Naming Conventions for HubSpot Lists, Reports, Campaigns, Workflows, Emails, Forms, CTAs

Naming conventions are important for keeping your HubSpot portal organised and easy to manage.

Overview

Benefits

Examples

Campaigns

Resources

Naming Convention Overview

In this article we'll cover naming conventions for HubSpot assets, including:

  • Lists
  • Workflows
  • Reports
  • Emails
  • Forms
  • CTA
  • Pages (landing pages, web pages)

We'll also discuss:

  • Campaigns

HubSpot Campaigns often have different naming conventions than most other assets, due to the way campaigns are used - they often group together items for ROI and attribution tracking.

ie Naming conventions for most assets are for easier management

whereas naming conventions for campaigns are a combination of easier management, combined with attribution and ROI reporting to the business.

Benefits of naming conventions

The benefits of using naming conventions throughout your HubSpot portal include:

  • Searching and finding assets easily
  • Consistency throughout the portal
  • Grouping related items together

Naming Convention format

There's a number of considerations when it comes to naming HubSpot assets, however here are the main ones we see included:

  • Brand (eg XEN, HubShots)
  • Product (eg if you have a range of products)
  • Campaign name (eg if you are including assets as part of a HubSpot campaign)
  • Objective (eg Subscribe/Signup, Contact Us)
  • Description (general description of the asset that makes it easy to find)
  • Persona or Lifecycle stage
  • Timeframe (Eg date range or specific month)
  • Journey (Eg stage of the funnel, nurture, etc)
  • Geographic location (eg regions/countries)
  • Numbering (eg for easy ordering on listing pages)
  • Version (eg if you are testing multiple versions  of a page)
  • Type (eg LP for Landing page, TY for Thank You page, Static/Active for Lists, Contact/Deal/Ticket for Workflows, Popup/Embed for Forms)
  • Site Location (eg sidebar, footer)

Not all assets have all of these pieces in their naming - they'll usually have a few.

We use the pipe (ie '|') symbol in our asset naming. We've also seen backslash and star characters used eg "/" or '*'

Quick Examples

Let's start with lists - since they are the foundation of most portals. Consider your lists as the building blocks for your other assets (eg since Lists get included in Emails, Workflows, Reports, etc)

Here's some examples of names of lists in our portal:

  • XEN | Contact Us | AU | Form Submits
  • XEN | Website visitors | All 
  • XEN | Website visitors | All | Last 7 days
  • XEN | Website visitors | MQLs | Last 7 days
  • XEN | Website visitors | Customers | Last 7 days
  • XEN | Suppression List | Active
  • XEN | Suppression List | Static
  • XEN | Bounced Contacts
  • XEN | Unsubscribed Contacts
  • XEN | Product | QuickCheck | Form Submits
  • XEN | Nurture | General Welcome
  • HubShots | Website visitors | All
  • HubShots | Webinar | 11 Things | Invitees 
  • HubShots | Webinar | 11 Things | Registrants 
  • HubShots | Show Notes | Subscribers | All
  • HubShots | Show Notes | Subscribers | Engaged
  • HubShots | Show Notes | Popup Form Submits
  • GOW | Promote | All courses
  • GOW | Promote | Christmas Promotion
  • GOW | Promote | Survey with Offer
  • GOW | Customers | New in last 30 days
  • GOW | Comment Form | Submits

This is a selection from our portal (we have 718 lists in our portal as I write this). The goal of the naming is that it helps us easily find and understand what the lists are for.

All our lists start with a brand prefix, and then either an outcome of a general description, followed by specific filtering or further granularity.

Some are foundation building blocks eg:

  • XEN | Suppression List | Static
  • XEN | Bounced Contacts
  • XEN | Unsubscribed Contacts

which are then used in a list of lists:

  • XEN | Suppression List | Active

Another example of using lists as building blocks - we create an overall website visitors list:

  • XEN | Website visitors | All 

and then we use that list in another list, but with added filtering:

  • XEN | Website visitors | All | Last 7 days

HubSpot Campaigns

HubSpot Campaigns have their own set of naming considerations.

As per the introduction above, HubSpot Campaigns often have attribution and ROI requirements attached to them, and thus naming can be a little more involved.

A few initial thoughts:

  • You'll likely have a mix of time specific campaigns, and always on (evergreen) campaigns
  • You'll likely have a mix of global campaigns as well as specific region campaigns
  • You'll likely have a mix of journey campaigns (Eg some are top of funnel awareness, whilst others are bottom of the funnel conversion focussed)
  • You'll likely have a mix of channel campaigns (Eg specific partner/vendor campaign, versus general social/paid campaigns)

We usually recommend:

  1. getting a clear picture of the types/mix of campaigns you'll be running first
  2. understanding the attribution and ROI reporting requirements
  3. and then working backwards to formulate the naming conventions.

(ie don't start with the naming first - leave that to last)

Note: HubSpot now supports changing HubSpot Campaign names, and having a number of utm parameter entries being associated with the one campaign. This is only a new improvement - previously there was no way to change the campaign name or associate utm_campaign parameters if the name changed.

Recommended Resources

Check out these episodes of HubShots:

  • Lists: For specific discussion of naming conventions related to Lists, check out episode 280 of HubShots, or watch the video on YouTube here:
  • Forms: For specific discussion of naming conventions related to Forms, check out episode 279 of HubShots, or watch video on YouTube here:
  • Campaigns: For specific discussion of naming conventions related to marketing campaigns check out episode 278 of HubShots, or watch the video on YouTube here: