Neither should be confused with Aampe Labels. Topics help you organize Message Groups according to a shared theme, user journey stage, product feature, or content-map category. Composer has a dedicated Topic Management area where you can create Topics, view related Message Groups, add or remove Message Groups, and edit Topic names or descriptions. The important difference is that Topics are managed content groups, while Tags are filterable markers. Examples:
Tags are organizational markers that help teams filter, isolate, or report on sets of Message Groups. A Message Group can have multiple Tags. Tags are useful for sorting and filtering, but they do not provide the same managed grouping experience as Topics.
Examples:
Important: Tags are not Labels. Tags are organizational markers. Labels are a separate Aampe concept and should not be used as another word for Tags.
The Short Rule
Use Topics when you want a clear, managed way to group Message Groups by content area. Use Tags when you need filterable markers across Message Groups, especially for reporting, operational review, team ownership, country, language, or vertical. If you are creating a durable content structure from scratch, start with Topics.Key Differences
Why This Matters
Topics and Tags can both help organize content, but they answer different questions. Topics answer:“What content area does this Message Group belong to?”Tags answer:
“What marker do I need to filter or identify this Message Group by?”Tags were being used heavily before Topics because customers needed some way to sort and isolate content. For example, teams used Tags for countries, teams, verticals, languages, or reporting views. That is useful, but Tags are open-ended and can become inconsistent quickly. Topics were introduced because Tags did not give customers a meaningful way to understand how many Message Groups existed against a content map, theme, product feature, or customer journey stage.
When to Use Topics
Use Topics when the grouping should be durable and visible as part of your content strategy. Good Topic use cases:
Topics are especially useful when your team wants to answer:
When to Use Tags
Use Tags when you need a filterable marker, not a managed content group. Good Tag use cases:
Tags are useful when a Message Group needs multiple markers at the same time. For example, a Message Group could be tagged with a country, vertical, and cleanup status.
Use Tags carefully because the tag list itself is not yet easy to manage. If teams create similar Tags such as Promo, Promotion, Discount, and Discounts, the account becomes harder to filter and audit.
How to Decide
Use this decision table when setting up or cleaning up content.Examples
Example 1: Premium Plan
A subscription app has many Message Groups about its paid plan. Some are onboarding nudges, some are upgrade prompts, and some explain premium features. Use a Topic for the durable content area:
Use Tags only for filterable markers:
The Topic shows that the Message Group belongs to the Premium Plan content area. The Tags help the team filter by language, ownership, or operational status.
Example 2: Country or Team Organization
A regional customer has multiple teams or countries managing content. They may need to isolate content by country in result pages or message overview pages. Use Tags for those markers:
Do not use separate Topics for every country unless country is the actual content strategy. If the content strategy is about user journeys or product features, keep those as Topics and use country as a Tag.
Example 3: Product Vertical
A customer wants to see sends for a particular vertical, such as podcast content or grocery content. If the vertical is a durable product/content area, it may be a Topic:
If the vertical is mainly needed for filtering or reporting across several Topics, use it as a Tag:
When in doubt, ask: “Do we need to manage this as a content group, or just filter by it?”
Example 4: Same Message Across Languages
If the same Message Group exists across several languages, do not rely only on Tags to make that structure understandable. Use a Topic for the content theme:
Use Tags for the language markers:
This makes the content theme visible while still allowing language-level filtering.