Hey! 👋
Hope you’re doing well!
In this edition of the newsletter, I have a campaign management/hierarchy guide to share with you — we’ll get to that in a second!
It’s been a wild ride of a year so far, and I feel like things are only going to get crazier in the second half of the year. I’m noticing more layoffs than I’ve seen in a while, but also more recruiter activity and job postings — more in RevOps than Marketing Operations, though. It seems like certain industries are contracting with the tariff unpredictability.
BUT that is just my observation/assumption…what are you seeing? Click the corresponding link below to let me know. 🤔
POLL: Do you think the marketing operations job market is getting better?
In today’s edition, I want to teach you everything you need to know about campaign hierarchy. I know, it isn’t the sexiest topic in the world…but it becomes super sexy when you are struggling to manually fix all of your historical campaign tracking. 😫
Before we dive in, please check out a quick word from our sponsors, who are kind enough to support this free MOPs content 💖:
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Okay, back to campaign management! 👇
"Our campaigns are a mess."
Sound familiar? If you're in MOPs and using Salesforce or HubSpot, chances are you've said this — or heard it — more than once. Campaign hierarchy isn't just a buzzword…it’s the backbone to analytics and attribution.
But Sara…why? How is it the backbone?
Without a solid hierarchy in place, you can’t:
Roll up performance across tactics and programs
Attribute ROI by channel or initiative
Simplify onboarding and cross-team coordination
Or, at least….you can’t do it without tons of painful manual work and data surgery. 👩⚕️
I’m going to be real with you — the guide is pretty comprehensive, and I put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into trying to get it right. And a lot of time/mental energy, so I’m a bit tapped while writing this. SO I will keep it short, here are my main tips you should really focus on:
Start with a hierarchy, even if it’s just a v1. Salesforce makes this easy with Parent Campaigns. In HubSpot, you’ll have to simulate it with naming conventions + properties….which takes more work, but it’s worth it, even if you only have a few campaigns. Get the reps in and figure out what works so you can continue on with it as you scale.
Picking a naming convention is valuable, but documenting and enabling marketers on it is CRUCIAL. I once logged into an instance and they had 11 different spellings of “responded” — yes, ELEVEN. When I asked “how did this happen, where is your [campaign documentation, utm sheet, etc]?” there were a lot of shrugs and “We don’t have anything documented.” Well, no wonder it’s a mess then…if you don’t document it, share it, enable it, and enforce it, it doesn’t matter. You’ll still end up running tons of SQL after-the-fact to try to report on the jumbled mess.
UTMs aren’t optional. Clean, consistent UTMs = accurate attribution. Build a governance doc and stick to it. This is especially important for paid channels like ads, influencer campaigns, and content syndication, because you need to measure if it’s a worthwhile channel for your business.
Document your taxonomy in a centralized place. You can create additional artifact docs for more detailed explanations or guides (that you can link out to from your centralized taxonomy doc), but having one shared doc for program types, naming rules, and statuses will save your team from a world of confusion and frustration.
Measure what matters. Roll up performance by initiative, not just tactic. Influenced contacts, MQLs, CPL…make sure your structure supports seeing the big picture, not the tiny tactics. As an overall ideology, keep in mind: any data in a silo can be misleading, so look across multiple metrics to see a story.
Feeling overwhelmed? Here’s where to start:
Read the guide and take it all in.
Build your 2025 campaign hierarchy (even a v1 draft is better than nothing)
Clean up old campaign names + add structure to your existing campaigns
Set up or audit your UTM tracker
📖 Check out the guide here, and please share with your peers, stakeholders, or clients if you find it helpful!
What I’m up to/what I’m studying 💭
I’ve been nerding out on sales outreach tools like HeyReach and Instantly lately…especially ever since I hosted an ExitFive webinar with Alex Fine of Understory, who taught me so much about sales email deliverability! 🧠 We’re early enough in Vector to be able to run experiments and build things from the ground up, which is really fun as an operator. 😍
Would love to hear any experiments you’re running! 👂
Dear Sara ✍️
New to marketing operations? On a team of one at your company? Shy/introverted? Wish you could ask a question to an experienced marketing operations professional, without them knowing who you are? Here’s your chance! Submit an anonymous question to me here and I’ll answer a new question in every issue.
Here’s my answer to a question from last week:
I'm embarrassed to say that I've never used Zapier. How do I get started?
Don’t be embarrassed! There are tens of thousands of tools and not enough time in the day to learn them all. Luckily, Zapier does have a free tier to get started, and they have an intro course here. To be honest with you, a lot of my own learning has been trial and error — signing up for the free product and playing around with it, doing Google searches for answers — and now they have the in-app AI assistance bot, which is really helpful too. BTW, if you are already looking to sign up, use this link and I’ll get a kick back if you ever end up upgrading to a paid plan. 🫶
(And no, this was not plugged — but the submissions are anonymous, so I don’t know if someone from Zapier submitted it or something. 😜)
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Thanks for reading,
❤️ Sara