Naming Convention | Data

A naming convention for campaigns, flow names, and flow messages is EXTREMELY important. It makes analyzing and slicing data so much quicker in your data visualization tool as well as in GA4.

While most people think that they have a naming convention, it probably isn't as optimized as it could be.

Here is a sample campaign name that I created:

2025-04-06_marketing.comms_engaged_product.launch_eyes_consumer_shop.new.colors_all_first.time_na_glitter_static_local_na_all_no.test

Yes. It is long. But I've never heard a data-minded person complain about it.

I created this naming convention when I was working at a tech startup back in 2019. We were sending about 50 comms per day so grouping items at end of month was time consuming and it was impossible to see how campaigns were performing mid month. This naming convention also helps with forecasting revenue by comm type.

Here is what you are getting from this naming convention:

1. Date: 2025-04-06

2. Campaign VS Flow: marketing.comms

3. Engagement Level: engaged

4. Bucket: product.launch (main groupings are: product VS brand VS promo)

5. Product Line: eyes

6. Regular customer VS ambassador: consumer

7. Description of the email content: shop.new.colors

8. Gender options are male VS female VS all: all

9. First time VS resend: first.time

10. Region: na

11. Product franchise: glitter

12. Product image is static VS dynamic: static

13. Send time is static VS local: local

14. Large company campaign (i.e. black friday, summer sale, father's day): na

15. Time Zone: all

16. AB Test type: no.test
    

A few things to consider:

• Most companies don't need this many components in their campaign name. Pick what's right for the business

• Use all lowercase

• Separate components by "_"

• Separate words within a component with "."

• Any character other than "_" or "." will break in GA4

• If you are using Adobe Analytics, character count is more limited. You can always convert the long names to an abbreviation and then convert it back in the data visualization tool

• Not everybody likes using the Naming Convention Builder. Ignore them and push to use it

I have never had access to a UTM tool so I custom build the Naming Convention Builder whenever I have a new client.