Bento gives you two main tools for storing information about your subscribers: tags and custom fields.
Knowing when to reach for which is one of those things that'll save you a ton of headaches later when your automations start getting complex.
So let's cover what each one is, how to decide between them, and a couple power features. Then you'll set up some test data we'll use for targeting practice in the upcoming lessons.
For the full reference on both concepts, see the Tags and Fields pages in the Bento docs.
Tags
A tag is a simple binary label you attach to a subscriber. They either have it, or they don't. You can't have the same tag twice on the same person.
Tags are great for categorical things: marking what someone has done, where they came from, or what group they belong to.
Common patterns I use:
Flag – Customer – ProductNameEmail Course – Whatever – Lesson 1 CompletedEvent – Webinar – July 2026 Attended
Tags are created automatically the first time you use them. You don't need to define them in advance.
This makes imports and API integrations easy, but be careful not to accidentally create hundreds of tags via typos.
(Because of this, I personally DO prefer to create my tags in advance, so I can just copy and paste them exactly as they're stored.)
You can add and remove tags manually from a subscriber's profile, through Flows, via the API, or during CSV imports. You'll know how to do all of these by the end of the training.
My naming advice: Pick a consistent convention and stick with it. I namespace mine with dashes as separators, going from broad category to specific: Category – Sub-Category – Specific State. Friendly readable text, not kebab-case slug formatting.
I like this because it makes your tag list scannable when you have hundreds of them, and they sort and group themselves naturally.
But that said, you can do whatever you find intuitive and helps you stay organized.
Custom Fields
A custom field is a key-value pair on a subscriber.
The key is the field name; the value is whatever data you want to store.
Unlike tags, fields hold a specific value: text, a number, a date, or a boolean (true/false).
Setting a new value overwrites the previous one.
Bento has a few built-in fields (email, first_name, last_name).
Everything else is a custom field you create. Like tags, they're created automatically the first time you set one on a subscriber.
Common patterns:
onboarding_status: "onboarded"plan_type: "enterprise"last_purchase_date: "2025-06-15"some_numeric_value: 2500
Gotcha: Field names are case-sensitive. Company and company are treated as two different fields.
I recommend all lowercase with underscores and being consistent about it.
Fields are also what power personalization in your emails via the "Liquid" code/templating language (more on this later):
Hey {{ visitor.first_name | default: "there" }}, Your current plan is {{ visitor.plan_type }}.
We'll cover Liquid in depth in the How To Use Liquid In Bento For Epic Power lesson. For now just know that fields are where the data lives that Liquid pulls from.
When To Use A Tag vs. A Field
This is the decision that trips people up most. Here's the framework I use:
Ask yourself: "For this piece of data, can the subscriber be multiple values at once?"
-
NO (mutually exclusive states) → Use a field.
- Example:
onboarding_status= "onboarded" or "not_onboarded." They can only be one at a time. - Example:
plan_type= "free", "pro", or "enterprise." They're only on one plan.- (If they CAN be on multiple plans at once, generally DO NOT use fields; go for tags instead)
- Example:
-
YES (accumulating attributes) → Use tags.
- Example: Products purchased. Someone can buy Product A, then later buy Product B. Each purchase gets its own tag:
Purchased – Product A,Purchased – Product B. - Example: Webinars attended. They can attend many; each one gets a tag.
- Example: Products purchased. Someone can buy Product A, then later buy Product B. Each purchase gets its own tag:
The counting edge case:
Tags can only exist on a subscriber once. So if you need to know how many times something happened (not just whether it happened), tags alone won't cut it.
The simplest approach that doesn't require Liquid: create a separate numeric field for each thing you're counting, then increment it in a Flow.
(Flows even have incrementor actions to make this easy. This will be a breeze for you once through the Events & Flows Overview lesson)
product_a_purchases: 3product_b_purchases: 1
There are fancier approaches using comma-separated field values and Liquid parsing, but those add complexity.
We'll cover that in the Liquid lesson if you need it. For most people, separate counter fields work great.
Rule of thumb: If it's a state, use a field. If it's a badge or flag or thing they did, use a tag.
Auto-Decaying Tags
This is a newer feature Jesse added that I haven't used much, but is super nifty if you want to keep things simple on the Workflows front.
You can set a tag to automatically remove itself from a subscriber after a certain number of days.
Use cases:
- Promo windows: Tag someone as
Flag – In Promo Windowwhen a sale starts. Set it to decay after 7 days. No need to remember to manually remove it or build a cleanup flow. - Trial periods: Tag someone as
Flag – In Trialon signup. Set decay to 14 days. Build a flow that fires when the tag is removed to trigger your conversion sequence.
You configure this in the tag's settings within Bento.
For my taste, these are a bit too low-visibility & low-control, but alas, I am a nerd with my Bento build-out.
Quick Preview: How This Data Powers Segments
Segments in Bento are dynamic groups that update automatically based on rules you define.
No manual maintenance; when someone meets the criteria, they're in. When they stop meeting it, they're out.
(See Segments in the Bento docs for the full reference.)
We'll build real segments in the Defining Segments & Scheduling Emails lesson. But here's a quick preview of how the data you're setting up becomes useful:
- "onboarding_status equals onboarded" - targets only onboarded users
- "last_purchase_date is within the last 30 days" - targets recent buyers
- "has tag Flag – Enterprise" - targets anyone tagged as an enterprise customer
- "does not have tag Flag – Unsubscribed From Promos" - excludes people who opted out
You can also browse and filter your subscriber list at any time under People in Bento.
Think of it as a quick ad-hoc lookup before you commit to building a full segment.
Action Steps
We're going to set up some test subscribers with specific data that we'll use in the next couple lessons for segmentation and scheduling practice.
1 - Create Three Test Subscribers
Use your own email with the + alias trick:
yourname+bentotraining1@your_google_workspace_website_url.comyourname+bentotraining2@your_google_workspace_website_url.comyourname+bentotraining3@your_google_workspace_website_url.com
e.g. Jesse could do this for his jesse@bentonow.com address:
jesse+bentotraining1@bentonow.comjesse+bentotraining2@bentonow.comjesse+bentotraining3@bentonow.com
Both will land in your normal inbox, but Bento treats them as separate subscribers.
This gives you real records to experiment with.
2 - Tag The First 2 Subscribers
Add the tag Flag – Customer – MySaaSProduct to test subscribers 1 & 2.
This simulates two users who are both customers of the same product.
3 - Set A Custom Field On Test Subscriber 1
On your first subscriber (+bentotraining1), set the custom field onboarding_status to onboarded.
Leave it unset/empty on your others.
4 - Confirm Your Setup
You should now have:
- Three test subscribers in total
- Two with the
Flag – Customer – MySaaSProducttag - One with
onboarding_status= "onboarded" - One with
onboarding_statusempty
We'll use this data to practice targeting and excluding subscribers in the upcoming lessons.
Next up: we'll create some actual emails in Bento. After that, we'll use segments to target specific subscribers based on exactly this kind of data.