Let’s be honest. Naming conventions have a bit of a bad reputation.
They’re often seen as one of those tedious “admin” tasks that someone in middle management insists on, while everyone else quietly ignores them. Then, a few months later, your data analyst is left trying to untangle the chaos and make sense of it all.
Picture this: your analyst sits down to build a performance report and finds campaigns called “Summer_promo_2025,” “SUMMER-Sale-Final,” and “summer discount campaign v3”. Cue the back-and-forth:
- What was this campaign about?
- Which funnel stage was it?
- Which brand or region does it belong to?
It’s a time-waster for everyone, and more often than not, those questions just get skipped entirely. The result? Surface-level reporting that looks neat on a dashboard but doesn’t actually say anything.
Here’s the thing: that mess is completely avoidable. A proper naming convention isn’t busywork. It’s one of the simplest, most effective ways to unlock better insights from your marketing data.
There are three main benefits to having a standardised naming convention across your marketing platforms:
1. Instant Clarity Across All Platforms
A clear, standardised naming convention means anyone, from a campaign manager to a CMO, can open a report and immediately understand what’s going on.
That clarity isn’t just convenient. It’s powerful. It allows teams to quickly see what’s performing, what’s not, and where to focus next.
2. Cross-Channel Insights That Actually Matter
When your naming conventions are consistent across every platform, your data finally starts to work for you.
You can slice and dice performance by brand, product, audience, funnel stage, or region, without manually cleaning data or cross-referencing multiple spreadsheets.
Suddenly, you’re not just seeing how Facebook or Google performed in isolation. You’re seeing the whole picture: how your awareness campaigns perform across every touchpoint and how each channel contributes to the bigger strategy.
That’s where real marketing intelligence lives.
3. Massive Time Savings (Especially for Your Data Team)
Yes, it takes a bit of upfront effort to plan and roll out a good naming convention. But once it’s in place and supported by the right tools, the time you’ll save is huge.
Your data team will no longer spend hours writing messy mapping rules or chasing marketers for context. Your analysts will deliver insights faster. And your marketing managers will be able to make decisions with confidence because the data just makes sense.
Making It Stick: How to Actually Implement It
The difference between naming conventions that work and those that gather dust in a Google Doc somewhere comes down to how easy they are to use.
Your naming convention should be:
- Accessible: Easy for everyone to find and apply.
- Flexible: Able to evolve with your campaigns and channels.
- Enforceable: Built into your workflow, not just written in a forgotten playbook.
Ready to Transform Your Marketing Data?
At Helix Growth, we’ve seen how a well-implemented naming convention can completely transform the way teams work with data, from faster reporting to smarter strategic decisions.
We offer two ways to help:
- Naming Convention Tool: A customisable tool that helps your team generate consistent names and maintain standards across channels based on your unique setup.
- Naming Convention Audit: A full review of your current setup, identifying gaps and creating a clean, logical convention you can roll out immediately.
If you’d like to chat about either of these, reach out. We’d love to help you turn naming conventions from a headache into one of your biggest marketing advantages.