Tags Versus Categories: What’s the Difference?.
Categories group contacts broadly. Tags add more detail. Used together, they make segmentation easier without overcomplicating the database.
Categories and tags both help organise a database, but they do different jobs.
Categories are broader.
A category usually describes the contact’s main relationship with your business.
For example:
Buyer
Seller
Past client
Investor
Appraisal contact
Referrer
These should stay fairly simple.
Tags add detail.
Tags can describe something more specific about the contact.
For example:
Downsizer
First home buyer
Waterfront
Wants off-market
Investor
Relocating
Renovator
Selling in 6 months
A contact may have several tags.
Use them together.
A buyer might sit in the Buyer category and also have tags such as:
Investor
Geelong West
Under $1 million
Renovator
That gives you more ways to search and segment without creating dozens of categories.
Avoid over-tagging.
Too many tags create the same problem as too many categories.
Keep them useful, consistent and easy for the team to understand.
A simple rule.
Use categories to show who the contact is.
Use tags to show what is useful to know about them.
That keeps segmentation simple and makes the database easier to work with.