Overview
Message categories and tags are two ways to label email and SMS messages. Categories are a fixed list that you manage centrally. Tags are free keywords that you enter while you edit a message.
Use categories to evaluate, segment, and automate messages across groups. Use tags to find, filter, and compare messages in Mapp Engage.
Categories or Tags?
Message categories | Tags | |
|---|---|---|
Per message | One category | Up to 100 tags |
Creation | Created in advance under Administration > Categories > Message | Entered while you edit the message |
Available in | Statistics, Segmentation Builder, Whiteboards, exports, placeholders | Message search, message statistics, REST API |
Typical use | Evaluate, segment, and automate messages across groups | Find, filter, and compare messages |
Message Categories
A message category is a label that you assign to an email or SMS message, for example Newsletter, Promotion, or Order Confirmation. Each message can have one category.
Message categories are not tied to a group. This makes them useful when you want to evaluate or automate messages across several groups, for example all newsletters, no matter which group they were sent to.
What You Can Use Message Categories For
Statistics and reports: Message statistics and campaign dashboards show the category of each message, and you can filter by it. Message reports and statistics exports include the category.
Segmentation: In the Segmentation Builder, you can limit the criterion Email Activity to messages of a category, for example contacts who opened a newsletter in the last 30 days. See Email Activity Criteria.
Automation: Whiteboard events and filters can be limited to messages of a category. This lets one Whiteboard react to messages from several groups. See, for example, Reacts to Email Message.
Exports: Raw data exports and simplified data exports contain the category ID and name. You can limit a simplified data export to selected categories. See Raw Data Exports.
Personalization: A placeholder inserts the category name into the message. See Placeholders for Message, Group, and System Data.
Assigning a Category
You assign the category when you create the message:
Email: In the Content step, or in the Configuration step under Advanced Options. A CMS email template can predefine the category.
SMS: In the Configuration step.
After a message has been sent, you cannot change its category. For the steps, see Create and Assign Message Categories.
A group can require a category for every sendout. You set this under Mandatory Fields for Sendout in the sendout options of the group. The requirement applies to group sendouts and split sendouts, but not to group sendouts started by an automation. See Group Creation: Sendout Options.
Managing Categories
You create, edit, and archive message categories under Administration > Categories > Message. See Create and Assign Message Categories and Message Category: Overview.
Tags
A tag is a keyword that you add to an email or SMS message, for example SummerSale or Shoes. You do not create tags in advance: you reuse existing tags or enter new ones while you edit the message.
What You Can Use Tags For
Finding messages: Use tags as search criteria wherever Mapp Engage offers a message search, for example in the Draft Messages overview.
Comparing statistics: Filter the Group Message Statistics and the Single Message Statistics by tag. For example, tag all messages of a summer promotion with SummerSale and compare their performance.
Organizing work: Mark messages by campaign, product line, department, or owner, so that your team finds them quickly.
Integration: Attach, detach, and search tags through the REST API, for example to use the same keywords as an external system. The API also supports tags on groups. See Attach tags and Find entities by tags.
Adding Tags to a Message
You add tags in the Tags field of the message information while you create or edit an email or SMS message, for example in the Content step. Each space starts a new tag, so use single words, for example SummerSale. Commas are not allowed: the field shows an error and the tags are not saved. You can also add tags to drafts and prepared messages.
Whiteboards have their own tags. See Manage Tags in Whiteboards.