User Groups

User Groups are categories that you can associate with Users and Pages. They are similar to tags but have some important differences.

User Groups can be used for mailing targeting and analysis. Users who take action on a Page are associated with that Page's Groups(s).

Whether your organization will use tags, user groups, or both will depend on your particular situations and goals. This page is designed to help you choose the best tool for the job, and understand the key differences between tags and user groups.

Both tags and user groups can be added to pages. The only way users can gain tags is to take action on a page that has tags. Users can be added to groups in any of the following ways:

• taking action on a page that has a user group
• on that user's Change User Overview screen
• from an import (using the column group or group_id)
• from a user updater (using the column group or group_id)
• from the REST API

An important feature of tags is that when you change a page's tags, ActionKit will automatically update a user's tags as a result. This process happens behind the scenes automatically. In other words: a user has the tags currently associated with all of the pages they have taken action on. If you change a page's user groups, ActionKit will NOT retroactively update a user's groups. In other words: a user has the groups associated with the pages they have taken action on, at the time they took action on those pages.

Another important distinction between tags and user groups is that users can be removed from groups, but users cannot be directly removed from tags. Users can be removed from groups in any of the following ways:

• on that user's Change User Overview screen
• from an import (using the column group_remove or group_id_remove)
• from a user updater (using the column group_remove or group_id_remove)
• from the REST API

Unlike tags, removing a user group from a page will NOT remove any of those page's action takers from that group. Future action takers will not be added to that group, but ActionKit won't retroactively add/remove users to groups based on a page's current groups.

Similar to tags, user groups can be used to target mailings as well as use reports to analyze performance by groups in the Query Builder.

Feature Comparison: User Groups vs Tags

Feature	Tags	User Groups
Can add users directly		X
Can add to pages	X	X
Can add to mailings	X
Gains membership by taking action on a page with tags/groups	X	X
Retroactively changes membership when a page's tags/groups change	X
Can remove users directly		X
Can be added by import	(only if the import page has tags, and you don't skip action creation)	X
Can be removed by import		X
Can be added/removed by user updater		X
Can be added/removed by REST API		X
Can be used to target mailings	X	X
Can be used for data analysis in reports	X	X