Naming convention can keep your account organized and allow you to quickly filter and identify your items. Naming convention is simply an agreement on how to name things.
In this article, we'll go through tips on why and how you can start working with naming conventions.
Today, many people work in several different systems. This means that we have data in several different places, and the data is only growing.
It is both documents and presentations in tools such as Google drive and Onedrive. But also E-mail templates, lists and landing pages in Marketing Automation systems.
It sometimes feels like you're creating a folder within a folder within a folder within a folder.
It's easy for all the data to become disorganized, leading to unnecessary stress and time-consuming searches.
Sometimes you need to create a new version of a file or email template. How can you keep track of the latest version if the naming is not well thought out?
The problem becomes even bigger when several people in the team need to work with the same files/objects. When someone in the team is looking for a file, they don't know where to start looking and it can take a very long time and lead to confusion and maybe even irritation.
Often when we get access to a new Marketing Automation system, we see that the naming is not well thought out. The solution is simple: Start working with naming conventions!
Review your current structure. For a naming convention to work, everyone working with it needs to follow it and be consistent.
Naming conventions should be simple, describe the content and leave no room for guesswork.
Use as few abbreviations and codes as possible. Also make sure you use understandable and descriptive words.
Here are some tips:
Start with simple format rules such as Phone number: +46 76 738478437 should be only one number per field and only digits. Many systems and/or integrations have a call function. In order for automatic dialing to work, the number must be formatted according to common standards.
Determine a date format, e.g. YYYYMMDD
Do not use information in the name that is already clearly available in the system. E.g. assets of type "List" do not need to be included in the name
For the naming of e.g. companies, decide which source(s) is/are the "asset". If necessary, add a field for e.g. Informal Company Name to simplify searches. The difference between a company's actual name and what most people think the company is called can be significant. This is a common challenge and reason why people do not find the company they are looking for and therefore create duplicates.
Decide how, for example, middle names should be handled, as part of the first name, surname or as a separate field. For example, how should you handle John Junior Johnson? How should you handle those who actually have it as part of their name, which is very common in many parts of the world. You cannot then communicate with them as just John, or Junior Johnson.
When numbering, use sequential numbering, 01, instead of 1.
It is probably important to have slightly different naming conventions for different parts of the business, CRM, Promotions, Company Name etc.
Perhaps the most important thing when implementing and working with naming conventions is to be consistent. It is important that you and everyone in your organization stick to the rules you have set. As soon as it becomes inconsistent, the whole structure fails.
Make sure to document your rules and also make sure that everyone in your organization has access to the document.
But it's not enough just to give them the document, you need to train everyone in the new way of naming things.
Without a proper briefing and a documented basis, confusion will arise and naming will soon become inconsistent.
The structure of your naming convention is entirely up to you and how your company works.
Here are some common naming convention blocks:
Date
This can be very useful for timed promotions, webinars and events.
Topic/offer
What is the topic? What offer is this? Using a topic can be very clear in many cases. We recommend you to make a list of topics/offers to stick to.
Country, region or city
When marketing in different countries, location can be a block you want to use in your naming convention. This can also be developed and made even clearer by adding the language used. However, it is important not to complicate things unnecessarily. If all communication in Sweden is sent only in Swedish, you do not need to specify both country and language.
Channel
Do you use several different channels? Then this can be helpful for you. Here too, our recommendation is that you draw up a list and decide at what level you want to distinguish between the channels. For example, whether "Social" can be a channel or needs to be broken down into specific channels such as Linkedin, Instagram, Facebook, etc.
Type
What type of material is it? For example, it could be a report, a white paper, use case or contract.
Product/Service
Usually companies have more than one product/service. To make it clear which service area it concerns, you can use such a block.
Segment type
Here you can specify the type of segment. For example, it could be newsletter subscribers, people with the title category management or people living in Stockholm. This type is perhaps the most common to use when creating lists and segments, but can also be useful in automations and E-mail.
Action
What action have the people performed. For example, it can be everyone who has bought a certain product, clicked in an e-mail or visited the website. This is also common when building segments and lists, but can also be used in, for example, Marketing Automation flows.
Department
Do you work in a large company with different departments? To easily filter on only your department's items, you can use the department name in your naming convention.
It is also important when setting up your naming convention strategy to consider how you want to divide different blocks. See three examples below:
location type channel
location_type_channel
location_type_channel
On option 1, it is difficult to see when a word starts and ends. This is easy to determine on options 2 and 3. However, in reality it is often more complicated than these examples and there may be blocks containing more than one word. We therefore recommend the following:
To understand when a block starts and ends, we recommend using underscores ( _ ). We also recommend that if a block has more than one word that you use hyphens ( - )
See example:
Sweden_Webinar-Importance-of-having-a-good-naming-convention_Facebook
Naming convention is an agreement on how to name objects. The goal of naming convention is to make it easy to access data and objects when you need it. How you name different objects is entirely up to you but there are some guidelines.
Keep it simple.
Be consistent and make sure everyone in your organization is on board.
Document your agreements.
Use underscores to separate different blocks and hyphens to separate different words in a block.