Tags, Groups and Segments in Mailchimp: What’s the Difference?

If you use Mailchimp for your email marketing efforts, you’re well aware that this tool enables you to organize your contacts based on their interests or characteristics to strategically schedule your campaigns.

Thanks to Mailchimp’s tags, groups, and segments, you can send each contact the most relevant content, enticing them to visit your site or purchase your products.

But what’s the difference between tags, groups, and segments? Let’s clear things up.

Tags

Tags are customizable labels that help you keep your contacts organized based on the information you have about them.
For example, you could tag your collaborators as “staff” to send them internal newsletters, or tag users based on their geographical location (e.g., “Italian customers”) or the source of their newsletter subscription (“social users,” “fair attendees,” etc.).

Tags aren’t just useful for internal organization; they also allow you to further filter your audience to send targeted campaigns.

You can also create automated campaigns tied to specific tags for follow-up purposes. For instance, you could automate sending a newsletter for registrations to upcoming e-learning courses in the next fall, targeting users who have previously participated in your courses and might be interested.

Associated tags are visible in the complete contacts table as well as within the profile of each individual user. Additionally, you can view your top 5 tags from the Mailchimp dashboard, providing easy access to campaign planning.

Groups

Groups offer another way to organize contacts within your audience. Unlike tags, whose divisions are tied to internal matters, groups are categories that your contacts assign themselves.

For instance, a restaurant might ask its newsletter subscribers to identify their preferred menu type (vegan/gluten-free/nut-allergic) to send targeted communications.

You can create hidden groups or make them visible within the sign-up form so that users themselves can select the category that suits their needs.

Segments

Mailchimp’s segments also group contacts based on shared characteristics, but they differ from groups in that:

• they aren’t necessarily tied to a single list field; they can include up to five fields
• they can be based on data related to contact activity (e.g., which emails they’ve opened, how long they’ve been on the list, etc.)
• they aren’t visible or selectable by subscribers
• they can be static (segments that include specific contacts only) or dynamic (segments that update automatically when new contacts match the specified conditions)

Lists contain a wealth of information that can be used to filter contacts through segments and send them specific campaigns. For example, you could create a segment including only “customer” group subscribers living in a specific region who haven’t opened your latest email and have birthdays in the upcoming month.

Some Tips

A common mistake is to segment newsletter subscribers using only audience lists. It’s important to consider that this approach might result in duplicate contacts across multiple lists. Since Mailchimp’s pricing varies based on the number of subscribers, if a user is added to three lists, their email address is counted three times, which could impact account costs.

Furthermore, sending a campaign is limited to a single list: if there’s a need to communicate with all subscribers, you’d have to create as many campaigns (with the same content) as the lists used.

Therefore, remember to create the fewest possible number of lists and segment your subscribers using tags, groups, and segments. By harnessing all available data, you can enhance your email marketing strategy and more easily achieve your goals.