---
title: "Audience Naming Conventions"
description: "Define account-level templates that keep audience names consistent, and optionally require every new audience to use one."
url: "https://www.contentstack.com/docs/lytics/audience-naming-conventions"
product: "Contentstack"
doc_type: "guide"
audience:
  - developers
  - admins
version: "current"
last_updated: "2026-11-05"
---

# Audience Naming Conventions

Define account-level templates that keep audience names consistent, and optionally require every new audience to use one.

## Introduction

As an account's audience library grows, inconsistent names make it hard to find, group, and audit audiences. **Audience Naming Conventions** give admins a way to define reusable name templates — with dropdowns, free-text fields, and fixed tokens — that anyone building an audience can select and fill in. Optionally, you can require that every new audience use a convention.

This feature replaces ad-hoc naming guidelines and prefix conventions with structured, account-level rules that the platform enforces for you.

## How It Works

A **naming convention** is a template with two kinds of tokens:

*   {{VariableName}} — a required dropdown. The admin defines the allowed values.
*   {{input}} — an optional free-text field for custom text.

Literal text in the template appears as-is in the generated name.

**Example template:** {{Team}}\_{{Channel}}\_{{input}}

With Team = \["growth", "retention", "brand"\] and Channel = \["email", "sms", "push"\], a user building an audience would pick values from the dropdowns and optionally add custom text, producing names like growth\_email\_spring-promo or retention\_sms\_winback-q2.

Admins can define multiple conventions — one per team, one per campaign type, or any combination that fits the account's governance needs.

## Configuring Conventions (Admin)

Conventions are managed from **Account → Settings → Audiences**. The page contains two sections: **Audience Similarity Enforcement** (a separate feature) and **Audience Naming**.

![Admin page for Audience Naming with one expanded rule showing template and variable options](https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/blt2d43f51baca745a8/am54a4f39da6dcfb96/d435629db088bc59be5a3343/1ec6bf45bbe97cea9aa81b3d76b329d39df94dca6dbc9c0826346f37fa46dc4c-v2-admin-audience-naming-expanded.png)

### Adding a convention

1.  Click **Add Rule**.
2.  Give the rule a **Convention Name** — this is what end users see in the dropdown when building an audience.
3.  Enter a **Template** using {{VariableName}} and optional {{input}} tokens.
4.  For each variable in the template, configure:
    *   **Label** — display name shown on the form field.
    *   **Options** — the list of allowed values, added as chips (click each chip's × to remove).
5.  Save the rule.

You can add as many rules as you need, and expand or collapse each rule's card to keep the list tidy.

### Enforcing conventions

A separate account setting, **Enforce Audience Naming Conventions**, controls whether users _must_ pick a convention when creating or editing an audience:

Enforcement

User experience

**Off**

Users see a "Naming Convention" dropdown that includes **None**. They can either pick a convention or type a name freely.

**On**

The **None** option is hidden — users must pick one of the defined conventions.

If enforcement is turned on but no rules exist, users can still save audiences with free-form names. The builder shows a banner reminding admins that conventions won't be enforced until at least one rule is defined.

## Using a Convention (Audience Builder)

When a user creates or edits an audience, the builder shows a **Naming Convention** selector above the name field.

![Audience builder with the Naming Convention selector empty — pick a convention to start](https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/blt2d43f51baca745a8/am1310a92c3f94c2e9/0a3ee5c932e34c1d16e05578/6c317a3f41ed65387d84a2c5b88c94f3a3dcc7aa17ca3eee5d14967be58492e9-v2-builder-naming-convention-selector.png)

1.  Pick a convention from the dropdown. The form below expands with one field per variable plus an optional free-text field (if the template includes {{input}}).
2.  Fill in each variable by picking from its dropdown. Enter any custom text in the free-text field.
3.  The audience **Name** field updates automatically as you fill in values, and is locked against manual edits — a lock icon on the right of the field and the helper text "Name is generated from the selected convention" explain why.

![Audience builder with a convention applied — per-variable dropdowns, free-text field, locked Name field with lock icon](https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/blt2d43f51baca745a8/am39bd6ed2c44ada0f/ad9663a7111e01cf6e9c6627/3cb3f12c2c28be7381a3dce928ded9b7c4fc597bbbc846f7ea745f93361c4911-v2-builder-naming-convention-applied.png)

To choose a different convention, re-open the selector and pick a different rule — the form fields update to match.

### Editing an existing audience

When a user opens an existing audience whose name matches one of the defined conventions, Lytics auto-detects the convention and pre-fills the variable values. If the existing name doesn't match any convention:

*   With enforcement **off**, the audience keeps its current name unless the user picks a convention.
*   With enforcement **on**, the user is prompted to pick a convention to save changes.

## Scope

*   Conventions apply to **user-table audiences** (the standard audience builder). Content-table and other document-type segments are unaffected.
*   The feature applies both when **creating** a new audience and when **editing** an existing one.
*   Conventions do not retroactively rename existing audiences — names only change when a user saves an audience with a convention selected.

## Tips

*   Keep variable dropdowns short. Long lists slow down the name-building workflow; split a single overloaded convention into two separate rules instead.
*   Use {{input}} for the part of the name that varies per audience (e.g., the campaign name), and variables for the dimensions you want to report on or filter by later.
*   Enforce conventions only after you've created a rule set that covers your common audience types — otherwise builders will be blocked on workflows you haven't designed for yet.

## Related

*   [Audiences](/docs/lytics/audiences) — Creating and managing audiences
*   [Audience Groups](/docs/lytics/audience-groups) — Grouping audiences into folders