Framework [Framework] Salesforce Campaign Naming Conventions and Best Practices

If you are in sales or marketing and you've tried to utilize Salesforce Campaigns for attribution, you know that properly naming Salesforce Campaigns in a consistent and scalable way is nearly impossible.

Over the last several years I've helped countless high-growth companies implement and utilize Salesforce Campaigns to track KPIs, measure multi-touch attribution, and more. Over time, I've developed best practices and a framework for naming Salesforce Campaigns that I'm going to outline in this article.

Goals

• Keep it simple
• Enable grouping, slicing, and filtering of Campaign data
• Utilize Salesforce Campaigns as a way to align sales & marketing

Best Practices

• Make it human readable
• Utilize standard Salesforce fields as much as possible
• Breakout key components into separate fields
• Utilize Google Analytics cookies and UTM parameters to limit the number of Salesforce Campaigns you need to create

The Framework

[Status] [Name] [Type] via [GA Medium] from [GA Source] engaging with [GA Content] searching [GA Term]

Examples:

• Downloaded ABM for Dummies eBook via PPC from Google Adwords engaging with Banner Ad 10 searching "Account-Based Marketing Guide"
• Attended Account-centric Sales 101 Webinar via Retargeting from RollWorks engaging with Ad Creative #3
• Did Not Attend ABX from 0 to 60 Event via Email from House Database engaging with Email A

Breakdown of Framework

Campaign Name (standard SFDC field on Campaign)

• What is the event/asset name?
• ABM 101
• Account-centric Sales
• How to deploy ABM in 7 days
• Measuring ABM Success

Campaign Type (standard SFDC field on Campaign)

• What was it?
• Webinar
• eBook
• Case Study
• Conference

Member Status (standard SFDC field on Campaign Member)

• What action did they take?
• Attended
• Did Not Attend
• Registered
• Read
• Downloaded
• Submitted

GA Medium (custom SFDC field on Campaign Member)

• How did they get it?
• PPC
• Paid Social
• Organic Search
• Email
• Retargeting

GA Source (custom SFDC field on Campaign Member)

• Where did they get it from?
• Google Adwords
• House Database
• Facebook Ads

GA Content (custom SFDC field on Campaign Member)

• Which call-to-action or content-targeted ad was engaged with?
• Homepage Banner
• Creative Ad #5
• Footer CTA

GA Term (custom SFDC field on Campaign Member)

• Which keyword was searched from Google/Yahoo/Bing?
• "how to implement ABM"
• "what is retargeting"
• "what is the best blogging platform"

How to Implement, Automate, and Analyze

In our follow-up article, we discuss in-depth how to implement and automate using Google Analtyic cookies, Google Tag Manager, your favorite marketing automation platform and Salesforce.

Article: How to pass values from Google Analytics into a form and onto a Salesforce Campaign