Keap Tags vs Campaigns Explained in Plain English

Tags are labels. Campaigns are workflows.

A tag is a sticky note on a contact. It says 'this person attended my March webinar' or 'this person bought the starter package'. A tag does not, by itself, do anything. Campaigns are the workflows that watch for tags and then do things: send an email, wait three days, apply another tag, send another email.

The mental model

• ●Tag = state. What is true about this contact right now?
• ●Goal = trigger. What event causes the workflow to start? Usually 'tag applied'.
• ●Sequence = the workflow. The emails, waits, and actions that happen in order.
• ●Campaign = a container holding goals and sequences that belong to one outcome (e.g. the entire welcome series).

The two most common mistakes

• ●Using tags to send emails directly (you can't, you need a campaign).
• ●Creating a new campaign for every email instead of reusing sequences.
• ●Forgetting that a sequence keeps running on a contact even after their state changes. If someone unsubscribes mid-sequence, you need a campaign to actively remove them.

A clean tag taxonomy

Group tags into four categories. Every tag in your account should fit into exactly one.

• ●Source: where did this contact come from? (e.g. 'Source - Wufoo Form A', 'Source - LinkedIn Ad')
• ●Lifecycle: where in the journey are they? ('Lifecycle - Lead', 'Lifecycle - Customer', 'Lifecycle - Churned')
• ●Product: what have they bought or expressed interest in? ('Product - Starter', 'Interest - Coaching')
• ●Behaviour: what did they do? ('Behaviour - Clicked Webinar Replay', 'Behaviour - Opened 5+ emails 30 days')

If a tag does not fit one of those four categories, it probably should not exist. That single rule deletes about 70 percent of the average Keap account.