What are naming conventions for segment management?
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Six months after setting up your segments, you open your ESP and find a list that includes "Active Q3", "Active Users Final v2", "Engaged (July)", and "Test DO NOT USE". You don't know which ones are live, which are safe to delete, or what any of them actually contain. A consistent naming convention solves this before it becomes a problem.
A pattern that works across most teams is: [STATUS] [AUDIENCE] [CRITERIA] [TIMEFRAME if relevant]. "LIVE Customers 90d-clickers" tells you it's active, who's in it, and what qualifies them. "ARCH Newsletter Pre-2024" tells you it's retired and roughly when. Apply prefixes consistently: LIVE for segments powering active campaigns or automations, TEST for experimentation, ARCH for deactivated but not deleted. These three prefixes cover most situations.
For criteria, use the rule window rather than the creation date. "90d-clickers" stays accurate a year later. "October-engaged" doesn't. For lifecycle segments where the criteria updates dynamically (engaged, lapsing, churned), skip the date entirely. When the criteria involves a threshold, include the number: "Lapsing 91-180d" is clearer than just "Lapsing", especially when you have multiple stages.
Document your naming convention in a shared place your whole team can access, and include worked examples for each segment type you use. When someone new joins and needs to build a segment, they should be able to look at your existing names and immediately understand the pattern. Apply the convention retroactively when you do your next segment audit. Segments that don't fit the system are candidates for renaming or archiving.
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