Tags are visual achievements that celebrate your customers’ milestones — like the stamps on a loyalty card or the trophies in a video game. They help you spot patterns at a glance: a customer wearing a “Gold” tag and a “2 Year Customer” tag tells you a story before you even open their profile.
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Why Tags Matter
Tags give you instant context about who your customers are. Instead of digging through order history to figure out if someone is a loyal regular or a brand new buyer, you can see it at a glance — on their profile, in your customer list, on their orders, and even in emails.
This matters because:
- Your packing team knows they’re handling a VIP’s order without looking anything up
- You can spot your most valuable customers in a list of hundreds
- Customers receive a “Tag Earned” email when they hit a milestone, which feels genuinely rewarding
- You can use tags as conditions in Priority Rules to automatically bump VIP orders to the top of the queue
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Before You Start
You’ll need:
- Tracksies HQ installed and activated
- At least one tag channel enabled (we’ll cover how to do that below)
- Some order history in your store — tags are calculated from real customer data, so a brand new store with zero orders won’t have any tags to show yet
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How Tags Work
Tag Channels
Tags are organised into five channels. Each channel measures a different aspect of customer behaviour:
- Commitment — Total number of orders placed. A customer with 10 orders has shown more commitment than one with 2. Example thresholds: 1 order, 5 orders, 10 orders, 25 orders.
- Tenure — How long someone has been your customer, measured in months since their first order. Example thresholds: 6 months, 12 months, 24 months.
- Value — Lifetime spend across all their orders. This is the total dollar amount they’ve spent with you. Example thresholds: $100, $500, $1,000, $5,000.
- Price Sensitivity — The percentage of their orders that used a discount code. A customer who uses coupons on 80% of their orders behaves differently from one who never uses them. Example thresholds: 25%, 50%, 75%.
- Engagement — How recently they last ordered, measured in days since their most recent purchase. This one works a bit differently from the others: a lower number is better. A customer who ordered 3 days ago is more engaged than one who ordered 90 days ago. So your thresholds go from high (less engaged) to low (most engaged).
Each channel can be turned on or off independently, so you only use the ones that make sense for your business.
One Tag Per Channel
Here’s how the system decides which tag a customer gets: within each channel, it finds all the tags whose thresholds the customer has met, then awards the highest one.
So if your Value channel has tags at $100, $500, and $1,000, and a customer has spent $750 total, they’ll wear the $500 tag — because they’ve passed that threshold but haven’t reached $1,000 yet. They won’t show both the $100 and $500 tags; it’s always the single highest one they qualify for.
The result: each customer can have up to five tags total — one from each enabled channel.
When Tags Are Calculated
Tags are recalculated automatically whenever a customer’s data syncs (this happens after orders are placed and processed — you don’t need to do anything). The system fires a tracksies_customer_synced hook, and tags update from there.
If you want to force a recalculation — say, after importing historical orders or changing your thresholds — head to the Customers page and click the Recalculate button. This processes customers in batches of 100 at a time.
When a customer earns a brand new tag, Tracksies fires a tracksies_tag_earned hook, which triggers a Tag Earned email to that customer (if you have that email enabled in your email settings).
Tags vs Manual Flags
You might notice there’s also a Flags feature (hq.tags.flags) that lets you manually mark customers as VIP, Caution, or Banned. These are different from tags — flags are manual labels you apply yourself, while tags are automatic achievements based on data. They work alongside each other.
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Setting Up Your Tags
Step 1: Enable Tag Channels
- In your WordPress admin, go to Tracksies in the left sidebar, then click Settings
- Click the Features tab at the top of the settings page
- Find the HQ section and look for the tag toggles. Each channel has its own feature flag:
– Commitment Tags (hq.tags.commitment)
– Tenure Tags (hq.tags.tenure)
– Value Tags (hq.tags.value)
– Price Sensitivity Tags (hq.tags.price_sensitivity)
– Engagement Tags (hq.tags.engagement)
– Manual Flags (hq.tags.flags) — for VIP/Caution/Banned labels
- Toggle on the channels you want to use. You don’t need all five — pick the ones that matter for your business
Step 2: Configure Tag Thresholds
- Go to Tracksies > Settings and click the Tags tab at the top
- You’ll see each enabled channel listed with its own table of tag rows
- Click the Add Tag button at the bottom of a channel’s section to create a new tag tier
- For each tag, fill in:
– Tag Label — This is the display name your team and customers will see. Make it feel rewarding: “Loyal Legend” is more fun than “Tier 3”. “Gold Member” tells a better story than “Level 2”.
– Threshold Value — The number a customer needs to reach to earn this tag. For Commitment, that’s a number of orders. For Value, it’s a dollar amount. For Tenure, it’s months. For Price Sensitivity, it’s a percentage. For Engagement, it’s days since last order (remember: lower is better for this one).
- Add as many tiers as you’d like within each channel. Most stores do well with 3-5 tiers per channel.
- You can drag tag rows to reorder them within a channel — this controls the display order, which determines how tags are sorted when shown together
- To remove a tag tier you no longer want, click the delete button on that row
- When you’re happy with your thresholds, click Save Tag Thresholds at the bottom of the page
A tip on setting thresholds: Start conservative. It’s much easier to lower thresholds later than to raise them — customers don’t love losing a tag they felt they earned. Look at your top 10% of customers and use their numbers as your highest tier. Aim for roughly 5-10% of customers qualifying for your top tag.
Step 3: Customise Tag Appearance
Every tag can have its own icon and colour, so your team can spot different achievement types at a glance. This is optional — tags work with defaults if you skip this step.
- Go to Tracksies > Settings and click the Tags tab
- Find the tag you want to customise
- Each tag row has fields for:
Icon Type
You can choose between two options:
- FontAwesome — Pick from 45+ curated icons sorted into helpful categories: awards (trophies, medals, stars), shopping (cart, bag, gift), time (clock, calendar, hourglass), and status (shield, crown, gem). Click the icon picker to browse through them and select one. The icon class is stored as something like
fa-solid fa-award.
- Image — Upload your own tag graphic. Click to open the WordPress Media Library, where you can select an existing image or upload a new one. The image URL is saved and used wherever the tag appears.
You can toggle between FontAwesome and image independently for each tag — so your “Gold” tag could use a FontAwesome trophy while your “Founding Member” tag uses a custom uploaded logo.
Tag Colour
Click the colour swatch to open the colour picker (it uses WordPress’s built-in wpColorPicker). This sets the background colour of the tag pill. The text colour is calculated automatically for contrast — a dark background gets white text, and a light background gets dark text. You don’t need to worry about readability; Tracksies handles that for you.
- After making your changes, click Save Tag Thresholds at the bottom of the page. Your customisations apply everywhere the tag appears.
If you don’t set a custom colour or icon, tags use sensible defaults based on their channel.
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Where Tags Appear
Once a customer earns tags, you’ll see them in several places:
- Customer profile sidebar — Shown in full mode with both the icon and the label. This gives you the complete picture of who this customer is.
- Customer list view — A dedicated Tags column shows tags in compact mode (icon only) so you can scan through hundreds of customers quickly.
- Order edit screen — Tags appear in the Intel Panel (if you have it enabled), so your team can see who placed the order without leaving the screen.
- Tag Earned email — When a customer earns a new tag, they can receive a celebratory email. This is a great moment to make them feel valued.
Display modes explained:
- Compact mode (icon only) is used in list views and orders where space is tight
- Full mode (icon + label) is used on profile pages where there’s room for detail
- Tooltips show everywhere: hover over any tag to see its label and the metric that earned it (for example, “Gold – 10 orders” or “Loyal – $1,234.56”)
Tag data is stored directly on each customer record, so it’s fast to display — no extra database queries needed when showing tags.
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Common Questions
Can I manually award a tag?
No — tags are automatic, based on the thresholds you’ve configured. This keeps things fair and consistent. If you want to recognise a customer manually, use the Flags feature instead (VIP, Caution, Banned) — those are designed for manual labels.
Can a customer lose a tag?
No. Once a tag is earned, it stays on the customer’s profile permanently. Even if their metrics change later (say, a refund lowers their lifetime value below a threshold), the tag persists. Think of it like a degree — you earned it, it’s yours.
What happens if I change a tag threshold after customers have already earned it?
Tags are recalculated when customer data syncs. If you lower a threshold, more customers will earn the tag on their next sync. If you raise it, customers who already earned it keep it, but new customers will need to meet the higher bar. You can also hit the Recalculate button on the Customers page to force a fresh calculation across all customers (100 at a time).
Do tags affect anything else in the system?
Yes — tags can be used as conditions in Priority Rules. For example, you could create a rule that says “if a customer has the Big Spender tag, set their order priority to High”. This means your most valuable customers get their orders packed first.
How many tags can a customer have?
Up to one per enabled channel. If you have all five channels enabled, a customer could have up to five tags at once. Plus any manual flags you’ve applied.
What’s the difference between tags and statuses?
Statuses (Active, VIP, At Risk, Churned) describe a customer’s current relationship with your store — they can change as behaviour changes, and a customer can only have one at a time. Tags describe what they’ve achieved — they accumulate over time and never go away. If statuses are like a job title, tags are like the certificates on the wall.
Can I use different icons for different tiers in the same channel?
Absolutely. Each tag row has its own icon and colour settings, so your “Bronze” tag could be a medal icon in brown, your “Silver” could be a star in grey, and your “Gold” could be a trophy in gold. Go wild.
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Troubleshooting
Tags aren’t appearing anywhere
First, check that the tag feature is turned on. Go to Tracksies > Settings > click the Features tab, and look for the tag toggles under the HQ section. If the channel toggles are off, no tags will be calculated or displayed for those channels. Make sure at least one channel is enabled.
A customer should have a tag but doesn’t
The most likely cause is that the customer’s data hasn’t synced recently. Tracksies calculates tags after orders sync to customer profiles. If you’ve had recent orders, give it a moment to process. You can also go to the Customers page and click the Recalculate button to force a fresh tag calculation. This processes 100 customers at a time, so for larger stores you may need to click it a few times.
Tag colours aren’t showing
Try clearing your browser cache first — sometimes cached CSS prevents new colours from appearing. If that doesn’t help, go back to Tracksies > Settings > click the Tags tab and make sure you clicked Save Tag Thresholds after setting the colour. Changes don’t take effect until you save.
Custom icon isn’t appearing
If you uploaded a custom image but it’s not showing, check that the image is still in your Media Library. Go to Media > Library in your WordPress admin and confirm the image is there. If someone deleted it from the Media Library after you set it as a tag icon, the tag will fall back to the default channel icon. Re-upload the image and select it again.
If you chose a FontAwesome icon and it’s not showing, make sure FontAwesome is loading on your site. Tracksies includes it, but if another plugin or your theme is blocking external font loading, icons might not render.
Tag channel shows as disabled
Individual tag channels are toggled from Tracksies > Settings > click the Features tab. Look for the specific channel (Commitment, Value, Tenure, Price Sensitivity, or Engagement) and make sure its toggle is turned on.
Engagement tags seem backwards
That’s by design. The Engagement channel measures days since last order, and lower is better — a customer who ordered 3 days ago is more engaged than one who ordered 90 days ago. So when setting thresholds, your “best” engagement tag should have the lowest number. For example: 7 days = “Super Active”, 30 days = “Regular”, 90 days = “Checking In”.
Tags aren’t updating after I changed thresholds
Changing thresholds doesn’t instantly recalculate every customer. Tags update when each customer’s data next syncs (which happens naturally after new orders). To force an immediate recalculation, go to the Customers page and click the Recalculate button. For stores with many customers, you may need to click this several times since it processes 100 at a time.