Use custom fields and tags

Use tags to put people into groups, like “paid” or “webinar”, and custom fields (shown as “Extra fields”) to store details about a person, like their plan or company. Both can be used to filter contacts, build segments and personalise emails.

Tags or custom fields?

• Tag: a yes/no label. A person either has it or not. Good for groups: customer, beta, webinar-oct.
• Custom field: a name and a value. Good for details that differ per person: plan = pro, company = Northwind.

Create and manage tags

1. Go to Contacts and open the Tags tab.

2. Click New tag.

3. Enter a Name, an optional Description (optional), and pick a Colour.

4. Click Create tag.

To rename or delete a tag, click the … button on its row and choose Edit tag or Delete tag. Deleting a tag removes it from every contact that has it. The contacts themselves stay.

Add tags to people

• One person: open their profile, type in Add a tag under Tags, and click Add tag. Click the x on a tag to remove it.
• Many people: on the People tab, tick the people you want, then choose Add tag or Remove tag from the bar that appears. You can also tick everyone who matches your current filters.
• While importing: map a column to Tags (separated by commas), or use Add tags to everyone in this file (optional). See Import contacts from a CSV file.
• From your app: send tags with the contact through the API. See Send events and contacts from your app.
• Automatically: an automation rule can add a tag when something happens. See Create an automation rule.

Add custom fields

Custom fields are created the first time you give someone a value. There is no separate setup screen.

• One person: on Add contact, click More details, then Add a field, and fill in Name and Value.
• From a CSV: any column you map to Extra field: column name becomes a custom field with that name.
• From your app: send custom_fields with the contact through the API.

Custom fields show on the contact’s profile under More about them. On the People tab, click Columns to show a custom field as a column.

Keep field names simple and consistent, like plan or company, lowercase with no spaces. Plan and plan are treated as different fields.

Use them

• Filter: on the People tab, use the Tag filter, or click Filters for more options.
• Segments: build rules like “Has Tag is paid” or “Custom: plan is pro”. See Create a segment to target the right people.
• Personalise emails: put a field in double curly braces, for example {{first_name}} or {{plan}}. Add a fallback after a bar for people who have no value: {{first_name|there}} gives “Hi there” when the first name is empty. In the template editor, select text and click Insert variable to pick a field instead of typing it.

Related articles

• Create a segment to target the right people
• Import contacts from a CSV file
• Build an email template