The most common way of organising and sorting content in any Marketing Automation platform but specifically in both Pardot and Marketing Cloud is via folders. However, as a marketer how should you file content so that it is easy to find and follow for the person entering the system after you?
Pardot has an automatic system of creating folders per piece of digital marketing asset: ie. campaigns, forms, automations, etc. But that may not be logical for your business and processes.
Marketing Cloud, on the other hand, gives you the ability to structure your folder hierarchy as you wish in each studio or builder. This can be beneficial when used in conjunction with each team utilising the MC platform or User Role (defined in your settings) that has access to the section in Marketing Cloud. It can also follow the same set of groupings as below:
In general, here are a couple useful groupings commonly found amongst Pardot and Marketing Cloud users:
- Regions, Continents, or Areas of reach: Your hierarchy will then look something like:
Africa → Year → Campaign Name and Date → All digital assets link into this folder
- Financial Year: Your hierarchy could look like:
FY21 → Month → Campaign Name
- Target Market or Business Unit : If you have a wider business model and reach different people with different content but still utilise one instance of Marketing Cloud or Pardot, it could benefit you to segment your folders via BU or target market and then look further into segmenting via campaigns, months, regions etc.
- Campaigns : I recommend this if you utilise the same campaigns each cycle; you can then segment further by region, month or year.
- Perhaps you are an industry-driven company and want to segment via industry.
Industry → Year / Region → Region / Year → Campaign Name
Another snag to be aware of in Marketing Cloud is that this folder structure needs to be created in each Studio or Builder.
If you are still stuck without a solution for a folder structure, jot down the following:
- Think of the most broad terms used to describe who you target marketing campaigns to or what your marketing Campaigns are, or your segmentation style that makes the most sense,
- Then think of the most granular way in which you segment your content,
- Fill in the sub-folders between getting from the broad to the detailed and decide how easily you need to find content.
- Remember, efficiency is key, so try not to make too many folders in between.
A handy tip is to create a shared folder that you can place cross-department content (like logos) into so that anyone can find it easily, at any time!