A tag in Sheep is like a sticky note that we add to a contact. Tags are used to segment people into groups where we don't have a field that does the job. For example you don't need a tag for people that live in the North East of England because there is a field english_region which is automatically set for anyone with a UK address.
If you ran a quiz about Elmer and collected the results (GDPR permitting) then you might want to tag all the entrants elmer. You could then combine the tag with another search term to determine the proportion of Elmer entrants in the North East vs the rest of the country.
That's great, then your fundraising team decide to create a segment for everyone who donated as part of the Elmer exhibit. Without talking to you they also use the elmer tags and then you've got a problem.
How you use tags is up to you - there is no right answer but the following will help:
use the auto-complete to reuse existing tags and get the spelling / phrasing
avoid spaces, use underscores
_prefix your tags with you initials, name, department or purpose e.g.
jw_elmer,marketing_elmeruse tmp_ as a prefix for tags that are temporary (and remember to cleanup when you've finished with them)
append a date where appropriate e.g.
elmer_2019so that you can useelmer_2020next yearuse emojis to communicate efficiently e.g.
💰elmer(Mailchimp doesn't support emoji tags so they won't show in Mailchimp)be intentional, when planning a project. Agree in advance how will want the data segmented and agree the tag names.
There is no limit on the number or length of tags that you use. The tags section will get a bit messy if you have dozens but nothing will break.