In political campaigns, direct response is king, and last click attribution is the easiest way to understand what channels are driving fundraising and lead generation efforts. In the digital ads space where aggressive optimization helps win higher budgets and elections, we desperately need to attribute the direct actions of dollars raised and leads generated to specific campaigns, audiences, and even creatives. At Direct Persuasion, this led to the creation of universal naming conventions, a dedicated reporting and analytics team to enforce them, and a granularity in optimization that we had never even dreamed about before. Now, we can’t live without naming conventions, and here’s three reasons why you should implement them on your digital advertising campaigns:

1: One-off reporting becomes incredibly easy.

When all your campaign fields are always in the same place, one-off reporting becomes second nature. When you clearly and consistently delimit your naming conventions by including parameters like audiences, gender targeting, and even device targeting, you are able to segment your own reporting incredibly easily. You can even set up templatized spreadsheets that always extract your parameters wherever they are, enabling even deeper analysis that doesn’t take all day.

2: You allow for full funnel analysis.

By using universal naming conventions across all channels and platforms, you enable cross platform and cross channel insights. You’re able to to analyze data from brand to conversion campaigns and how audiences and creative perform at each stage. Knowing that your creative codes will be in the same place whether the ad was run programmatically, on Facebook Ads, or on YouTube sets you up for success and lets you seamlessly analyze results no matter where the ad was run.

3: You enable bigger picture analysis by laying the foundation for dedicated analytics tools.

This is the most critical reason naming conventions are so important. Whether it’s a dedicated report builder Excel spreadsheet, an all in one software like Datorama, or even a custom database + business intelligence tool solution, if you are going to use smart analytics tools, you absolutely need naming conventions. Analytics tools, no matter the level, allow you to move past one-off reports and set up dedicated procedures and functions that automatically extract and prepare your data for analysis. Consistent naming is absolutely critical for these tools. By spending less time on data prep and more time analyzing the full scope of all your activity, you’re able to enable that bigger picture analysis that just might lead you to the insight that helps win the next election.

Want to learn more? Reach out to Jack Puetz at Direct Persuasion by emailing [email protected].