How do tags and segments work?

Tags are simple labels you apply to contacts — “Dog-Lovers”, “Paid-Members” — to organize them by interest, topic, or anything else. Segments are dynamic groups built from tags, profile fields, and behavior, which you can pick as the audience when scheduling a newsletter. For everything else on the Audience page, see Working in Audience.

Prefer to have it done for you?

Penpal can build segments and apply tags for you in conversation — for example, “build a segment of new signups” or “build a segment of everyone who opened in the last 30 days.” See how Penpal works.

Creating and applying tags

Create tags from Audience > Tags with the Create tag button — give each a name and a color. What a tag name can contain depends on how your account sends. If it sends through the company audience, names can use letters, numbers, spaces, hyphens, and underscores; Letterhead stores them in lowercase and turns spaces into hyphens, so VIP Guest List is saved as vip-guest-list. On a newsletter’s original audience page, tag names can’t contain spaces — use dashes instead (e.g. VIP-Guest-List).

Apply them:

• Individually — click a member’s row in your Audience table to open their full profile, then use the Tags panel there to search and select tags — no separate save step, changes apply as you make them.
• In bulk — on the Audience page, use the checkboxes to select individual members, or the header checkbox to select everyone on the current page (you can also check Select all to include members beyond the current page). Click + Add Tag, choose one or more existing tags — or type a new tag name to create it and include it — then click Add to apply to everyone selected. Bulk actions change many members at once, so review your selection before applying.
• By engagement — tag readers who opened or clicked a specific newsletter straight from its metrics page. See below.

Tag readers who opened or clicked a newsletter

You can apply or create tags for readers who engaged with a specific newsletter, directly from that newsletter’s metrics page — building engagement-based groups without switching views. The tag is added to those contacts in your audience right away.

Availability

This capability may need to be enabled for your account — contact support if you don’t see it.

1. Open the metrics page for any sent newsletter.
2. Use the tagging option in the engagement metrics to target readers who opened, clicked, or both.
3. Select an existing tag or create a new one, then apply it.

It’s handy for follow-up campaigns (tag everyone who clicked a product announcement, then send them a discount code), engagement scoring across multiple newsletters, comparing readers by which newsletter or variant they engaged with, and event reminders.

Creating segments

Segments group subscribers based on criteria such as tags, profile fields, and engagement. As you add and adjust rules, a running count shows how many contacts match — so you can tune the segment until it reaches the group you want, without saving first. The count covers every kind of rule — tags, profile details, engagement, location — and tells you plainly if it can’t be calculated just then, rather than showing a zero.

1. Go to Segments under the Audience menu and click Create segment.
2. Name the segment and choose how criteria are matched:
   • Any — subscribers match any of the criteria (OR logic), e.g. tagged Sports OR Fitness OR Gym.
   • All — subscribers must match all criteria (AND logic), e.g. tagged Sports AND custom field = Sports Enthusiast.
3. Click Add criteria to choose and add rules:
   • Tag conditions — choose in (has the tag) or not in (doesn’t) — and select one or more tags.
   • Profile field or custom field conditions — pick the field, choose an operator (such as equals to, before, or after), and enter the value.
   • Engagement conditions based on when someone last opened or last clicked — see Building a segment around a rolling time window below.
   • Segment conditions — include or exclude another segment with Segment is or Segment is not.
4. Click Save.

Segment counts aren’t real-time — they can take up to 3 hours to update after a segment is saved. You can still send to a segment right away; it includes the correct subscribers at the time of send.

Letterhead also builds Smart Engagement-Based Segments for you automatically, and you can chart how any saved segment engages over time against your whole-audience baseline.

Turn readers who engaged with a newsletter into a reusable segment

From an edition’s results page, you can turn readers who engaged into a reusable segment in one click — everyone who opened it, everyone who clicked a particular link, or everyone who picked a specific answer in one of its polls. Each becomes a real segment you can count, send to, and reuse. The segment always means everyone who engaged with that edition and refreshes each time you use it, so it’s never a frozen snapshot.

It’s handy for follow-up campaigns (turn everyone who clicked a product announcement into a segment, then send them a discount code), comparing engagement across variants, and building lists around poll responses.

Building a segment around a rolling time window

When you build a segment condition based on when someone last opened or last clicked, you can choose a rolling time window — such as everyone who opened in the last 30 days — instead of a fixed date. A rolling window keeps the segment current on its own: it always means the last 30 days relative to today, so you never have to come back and edit the date as time passes.

Where to find it: which options you see depends on how your account sends.

• Newsletters on the original audience builder: open the newsletter (channel), then go to Audience > Segments > Create segment. Under Profile Fields, add a condition on Last Open Date or Last Click Date, choose an operator (is, before, after, and so on), then switch the value type from Date range to Relative days and enter the number of days.
• Accounts that send through the company audience: you’ll find Last Open Date and Last Click Date under Legacy Profile Fields in the Create segment panel. The rolling “in the last (days)” option isn’t turned on for every account yet, and that panel doesn’t use the Date range and Relative days labels. If you don’t see a rolling option, use a date condition instead, or use the pre-built Smart Engagement-Based Segments.

A few examples of what this makes easy:

• Recently engaged — everyone who opened in the last 30 days, for a high-intent send.
• Slipping away — subscribers who last opened more than 60 days ago, for a re-engagement campaign.
• Active clickers — everyone who clicked a link in the last 90 days, to reward your most engaged readers.

If you’d rather not build the rules yourself, the pre-built Smart Engagement-Based Segments cover the common 30-, 60-, and 90-day opener, clicker, and inactive groups automatically.

Sending to a segment

When you’re ready to schedule, click Preview and schedule. On that step, the Audience dropdown lists all your segments with their latest counts. Pick one, fill out the remaining fields, and click Schedule.

You can assign a segment to a template the same way — the only difference is the final button, which reads Activate template there.

To send to everyone still engaged on the newsletter, pick Everyone but Ghosts from the segment list if your account sends through the company audience — it’s the exact complement of your Ghosts segment, without combining multiple segments by hand. It appears in the scheduling Audience dropdown, not on the Segments tab.

Finding a segment’s ID

Every segment card on the company-wide Audience > Segments tab — a custom segment you built and a built-in one alike — shows its ID as a small chip. Click it to copy the number to your