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Kit’s power as an email platform comes directly from its tagging system. Rather than maintaining separate lists for different audience subgroups — a practice that causes duplicate billing, management headaches, and messy automations in other tools — Kit uses a single subscriber list enriched with tags. The right tag architecture lets you send precisely targeted emails while keeping your list management clean and coherent.
Start with a simple tagging taxonomy: source, interest, and status. Don’t over-engineer it at first — add complexity only when you have a real need for it. A tag system you actually use is infinitely more valuable than an elaborate one you can’t maintain.

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Tags vs. Segments

Tags and segments work together but serve different purposes:
  • Tags are labels applied to individual subscribers. They can be added manually, automatically via form sign-up, via automation rules, or via click triggers in emails. A subscriber can have any number of tags. Examples: customer, webinar-attendee-2024, interested-in-course, source: podcast.
  • Segments are dynamic filters that combine tags, form sign-up data, location, and subscriber activity into a reusable group. A segment doesn’t store subscribers — it queries your list in real time. Every time you use a segment, Kit recalculates which subscribers currently match the criteria.
The key difference: a tag is a persistent attribute on a subscriber. A segment is a query that finds subscribers with certain combinations of tags and properties.

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Why Tagging Matters

When every subscriber on your list is tagged correctly, you can:
  • Send a sales email only to subscribers who haven’t already bought
  • Announce a new podcast episode only to subscribers who came from your podcast audience
  • Re-engage cold subscribers without bothering active ones
  • Trigger different sequences based on which lead magnet someone downloaded
  • Exclude people mid-launch who already purchased on day one
Without tags, every broadcast goes to everyone, and “everyone” is too blunt an instrument for anything more sophisticated than a simple newsletter. Tagging is what turns Kit from a basic email tool into a real audience operating system.

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The Tagging Taxonomy to Set Up From Day One

Use these four tag categories as your foundation. Name your tags consistently — a naming convention like category: value (e.g., source: podcast) makes your tag list scannable and prevents duplicates.
Tag CategoryExamplesHow It Gets AppliedHow It Gets Used
Source tagssource: podcast, source: blog, source: twitter, source: referral-partnerApplied at the form level — each opt-in form adds the relevant source tagFilter broadcasts to audience segments by where they came from; track which channels drive the most subscribers
Interest tagsinterest: copywriting, interest: productivity, interest: course-topic-xApplied via click triggers in emails, via form choice fields, or via automation when subscriber visits certain pagesSend highly relevant content to people who’ve expressed a specific interest; avoid sending irrelevant emails to uninterested subscribers
Status tagscustomer, free-user, trial, churned, vipApplied via Kit Commerce on purchase, or manually/via automation at key lifecycle momentsExclude customer from sales emails for products they’ve already bought; send exclusive content to vip subscribers
Activity tagsclicked: sales-page, attended: webinar-jan, completed: onboarding, no-opens-90dApplied via email click triggers, automation conditions, or third-party integrationsRetarget engaged subscribers; re-engage cold ones; branch automations based on behaviour

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How to Apply Tags

Kit gives you multiple ways to tag subscribers, and the right method depends on your use case: On form sign-up — the most common method. Go to your form’s settings and add a tag under Add a tag. Every subscriber who signs up through that form automatically receives the tag. This is how you implement source tags. Via import — when importing a CSV, you’re prompted to apply tags to the entire batch. Always apply at least a source tag during import. Manually on a subscriber’s profile — go to Subscribers, find the subscriber, and add or remove tags on their profile page. Useful for individual adjustments. Via email click triggers — in any broadcast or sequence email, you can attach a tag action to a link. When a subscriber clicks that link, Kit automatically applies the tag. This is how you build interest tags from real behaviour — someone clicks “I’m interested in the advanced course” and gets tagged accordingly. Via automations — in Kit’s visual automation builder, you can apply and remove tags as part of a workflow. Tags can be conditional (apply tag X if subscriber has tag Y and opened email Z). Via Kit Commerce — when a subscriber purchases a product through Kit Commerce, you can configure Kit to automatically apply a customer tag and trigger a post-purchase sequence.

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Creating Segments

A segment is a reusable filter you save for repeated use. You can send a broadcast to a segment, trigger an automation when a subscriber enters a segment, or just use a segment to understand a slice of your audience. To create a segment:
  1. Go to Subscribers → Segments and click New Segment
  2. Add conditions using the condition builder — conditions can include tags (has / does not have), form (subscribed via), location, custom fields, and activity (opened email in last X days)
  3. Combine conditions with AND/OR logic — AND narrows the segment; OR broadens it
  4. Name your segment clearly (e.g., “Customers — last 90 days” or “Podcast subscribers — not yet customers”)
  5. Click Save to store it for future use
Example segment: subscribers tagged source: podcast AND interest: course-topic-x AND NOT tagged customer — this is your warm, interested, non-customer podcast audience, which is exactly the right group for a targeted course promotion.
Segments in Kit are dynamic — they update automatically as subscribers gain or lose tags, ensuring your send list is always current. A segment called “Active non-customers” will always reflect today’s reality, not a static snapshot from when you created it.

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Using Click-Triggered Tags in Broadcasts

One of Kit’s most powerful and underused features is the ability to tag subscribers based on which links they click in your emails. In any broadcast or sequence email, select the link you want to make a trigger, and add a Click trigger action — choose which tag to apply when someone clicks. Use this to:
  • Segment your audience by content interest (different links go to different topics)
  • Identify your most engaged subscribers (anyone who clicks a “I’m interested” link)
  • Qualify subscribers for a pitch (anyone who clicks to read your sales page gets tagged, then enters a follow-up sequence)

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Tag-Based Exclusions

Exclusions are just as important as inclusions. Before sending any sales email, set up exclusions to remove subscribers who already own what you’re selling. In the broadcast recipient settings, use Does not have tag: customer (or a product-specific tag like customer: course-name) to ensure existing customers never receive a pitch for something they’ve already bought. Good exclusion hygiene also means excluding cold subscribers — people who haven’t opened any email in 90+ days — from important launch sequences, where high engagement rates matter most for deliverability.

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Keeping Your Tag System Clean

Tags accumulate over time. Without maintenance, your tag list becomes cluttered with one-off event tags, abandoned experiments, and duplicate variants (podcast-listener, from-podcast, source: podcast). Run a tag audit every quarter:
  • Merge duplicate tags — pick a canonical name and re-apply it, then delete the duplicates
  • Archive event-specific tags — tags like attended: webinar-march-2023 are useful for a few months, then can be archived or deleted
  • Document your taxonomy — keep a simple spreadsheet or Notion page listing each active tag, its purpose, and how it gets applied. This is invaluable as your team grows or when you return to Kit after time away.
Consistent naming (using the category: value format) prevents most duplication problems before they start.