How to build a behavior-based segmentation and tagging system
These prompts are based on the Your Database Isn’t Too Big. Your Segmentation Strategy Is Too Simple. webinar, published on the AI Lab by ActiveCampaign.
Get the quick-start guide
What will I accomplish with this guide? By the end, you’ll have an ActiveCampaign setup that tags contacts automatically based on what they do, routes them into the right segment, and triggers the follow-up emails without anyone clicking send. It’s based on the workflow Don Purdy walked through in this webinar—the same system he runs as a one-person operation for the University at Albany’s MBA for Executives program, where deliverability climbed from roughly 50 percent to over 99 percent.
Before you start, you’ll need:
- An ActiveCampaign account with permission to create forms, tags, segments, and automations
- A list of contact types you actually treat differently in messaging (alumni, prospects, current students, event registrants—whatever fits your business)
- One specific behavior or interest area to anchor your first behavioral segment (an event registration, a content interest, a click on a specific link)
- An email or campaign you’ve sent to your full list recently, so you have a baseline to test against
Quick reference
- Total time: 60–90 minutes for your first segment, tag set, and automation; faster after that as you reuse the pattern
- Tools needed: ActiveCampaign (Forms, Tags, Segments, Automations)
- Key output: A repeatable pattern—one form, one set of behavior-based tags, one segment, one automation—that you can clone for every new interest area
Watch this section
For full context on the following topics, watch these sections of the webinar:
- The deliverability paradox and why bigger lists punish generic sends—[04:38]–[06:53]
- Don’s four frameworks: interest-based tags, life cycle, behavioral triggers, AI optimization—[11:13]–[12:40]
- The 13-segment, 400-tag setup walkthrough—[13:49]–[14:58]
- Form to tag to automation, end to end—[15:34]–[16:42]
The workflow
Phase 1: Audit before you build
After this phase, you’ll have: a written read on where your emails are landing today and which contacts are getting the same content as everybody else.
- Check current deliverability: look at your last three sends and note open rate, spam complaints, and any gaps between contacts who used to engage and contacts who’ve gone quiet.
- Identify your batch-and-blast segment: which group of contacts is currently getting the same email as everyone else despite behaving differently? That’s your first candidate to split.
- Pick the splitting criterion: are these contacts different by who they are (role, life cycle stage) or by what they do (clicks, registrations, opens)? Don’s rule: behavior beats demographics.
- Write the goal: “Send registrants of in-person info sessions a different reminder cadence than people who only opened a general newsletter,” for example. One sentence, one outcome.
The size doesn’t matter if you’re not segmenting well. I was batch-blasting all 1,000 contacts with the same content. Some people opened up everything. Some people opened up nothing. They decided I wasn’t relevant. They started filtering for me aggressively.
Phase 2: Design your tagging structure
After this phase, you’ll have: a small, named set of tags and a single segment that captures the contacts you want to treat differently.
- List the tag categories you actually use: Don tags by industry, life cycle (prospect, student, alum), and event behavior (in-person info session registration, virtual session attendance). Start with three categories, not thirty.
- Create the first behavioral tag in Tags: name it after the action, not the audience. “in-person info session registration” tells you what they did. “interested prospect” doesn’t.
- Build the matching segment: open Lists → Segments and create a saved segment defined by the tag you just made (and any life-cycle tags that narrow it further).
- Resist over-tagging on day one: Don has roughly 400 tags now, but he didn’t start there. Start with 5–10 high-signal tags and let the next behavior you spot tell you the next tag to add.
Phase 3: Connect a form so the tag applies automatically
After this phase, you’ll have: an ActiveCampaign form that adds the right tags the moment a contact submits—no manual tagging.
- Create the form in ActiveCampaign: for an event, that’s a registration form. For a content interest, that’s a download or interest signup.
- Configure the form’s actions to apply the tags on submit: in Don’s example, three tags were added automatically—“in-person info session registration,” “MBA-prospects,” and “prospects.”
- Add a deal-create or deal-update action if you track contacts in a pipeline: Don’s form also creates or updates the deal record when a prospect registers.
- Embed or link the form in the place where the right people will encounter it (a landing page, a nurture email, an event invite).
Phase 4: Build the automation that does the follow-up
After this phase, you’ll have: a one-tag-triggered automation that sends the welcome, the week-out reminder, and the day-of reminder without you in the loop.
- Open Automations and start a new automation with a “Tag is added” trigger using the tag from Phase 2 (e.g., “in-person info session registration”).
- Add the immediate confirmation email: thanking the contact for registering, with the basic event details. Don sends this the moment the tag is applied.
- Add a one-week-out reminder: time-delay node, then send a reminder email written for a contact who already registered (different copy than a general invite).
- Add a 24-hour reminder: another time-delay, then a final reminder with the join link or location details front and center.
- Test the automation end to end: submit the form yourself, watch the tag apply, watch the deal create or update, and confirm each email fires on schedule before you send any traffic to the form.
Phase 5: Refine the segment count by testing, not by planning
After this phase, you’ll have: a working signal for whether the segments you’ve built are doing useful work—or are just noise.
- Run the segment for a full send cycle: pick a campaign that targets only this segment and compare its open and click rates to your historical batch-and-blast baseline.
- Ask the diagnostic question: is the segment changing what you send or how you say it? If not, Don’s call is to collapse it back into a larger group.
- Add the next segment only when behavior justifies it: the right segment count, per Don, is whatever’s driving action—not a planning target. Test, trim, repeat.
- Document the pattern so you can clone it: form → tags → segment → automation is the same shape every time. Write the four nodes down so the next interest area takes 20 minutes, not two hours.
The right number is whatever’s driving action. If the segment isn’t changing what you send or how you say it, it’s just noise. We didn’t land on a number by planning, we landed on it by testing and trimming.
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