Your thoughts on a naming convention system?

[maggiebutler]

We have used several naming conventions systems over the years and I want to put together a new model for 2021. On the Ops teams, they generally care about the way these assets are named:

• Lists
• Workflows
• One-time Marketing Emails
• One-time Sales Emails
• Marketing & Sales Automation
• Forms
• Web Pages
• Landing Pages
• Thank You Pages

But I also want to add:

• Contact properties
• Reports
• Other things I haven't thought of yet

I have started to create a new model for us here. What do you think of it? How are you naming your assets / outputs in the tech you are using?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZozNCQl45imHIGIOS1LzmiTYOGoLSqdfYq86F2BuLfc/edit#gid=2055047...

[karstenkoehler]

Hi everyone,

I just submitted a request relating to naming conventions: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/Enforce-naming-convention-for-new-assets/idi-p/745831...

If you would find this useful, feel free to upvote!

[Yeti_Chris]

We actually built a JavaScript tool to solve this challenge. It follows the same approach that you’ve outlined by properties by selecting items from drop downs.

The differences in populated with HubSpot, and then you copy and paste the naming convention to use for all of your emails, landing pages, lists.

There are a few additional fields that we have added based on how programs are organized by region/product.

[karstenkoehler]

Nice one, @Yeti_Chris, great minds 😉

[JenBergren]

For clients we have this blog for how we advise on naming conventions, but I have been looking for good examples of workflow naming conventions for internal operations, since this is what most of our agency workflows do, we currently don't do much marketing so we don't have campaigns or send emails to different locations/languages. I would love to see some examples of naming conventions unrelated to marketing, if anyone wants to share!

Thanks!

Jen Bergren

Sr. Operations Manager

Remotish -- A HubSpot RevOps Agency

[Yeti_Chris]

Thanks for sharing this model.  There are a few other items you may want to consider especially for larger enterprises.

Region (NA, EMEA, APAC, etc)

Product/Service Category 

Think about reporting first.  We had a rater involved Excel spreadsheet that converting values into a 12 digit code.  Made it a bit shorter.

[Phil_Vallender]

Hey @maggiebutler 

Great. We have semi-fixed naming conventions that have evolved over the years but I love the idea of a more complete, formal system that we could apply to multiple hubs to automatically improve admin efficiency. 

The need for this actually became clear to me recently when I wanted to segment landing pages for reporting, differentiating content LPs from job application LPs, but the naming convention didn't 100% support it. 

I'll be back with some specific thoughts, examples and ideas.

Cheers, Phil.

[jen_vaughn]

I'd echo what Phil has said here a bit.   

One of the best things I've learned is to tag the different page types we built. 

In my last role, we had landing pages (ie they had a form on them), thank you pages (the step between the landing page and the thing they signed up for), and pillar pages (a webpage ebook meant to be a more reader and mobile-friendly substitute for pdfs as content pieces).

For each of the items, we would use the page type in the name so that when we had to find the page again, we knew which one to click into. We'd usually end up with something like:

LP - Ebook Name - Segment or Campaign

TYP - Ebook Name - Segment or Campaign

PP - Ebook Name - Segment or Campaign

[bcartwright]

What I've found to be most helpful are naming conventions based on asset type within the tool. We use a letter code, serving as a tag on the asset. For example, our emails are typically either Customer Marketing/one-off (CM), Customer nurturing (CN), lead nurturing (LN), or marketing qualified lead nurturing (MQLN). So our naming convention: 

Type | Name of Email, number in series if applicable

• CN | New customer engagement, 1.1
• MQLN | Demo Follow up
• CM | October Round Up 

For workflows, there are often multiple types we want to include in the name, based on what's happening in the workflow. Today we're using the following types: Property Setting (PS), LR (Lead Routing), Auto tasks (AT), Customer Nurturing (CN), Marketing Qualified Lead nurturing (MQLN), or Sales Order Automation Process (SOAP).

Type(s) | Name of Workflow 

• SOAP | PO Submitted, Notify Slack
• LR | AT | Rotate MQLs and Assign Follow Up Auto Tasks based on MQL Type
• ARCHIVE - CN | LR | AT | Imported Registrations [amazon] Customer Nurturing, Assign Owners, and Auto Tasks

I also use an ARCHIVE identifier to clean things up without deleting workflows. 

Naming conventions are hugely helpful for me to keep things organized and allow for searching later, but they inevitabley have to change and be adjusted with time. There's obviously no need to have a language variable in your naming convention before you've launched outside of a first. But as you do start to launch in a new language, the naming convention has to change. And sometimes, it makes sense to add a new ID to the front of your title rather than the end. So then, what do you do about all of your existing assets? 

I know I'd love a quicker in-tool re-naming/saving functionality to make naming convention cleanup quicker. Or, better yet, asset tagging, to take the naming convention need away entirely!