# Naming convention — B2B SaaS

The naming convention with three segments a subscription business needs: which slice of the ideal customer profile a campaign reaches, where in the funnel it acts, and which quarter it belongs to.

Everything else is the general convention, unchanged. One row per segment, fixed positions, a closed list of values with an owner, one separator and a change rule that does not break reporting history.

## How to use it

1. Copy this file, or the CSV version if you would rather work in a sheet.
2. Decide the separator first, and pick one that cannot appear inside a value.
3. Fix the positions before the values, so a name can be split by position.
4. List the allowed values for every position, and give each list an owner.
5. Put optional segments at the end, never in the middle.
6. Write one full example name for every level, and check it splits correctly.
7. Agree the change rule before anybody renames anything that is already running.

## The columns

**Level** (Text). Which object this segment belongs to: campaign, ad set, ad, creative file, or the tracking parameters that carry the segment into the lead record.

**Position** (Integer). Which slot this segment occupies, numbered from the left. Channel, ICP segment and funnel stage go early, because those three are what every report filters on and they have to survive truncation.

**Token** (Text). The short code as it appears: midmarket, enterprise, awareness, capture. Spelled exactly as the sales system spells it, because that spelling is what the two datasets join on.

**Meaning** (Text). What the token stands for, in the words the sales team uses. A segment named differently in marketing and in sales cannot be joined, which throws away the point of the position.

**Allowed values** (Text). The complete list this position may hold, copied from the sales system rather than invented. When sales reorganises its segments, this list changes with it.

**Example** (Text). A real value written as it will appear, taken from the current segmentation rather than the one in last year's plan.

**Required** (Text). Whether the segment must appear. Funnel stage is required on every campaign, because it is the distinction that stops awareness being compared with capture on a single table.

**Separator** (Text). The character between segments, and never one that appears inside a segment or industry name. Values here are multi-word more often than in other categories, so the rule matters.

**Case rule** (Text). Lower case throughout, including company-size bands and industry names. Two spellings of the same segment is the same failure as two segments.

**Where it appears** (Text). Every place this has to be repeated: the campaign name, the tracking parameters, the form, and the lead record, so a closed deal can be traced to a segment and a stage without a mapping table.

**Maintained by** (Text). Who owns the list of values. For the ICP segment that is whoever owns the segmentation in the sales system, not marketing, because they will hear about a change first.

**Change rule** (Text). What happens when this has to change. A campaign that moves to another segment or another funnel stage is a new campaign; renaming breaks the history a long cycle needs most.

**Notes** (Text). What the next person needs: the segment retired when sales reorganised, the quarter token that records creation rather than the current period, the surface that truncates.

## The naming convention

| Level | Position | Token | Meaning | Allowed values | Example | Required | Separator | Case rule | Where it appears | Maintained by | Change rule | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |

## Before you commit it

- One separator is used everywhere, and it never appears inside a value.
- The ICP segment values match the segments sales actually uses.
- The funnel stage position has a closed list with a named owner.
- The same tokens reach the lead record, not only the ad account.
- Every level has one full example name that splits correctly.
- The change rule is agreed before anybody renames a live campaign.
- Retired segment values are recorded rather than deleted.