Learn the benefits of Marketo program naming conventions, and how to create your own, using our best practices.
No single method is right for every Marketo user. However, there are a set of standard best practices that will make your life easier and your instance more organized, structured, and scalable.
One of the easiest things you can do to stay organized creates a program naming convention. Having a standardized program naming structure will make it easier for you and your team to search within Marketo.
Did you know that a consistent naming convention can also impact numerous aspects of your instance including lead scoring and routing?
Benefits of a Program Naming Convention
A consistent naming convention includes the following features and benefits:
Create efficient operational programs
As referenced above, routing and scoring operational campaigns can benefit from a naming convention commitment.
One of the best examples of this is triggering operational campaigns based on your program name using the “contains” filter (or “excluded” filter, if desired). This approach reduces the number of times you need to manually update your critical operational programs, saving time and reducing risk.
Gain a bird’s eye view
By being consistent with naming conventions, you can group similar programs, associated campaigns and assets together, allowing for an easy bird’s eye view of what is active, approved, unapproved.
This is particularly beneficial in Design Studio, allowing for easy mass approve or unapproved groups of assets.
Report with ease
Program Performance reports allow you to filter by the program. You can use the search function on the program filters and easily pull in the reports you want.
Simple but very efficient – your reporting team will love you!
Make Spring Cleaning a Breeze
Include dates in your program names so you can do easy end-of-year archives or other date-driven cleanups. It’s also easier to determine which programs may need to be retrofitted or updated due to organizational or business changes.
Enable Your Teams
You might need to hand-off your instance or grow your team someday. A consistent approach will help new team members ramp up faster and provide structure to your instance, which can help with scalability.
Creating Your Program Naming Convention
Now that you understand how a naming convention can benefit you, it’s time to get started creating your own structure. Don’t leave your team out of the decision!
Collaborate with your team to come up with an ideal program naming convention. Some specific things to consider are:
- Team executing the program (ex. Corporate Marketing, Business Units or field offices)
- Date
- Program Type
- Market or Country/Region
- Description (with character limit)
At Centric Consulting, we use the following naming convention: [BusinessUnitCode]-[YY-MM-DD]-[ProgramType]-[Description(include asset type if appropriate)]
Here’s an example of a final product: CORP-17-07-13-CNTNT-Customer Lifecycle-Ebook
Last Thing to Remember: Document Everything
In order for your convention to be successful, your team needs to know how it works. This requires documentation. Here are two easy ways to think about documentation:
- Make sure you have program templates with the correct convention so the team can clone and update with the right name after minimal modification.
- Create “listening” smart lists to look for common misspellings of your codes or issues where letters might get replaced with numbers (zero and O is a common one that can be problematic).
As with all operational processes, it’s best to start your program naming convention early on, but many times this isn’t possible. Don’t be discouraged, it may seem like a daunting task, but it will pay off as your instance and team grows.
