Naming Standards in Marketing Automation systems

I spent some time with a prospect yesterday and the topic of the importance of naming campaigns arose;   a rose by any other name would smell as sweet…unless of course it was the name of a campaign, program, list, form, template, folder, offer, import configuration, custom field, report, or dashboard in your new Marketing Automation system.  Didn’t realize that there was so much stuff to name? And if you let your marketing automation users make up any name they want to, and save everything  in the top level folders, you will have a mess on your hands in a year.

When you roll out your new marketing automation system, be sure to roll out a standards document on naming conventions. Here are some tips taken from our client services lead management and lead nurturing best practices documents at Market2lead.

• Unless otherwise specified name everything with the following format

  • <Object-Type>_<Date>_<Tactic  Code>_<Target_Segment>_<Description>
  • Webinar Example: WBN_2008_Nurture_NA_Healthcare_in-house
  • Newsletter Example: NLS_1108_Communications_NA_Federal
  • Use Acronyms where possible. They are hard to enforce initially but help in conserving UI real estate and standardization.
  • Years are shown as yyyy as in 2008
  • Month/year is shown as mmyy as in 0308
  • Quarters are shown QNYY as in Q308
  • Year, month, date as yyyymmdd as in 20080731
  • Not all items will have a region and market segment
  • Many Marketing Automation Systems will let you sort assets alphabetically so think about what that first word should be!
  • Capitalize the first letter of each unique word
  • Never use spaces – use underscore to separate items
  • Campaign type should match the CRM picklist for “lead source” exactly

• Try to name related items the same way. For instance a single marketing campaign may have multiple programs related to it that all should have similar names. A single webinar campaign might have:

1. A webinar registration form, email invitation, email reminder

2. Email sorry we missed you, email thank you for attending
3. A follow up survey, and several unique  invitation lists (production, seed, test)

• For campaigns organize folders by geography first. Within these folders organize content by year first and then by campaign type under that.

• For lists the top level folder should be the list type (production, seed, test, exclusion etc
  • The next level down is ideally the program or campaign type

• For forms make the top level folder the form type – inquiry, download, free trial, PPC, etc

• For custom fields added to contact or account records put a suffix on the name that tells you instantly if that field is one that syncs over to your CRM.
• Name reports in a way that captures some of the business rules inherent in creating the report
  • NA_Free_Trial-_Registration_Q308_Box_Cutter_Software 
• Create archive folders for assets and programs that are no longer active

If you create and enforce the standards, it will be a whole lot easier to find things a year from now!

-Kevin

Comments

[Nicole Mossinger]

I could not agree more with the importance of creating naming standards.

When using dates in campaign, program, or other names, there is an advantage to putting the year first:

If you ever have to do an alphanumeric sort by date (e.g. in your reports), putting the year first will return things like:

CMP_2008-06_some_campaign
CMP_2009-03_another_campaign
CMP_2009-06_yet_another_campaign
CMP_2009-11_last_campaign

If you have the month before the year, the alphanumeric sort will return the following:

CMP_03-2009_another_campaign
CMP_06-2008_some_campaign
CMP_06-2009_yet_another_campaign
CMP_11-2009_last_campaign

Note how the 2008 campaign got mixed in with the 2009 campaigns.

If you have lots of campaigns or programs, this can get really confusing.

I know that putting the year first is counter-intuitive to many of us, but the functional advantages speak for themselves.