Tags as Triggers in Email Automation
Combine tagging with THEA, our Email Automation Tool, to always send the right email series to your recipients.
Benefit from tag-based email marketing automation and create email series for your recipients! The assignment of a tag triggers the automation workflow in tag-based email automation – this means the recipient triggers the workflow.
Tagging means, recipients are automatically assigned with a keyword when they perform a certain action. If you have one or several links in your email, a click on these links is transformed into a tag. These tags are added to your recipient data. Tagging lets you get to know your recipients better: the more tags you have assigned to a recipient, the more you know about their interest and preferences.
Your advantage: You create a tag-triggered automation once and can always be sure your recipients receive the right emails at the right time; after all, they have triggered the email workflow with their click behavior. With tag-triggered email automation, they always receive relevant and suitable content – and your open rates increase.
Individually set up your automation workflow:
- You decide, which tag triggers the workflow.
- You can different delay times before a first email and between single emails of your newsletter series.
- It’s totally up to you how you design your content.
Create tag-based email automation workflows as single-track and multi-level workflows.
There are three ways to assign tags:
- Automatically via interfaces, for example after a newsletter subscription or purchase.
- Through click behavior in emails, by assigning tags to links.
- Manually in data sets, by adding tags to the data sets of your recipients.
- Add tags to a recipient via REST API.
How Tag Triggers Work in the CleverReach® Automation Center
How to use tags – and everything you need to know about them
1. Automatic Tagging
When using our various shop interfaces, tags are transferred automatically, for example after a purchase or newsletter subscription. Every purchase or newsletter subscription leads to a new tag – and this tag triggers your email automation workflow after a predefined period of time.
Example: Newsletter Subscription
As soon as a new subscriber signs up successfully to your newsletter, they will be transferred to your CleverReach® recipient list as a new “recipient” and automatically receive a tag (for example „newsletter subscriber“). This triggers the automation.
TIP: Don’t wait too long until you send out your welcome email – right after the Double-Opt In, open rates are particularly high, as your new recipient has just said „Yes“ to receiving your emails. At this stage, every email with info or news are highly welcome. Make use of that and prepare multi-level welcome campaigns in advance.
Example: Purchase in Your Online Shop
When a customer purchases something from your shop, they automatically get a tag (e.g. „buyer“) – which gives you the opportunity to automatically reach them with the right offers in the future. TIP: Upselling! If a recipient buys new shoes, send them matching offers via email, in this case shoe care and cleaning products.
2. Manual Assignment of Tags in Newsletters
You can also assign tags manually in an email. Links, images or buttons get additional tags. If a recipient now clicks on these link, they automatically receive the corresponding tag set – which in turn starts the automation.
Example: Click on a tagged link in a shop newsletter
At the beginning of a new season, your subscribers receive emails with the latest products in your online shop. The respective product images not only have links but also tags. Interested customers end up in your online shop when they click on a link, and at the same time get an additional tag in their data set. The result: Your recipient triggers the automation workflow with their click behavior, at the same time you can send emails tailored to their interests. TIP: After a period of a few days or weeks, remind your recipients of products they were interested in but didn’t buy.
Keep in mind: If they have purchased the product in the meantime, the workflow that encourages them to buy should stop at that point. You can also use tags at that point.
3. Trigger Automation Workflow
When a tag is added to a recipient data set, this is the trigger for your previously created automation workflow. Now CleverReach® sends the respective email campaign. For a newsletter subscription, it makes sense to send a welcome email to your new subscriber with a little welcome present – e.g. a discount for your shop. Later, further emails can follow at previously defined intervals, for example with information only for newsletter subscribers.
4. What you need to know about triggers
The tag trigger only starts a workflow under certain conditions:
- When a new tag is set. If the tag already exists, the workflow is not triggered
- If the tag is transferred automatically (via REST API). If the tag is set manually for a recipient in the backend, this has no effect at first.
- Only for individual recipients. If several recipients are transmitted automatically (via REST API) simultaneously (in a so-called REST call), the trigger is NOT triggered for security reasons. Otherwise, all recipients would become a part of the respective workflow during the initial import via interface. The result: Even long-standing newsletter subscribers would receive your welcome series again. Tagging is exclusively intended for targeting individual recipients.
- Tags must be auto transmitted (via REST interface) via the respective group function. There is also a function for setting tags in the receiver area, but this does not work (on purpose!!!!), since there is no group assignment here.
5. Tips for tag-triggered welcome series for your online shops
- Your welcome series should not differ too much from the style and content of your regular newsletters – it should rather match the branding of your shop.
- Make sure you address your recipients personally to increase the relevance of your newsletters. This way, online retailers establish a personal relationship with their recipients, comparable to greeting new customers in a shop with a handshake.
- Let the company owner or real employees greet your new subscriber, with texts and images matching your shop. No need to say that your customers should have to possibility to contact the sender of your emails instead of being stuck with a no-reply address.
- It’s helpful to get to know your customers to always send them the perfect offers. Integrate some simple questions into your welcome series, e.g. ask for your recipient’s birthday, favorite place to visit or place of residence.
- Vice versa, you help your recipients to get to know your offers and product range better. A welcome series is perfect for this. For example, inform your subscribers about shipping costs, return conditions and special services.
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