overall deliverability of your broadcasts. 

Large providers like Gmail and Outlook take note of whether or not people open your emails. If you have a large amount of subscribers who aren't opening, the providers may start sending your emails to the junk or promotions folders to every subscriber, even the ones who actually engage with them.

#10 Tag Your Affiliates

Example: 🤝Affiliate: Amazon Products

Tag your affiliates and keep in touch with them regularly. 

You can also get even deeper with it and add automations that trigger emails when certain rules are met.

When something like "hasn't made a sale in X# days," is triggered, you can send an automated email that reminds the affiliate of the offer and helps encourage them to promote.