The Power of Naming Conventions: Why You Can't Afford to Go Without Them

In the fast-paced world of marketing operations, efficiency isn't optional—it's critical. Wasting time searching for old campaigns, misidentifying assets, or, worse, making costly errors due to disorganized systems can seriously hinder your team’s productivity. Without a well-structured naming convention in your Marketo instance, you're not just losing time—you’re losing revenue.

As a marketing operations consultant, I’ve seen firsthand how a lack of naming conventions can cripple efficiency, create confusion across teams, and impact reporting accuracy. Today, we're sharing why a solid naming convention is essential to streamline your operations and how to implement one that works for your unique marketing ecosystem.

Why You Need a Naming Convention

How often have you wasted time hunting for a campaign you swore you created last month? Without a proper naming convention, this frustration becomes a common occurrence. It’s not just about avoiding headaches—an effective naming convention leads to greater clarity, reduces errors, and helps teams work together seamlessly.

Here’s why naming conventions are essential:

• Avoid Costly Errors: A well-established structure helps avoid simple mistakes like creating duplicate campaigns or misidentifying key assets.

• Streamline Collaboration: Multiple users in your Marketo instance? Standardized naming ensures that everyone, from marketing to sales to ops, is on the same page.

• Consistency Across Tools: Whether you're exporting data to Salesforce, PowerBI, or Tableau, a consistent naming structure ensures smoother integration and more accurate reporting.

The Hidden Cost of Disorganization

Even if you’re the sole Marketo user for your company, disorganized naming can be a silent productivity killer. Inconsistent naming conventions lead to cluttered instances, making it nearly impossible to track campaigns by launch date, product, or region. The problem only multiplies as your business scales. Future-proofing your operations starts with a solid foundation today.

How to Build Naming Conventions That Scale

Creating a naming convention isn’t about applying a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s about tailoring a system that reflects your specific business needs, marketing strategies, and growth plans. Your convention should work for the here and now, but it also needs to grow with you.

For instance, if you market to a global audience, include a REGION tag in your naming convention. If your campaigns are tied to specific products or services, make sure that’s reflected in the structure. Here’s a framework you can adapt:

Example Naming Convention:

[YY]-[Product]-[Campaign Code]-[Program Type]-[Campaign Description]-[Region]

• [YY] – The current two-digit year

• [Product] – Your brand, product, or service

• [Campaign Code] – If integrated with a campaign management system, include a campaign code for trackability

• [Program Type] – Reflect the program channel type (e.g., EM = Email Send, ENG = Engagement Program, WB = Webinar)

• [Region] – Tag campaigns by region for global marketing

Take a look at how this naming convention can be utilized in Adobe Marketo Engage for fictitious brands, Diamond and Ruby.

A Closer Look:

24-DIAMOND-EM-ProductLaunch-NA

This simple structure tells you everything you need to know at a glance—this is a 2024 email campaign for the Diamond product targeting North America.

Practical Tips for Implementation

To ensure your naming convention sticks and evolves with your business, follow these steps:

1. Audit Your Current Naming Practices: Start by evaluating how campaigns and assets are named today. Identify patterns and inconsistencies.

2. Define Key Tags: Choose the most important identifiers for your campaigns—whether it's the product, region, year, or channel.

3. Educate Your Team: Once a naming convention is established, train all relevant teams on how to use it. Consider creating a reference document for easy reference.

4. Review Regularly: As your business evolves, so should your naming conventions. Make it a practice to revisit your structure quarterly.

Beyond Programs: Naming Your Assets

Naming conventions shouldn’t stop at the program level. By extending these practices to your assets—emails, landing pages, lists, and forms—you further enhance clarity and reporting accuracy.

Asset Naming Convention Example:

[Asset Type]-[Description]

Asset Type can include the following:

• [EM] – Email

• [LP] – Landing Page

• [FORM] – Web Form

• [LST] – List

Example: EM-ProductLaunch-CTA

This tells you the asset is an email tied to a product launch with a call to action.

Scaling for Collaboration and Efficiency

As you grow, collaboration across teams becomes increasingly important. When exporting data to platforms like PowerBI, Salesforce, or Tableau, a consistent naming structure makes it easier for other teams to understand and analyze your campaigns. This is particularly important for reporting across functions like sales and finance. A clear naming structure supports cross-team collaboration, ensuring everyone has a shared understanding of the data.

Future-Proof Your Marketo Instance

An effective naming convention not only keeps your campaigns organized today but also ensures you’re prepared for future growth. As your marketing initiatives expand and your team evolves, having a scalable naming system in place means you can quickly adapt without falling into chaos.

Ready to Optimize Your Marketo Instance?

If your Marketo or Salesforce Marketing Cloud (Pardot) instance feels cluttered or you’re struggling to maintain consistency across campaigns, Bedrock DigitalOps can help. As experienced marketing operations consultants, we specialize in creating custom solutions that streamline processes, improve collaboration, and drive results.

Let’s work together to implement a tailored naming convention that sets your team up for long-term success. Reach out today for a consultation, and let’s get your marketing operations running more efficiently!

Contact Us for a Free Consultation