Anyone who has faced migration of a marketing automation platform (MAP) knows it can be a daunting project. Whether it’s due to an acquisition, or the current platform no longer meets your business needs,  it can be difficult to know where to begin.  Here are some best practice guidelines and a checklist to help you get started.

Best Practices

  • Define your requirements upfront. Not only do you want to make sure you understand the scope of everything to be migrated, it’s also the perfect time to review your desired state.  Take time to document the current state of your system, what processes to keep and change, and the roadmap of how to get there. Understanding the complexity of the migration will help align resources and determine whether you’ll need additional assistance.
  • Plan for data architecture differences. If you are going from one MAP to another, it’s possible the way they store and use data will be different. For example, some MAP tools support a relational table database, and some do not. Analyze and plan for these differences to be sure the marketing use cases are supported post-migration.
  • Include a core team of key end users in the process. Consider the needs of the team members who will interact with the platform, as well as the business owners driving the vision of the optimal prospect and customer experience. Determine how to represent these individuals or include them as active members of your project team.
  • Evaluate whether your existing assets need a facelift. In addition to overall requirements, it’s a perfect time to determine whether your emails and landing pages need a new look.  Be sure to consider mobile responsiveness.
  • Don’t skimp on IP warming.If you’re using one or more dedicated IP addresses, it’s important to establish your sending reputation by sending small campaigns to a list of historically responsive contacts and to increase your sending gradually to the volume equivalent to that of a typical month. Skipping this process and sending the first few emails to too large a list could cause you to be blacklisted by ISPs. For more details about IP warming, check out this previous blog post.
  • Develop a realistic timeline. Having well laid-out requirements will help determine how much time you will need to get critical items moved, train users in the new system, and allow current campaigns to run their course.  Also, factor enough time to cut over while still having access to the old system, in case the records need to be accessed post go-live. If there is a critical deadline driving the migration, such as losing access to your current platform, be sure to allow enough time to achieve the new platform setup with a bit of overlap.
  • Align with your IT team.Many marketing automation platforms make the promise that a marketer can achieve their goals without IT intervention.  Although this is true for a majority of the aspects within the platform, you will still need some help from IT.  You will need IT to change CNAME, domain key and SPF settings when the system changes. They may also be involved in procuring certificates if you’re using secured websites, and might need access to CRM or custom integrations.  Depending on the desired functionality of landing pages and forms, you may also need some development resources who are comfortable working with JavaScript.
  • Test, test, test. Be sure to have a solid plan to test your emails, landing pages and forms on the new platform before you go live, as well as for any integrations or other back-end processing. Creating a list of functions or items to test with sample data, action(s) to be performed during the test, as well as the expected outcome and a pass/fail log, are great tools to help prepare for a successful launch and reduce post-migration surprises.
  • Carefully plan for the system cutover.You may have evergreen campaigns that run on an ongoing basis, or you may be in the middle of collecting responses from campaigns that recently launched. Develop a plan to continue these campaigns without interruption and to maintain access to the old platform for an appropriate amount of time to capture responses and complete desired reporting.
  • Clearly communicate a project management plan and schedule, and carefully monitor status and risks. There’s nothing worse than getting within weeks of your target cutover date to realize things are running behind or that scope creep is putting the launch at risk.  For complex projects, it’s imperative to call out critical milestones, as well as dependencies on other systems besides your marketing automation tool (including updates to CRM or reporting tools).

Migrations take a lot of coordination and planning, and hopefully these best practices and this checklist will help you to get started.

Checklist

Inventory critical assets and campaigns

  • Forms, both hosted within the platform and integrated with external web pages, including auto-responder emails and thank-you landing pages
  • Landing pages hosted within the platform
  • Evergreen email campaigns and other email templates
  • Subscription management centers

Inventory data management practices

  • Identify which contact and account fields are critical to maintain in the new platform
  • Analyze whether there is redundancy amongst fields, or fields that are no longer used
  • Define what personalization will be required
  • Decide whether the data needs to be cleaned before migration, or to implement processes to clean it as it enters the system (via forms, etc.)
  • Determine what data needs to be stored in a custom object vs on the contact record (such as event participation data, orders or other transactional data, etc.)
  • Detail marketing uses cases for segmentation, personalization, scoring and reporting to ensure the data needed is available and structured in a useable way
  • Develop a strategy to manage historical subscription information

Inventory core processes / desired state – questions to ask

  • What are the various integrations needed, including CRMs or event management platforms?
  • How do sales teams need to be notified of prospect / customer engagement?
  • Are there restrictions on the contacts or campaigns that different regions can access?
  • Does data transformation happen behind the scenes?
  • How should the system handle lead management?
  • What about integrations with web tracking packages?
  • What other apps, systems or business processes are required to optimize the platform?

Other considerations and questions

  • What can be migrated, and what cannot (for example, activity history and subdomains typically cannot be migrated)?
  • How will legacy data be stored?
  • How will expired assets and campaigns be stored, if at all?
  • What type of training will end users need on the system? Does training need to be tailored for different roles?

This information can seem a little overwhelming, but don’t worry! At Relationship One, we have all seen a lot of migrations and are available to help ensure your migration goes smoothly, so feel free to contact us for questions and/or assistance. Happy Migrating!