Before you start digging in, it’s important to understand what behavioral targeting and tags are, how they differ from each other, and how you can best put them to work.
Behavioral Targeting
The events endpoint within Mailchimp's API lets you capture the in-app activity of your contacts, which lets you unlock the power of behavioral targeting. When you leverage behavioral targeting, you can create personalization at scale based on what your customers are doing—or not doing—at specific dates and times. It’s the best way to turn the activity data from your app into marketing actions quickly, in ways that are most meaningful to your audience. And best of all? Mailchimp’s API gives you endless customization options.
Here are some examples of behavioral targeting you might consider capturing:
- Downloaded an application
- Installed an application
- Completed registration or signup
- Started free trial
- Completed first in-app action
- Started paid subscription
- Upgraded to next subscription tier
Whereas behaviors let you know what happened or didn’t happen, tags are attributes of people in your audience. For example: a customer might be a “premium user” (tag), and you can track when they “upgrade to premium” (behavior). Mailchimp customer Roadie, for example, uses tagging through Mailchimp’s API to create and send personalized, automated messages to the people and businesses that use their services.
“Rather than manually uploading or inputting audience data, we're using the Mailchimp API to bring in user information that we can act on,” says Content Manager Jamie Gottlieb. “The Mailchimp API has been crucial in being able for us to scale that as a company.”
Tags can tell you who your audience is and unlock a more granular view of it. Here are some useful examples of tags:
- Membership level
- Job title
- Type of user
- Sign-up source
- Type of service
Perhaps best of all, behavioral targeting and tags can work together to paint a more complete picture of who your contacts are and how you should market to them.
How to set yourself up for success
Now that you understand the difference between behavioral targeting and tags, let’s look at how to incorporate them into your marketing strategy. If you strategize beforehand and work closely with a developer, you’ll be able to make the most of your data.
Step 1: Identify your most actionable data elements
Before you start putting these tools to work, think about what information you want to capture and how you’ll use it in your marketing. For example, knowing how your customers joined your audience is a critical piece of data that can help you market smarter. With tags automatically applied to your landing pages, you can track sign-up sources for future use in your personalized marketing.
We also provide automatic tags through a number of integrations:
As you build out your strategy, put together a wish list of important actions your users take that would be helpful for your marketing.
Step 2: Work with a developer to automate tag and behavioral data collection
Mailchimp’s powerful API lets you customize behaviors and tags. Once you know what you are going to track, you need to get your integration built so you can start tracking in Mailchimp. This is a great way to take your personalized marketing to the next level. Talk to a developer about the possibilities based on the wish list you put together while strategizing. Don’t have a developer? Our experts directory can help.
Step 3: Launch personalized marketing that grows with your business
Now that you’re pulling in loads of data, you need to figure out how to best put it to use. Tags and behaviors can both deliver triggered messages on behalf of your organization, which saves you time and increases the ROI of your marketing.
Once you start tagging contacts, you’ll see your most commonly used tags on your audience dashboard, so you can start sending targeted campaigns to these segments with just a few clicks. You can even trigger automations based on tags to instantly follow up with a targeted message as soon as a tag is applied.
You can also segment based on behavioral and tagging data, sending targeted messages based on what you learn. And once you get the hang of it, try saving time by automating follow-up messaging based on significant tags or behaviors that often occur.
Unlocking the possibilities
At the end of the day, more data means more personalized marketing and better targeting. Your audience data is the most valuable tool you have for improving your marketing and growing your business. Get started with tags and behavioral targeting today to unlock the possibilities.
Ready to put these words into action? Share our guide with your developer.
