Stop Tagging Everything. Seriously.

A love letter to the delete button, and a plea for a bit more system in your tagging chaos.

I open a lot of GoHighLevel accounts. And other email marketing platforms too. And I'll be honest with you. What I find in there sometimes makes me want to lie down in a dark room.

Not because people are doing something terrible. But because they've been tagging. Everything. Constantly. With great enthusiasm and absolutely no system.

I've seen accounts with 300+ tags. Tags like #interested-maybe #followup2022 #warmish #not-this-one and my personal favourite: #tag1. Nobody knows what these mean anymore. Not the business owner. Certainly not their VA. And definitely not the automation that's now misfiring because three of those tags overlap and nobody actually noticed.

So let's talk about it.

Why Does This Happen?

I want to be clear: the impulse behind tag chaos is a good one. You want to track things. You want to know who's who, what they've done, where they are in your world. That's smart.

The problem is that tags feel like the easy answer in the moment. Someone opts in? Tag them. They clicked a link? Tag them. They opened three emails in a row? Tag them. They breathed near your funnel? You'd better believe there's a tag for that.

And it works. For a while. Then the tags multiply. Then you start abbreviating because the list is so long. Then you forget what the abbreviations mean. Then you start a new tag instead of finding the old one. And suddenly you've got 200 tags, six of which mean roughly the same thing, and none of which are doing what you thought they were doing.

The Real Cost of Tag Chaos

Here's the thing about a messy tag list. It's not just untidy. It's actively costing you.

You can't find anything. Searching your own contact list becomes a nightmare when you're not sure which version of the tag you used. Did you tag them #workshop-attendee or #attendedworkshop or #workshop2024? Who knows. Not you.

Your automations start misbehaving. When tags overlap, contacts can end up in multiple sequences at once. They get the wrong email at the wrong time, or they get it twice, or the trigger fires when it absolutely should not. This is the one that really stings. Because it's affecting real people and real relationships.

You slow yourself down on every build. Every time you set up a new automation, you have to go searching through a tag list that's taken on a life of its own. Instead of building, you're 'managing'.

New people (including future you) are completely lost. Hand your account to a VA, bring in a new team member, or come back after a holiday and you will spend a genuinely painful amount of time just trying to understand your own system.

It can muddy your segmentation. When your tags are vague or overlapping, you lose the ability to send the right message to the right person. Which is the whole point.

So What Should You Use Instead?

Tags aren't evil. I want to be clear about that too. They're a genuinely useful tool, when they're used for the right job. The problem is that most people are using them for every job, including several jobs they were never designed for.

Here's a quick breakdown of what to actually use and when:

Notes are perfect for one-off, human context about a contact. Spoke to her at a networking event and she mentioned she's thinking about rebranding? That's a note. It's not actionable in an automated sense, it's just useful information for when you (or someone on your team) is looking at that contact record.

Custom fields are where data lives. If you want to record what package someone is on, where they found you, what industry they're in - that's a custom field. It's permanent, it's structured, and it's searchable. If you're currently using a tag like #package-gold or #joined-via-instagram, you almost certainly want a custom field instead.

Broader segments or smart lists are brilliant for grouping people by who they are and what they've done, without needing a tag for every micro-action. A smart list of "contacts who joined in the last 90 days and haven't booked a call" is infinitely more useful than a tag called #new-no-call that someone has to remember to add and remove manually.

Tags — but done properly — are for temporary, actionable, automation-triggering moments. A tag should do something. If a tag isn't connected to an action, ask yourself what it's actually for.

Rule of Thumb

Before you create a new tag, ask yourself one question:

Is this triggering an automation — or am I just 'filing?'

If it's triggering something: great, the tag has a job. Create it, use it, and ideally remove it once that job is done.

If you're filing? Use a custom field, write a note, or build a smart list. Because a tag that just sits there, attached to 47 contacts, not connected to anything, is just noise. And noise, over time, becomes absolute chaos.

The Good News

If your GHL account (or a.n.other system) is currently looking like a tag graveyard, you're not alone and it's absolutely fixable. It takes a good audit, a solid naming convention, and a clear rule about what tags are actually for in your business.

And if you'd rather not untangle it yourself, that's exactly what I'm here for.