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    Marketing Automation Migration – the ‘What’, the ‘Why’, the ‘How’

    “Master the topic, the message, and the delivery.” — Steve Jobs

    As B2B buyers grow to be more empowered, every business wants to ace the topic, message, and delivery. To create seamless customer experiences, the magic spell, businesses sort after is a marketing automation platform, which helps:

    • increase conversions,
    • elevate ROI, and
    • improve customer relationships.

    It helps brands to remain at the forefront of their consumers’ minds. 75% of marketing professionals are using at least one marketing automation tool in their strategy.

    But as your company grows, you may outgrow your existing marketing automation platform. The reasons could vary, maybe your objectives changed, or your current marketing automation provider may not have crucial features that your company needs, or maybe you need to juggle between multiple instances.

    Migrating to a new marketing automation platform is like moving to a new house. You have to sort through your old stuff, pack what you need, and say goodbye. Goodbyes can be hard, especially when migrating to a new marketing automation platform, considering the resources and risks involved.

    This shift, however, doesn’t have to be as stressful as it sounds. We are here to ease your migration woes and make this transition a little easier for you. Let’s get the ball rolling!

    Reasons For Migration

    Marketing automation platform (MAP) migration can transform your brand by helping your marketers tackle the challenges of the ever-rising customer expectations. Moreover, it is a great opportunity to start afresh. Here are a few reasons why businesses may want to switch MAPs:

    Lack of Features

    Businesses have different needs and preferences for their marketing automation tool kits. While some may need simple segmentation and reporting, others may need a more robust segmentation, reporting, and CRM integration.

    Poor Customer Support

    Insufficient support and training from the vendor creates a gap between your expectations and actual results. A slow or poor response by the vendor for platform issues may lead you to switch MAPs.

    Performance Issues

    Issues in key marketing elements may hamper your campaigns like email deliverability issues, email throttling, outages, or other deliverability issues.

    Business Needs

    You feel your business needs are growing but your MAP is not ductile enough to support your growth. You find your current platform is shackled to basics and you need a more robust solution with better capabilities like SEO tools, ABM functionality, predictive tools, enhanced lead scoring, etc.

    There are a few other reasons to consider platform migration. It may be because you:

    • think it’s exorbitantly priced
    • find it difficult to use
    • think the performance is sluggish
    • have outgrown the platform
    • got acquired

    If you are considering a migration, do in-depth research, and talk to your stakeholders and employees. MAP migration is a complex process and requires effective collaboration. Therefore, make sure your team is ready to handle the technical challenges that you may face along the way.

    Points to Consider Before MAP Migration

    Migrating to a new platform can be challenging on your precious resources but staying confined to your current system even if it doesn’t deliver expected results is a rookie mistake. Before making the move to another MAP, ensure pulling all the aces up your sleeve. Follow these tips to iron out your migration journey:

    1. Strategically Plan Your MAP Migration

    Find a good time to make the switch to a new MAP. This should be during a period when you or your team don’t have a lot on your plate as it requires time to migrate assets and rebuild critical campaigns.

    2. Find the Right Partner

    Do your homework and understand what kind of training and after-support different vendors offer. Select a vendor that doesn’t just see you as a sales opportunity but one that understands your needs and sees you as a partner.

    3. Become GDPR and CCPA Compliant

    The General Data Protection Regulation put forth by the EU is already in force and is stringent when it comes to ‘consent’. CCPA works on similar principles that help protect the privacy and personal data of consumers who live within the state of California. What happens when a potential lead opts out? It’s important to consider a MAP that comes with all the requirements that GDPR and CCPA compliance warrant.

    4. Assess Your Workforce

    To effectively migrate to another platform, you must have the organizational and technical capacity to use a MAP. Find answers to:

    • How many people have experience with marketing automation?
    • How much training will be required?
    • Will you need to hire new people?

    5. Consider 3rd Party Integrations

    A MAP’s integration ability with additional software is key for successful marketing operations. Find a platform that’s compatible with your current tools and flexible enough to integrate with other 3rd party tools. Integrations can be tricky but when done right, they can work exceptionally with your MAP.

    6. Plan Your Budget

    Plan your budget based on how much the new MAP and its migration will cost. Not just the base cost, consider the cost of additional features, extensions, add-ons, recurring fees, support costs, etc.

    7. Prioritize Ease of Use

    Whichever platform you buy, your team should be able to use it for better results. There are free versions available for many platforms that you can let your team have a trial run to see if they find it intuitive and easy to work on.

    Important Steps to Follow

    Don’t just switch because migration may be the new kid on the block. Thoroughly evaluate your business objectives and answer the following questions:

    • Do you really need to migrate?
    • Do you know all about different vendors?
    • Do you think your team will be able to work easily on the new MAP?

    It’s essential that you have answers to the above questions because they would weigh out the pros and cons for you. To make the transition easier for you, here are 8 steps that we think will come in handy:

    1. Outline Your Needs

    Determine your organization’s unique requirements which will give you an understanding of your actual needs that your current MAP may not be serving. This will also help you determine if an upgrade of the existing MAP would be enough or if a new MAP is really needed.

    2. Understand Your Goals

    Identify critical risk factors and components of your business. Understanding what you want to achieve through your marketing automation plan will allow you to evaluate vendors more effectively.

    3. Establish a Timeline

    Once you decide which marketing automation platform you’re planning to migrate to, set a date and time for the transition to start. Plan a feasible timeline and don’t rush through it. Outline potential risks that may occur during the migration process and allow a sufficient time buffer in your MAP migration project plan.

    4. Assess Your Inventory

    Take note of everything you have in your existing marketing platform like workflows, contact fields, lists, content, landing pages, emails, blog posts, files, images, and email templates and be sure to remove outdated information. Track every step and ensure you don’t leave any important assets behind. A systematic assessment and tracking will help make the migration process smooth. Backup all reports and important assets from the old platform.

    5. Clean-up Your Database and Assets

    Migration makes cleaning up all unnecessary data a priority. Identify any updates that should be done in your workflows and comb through your contacts and delete duplicate data. Take this opportunity to not just clean your database but your assets as well. Export only the relevant assets that align with your future goals and remove inactive or unnecessary assets that won’t add any value to your new platform.

    6. Prioritize UX

    Your leads and customers shouldn’t notice any changes to your marketing communication or campaigns. Create a plan to run these campaigns without interruption and to keep historic success parameters.

    7. Constantly Test

    A good practice is to always test the new system before you shun your old one otherwise you may miss valuable leads. Implement A/B testing processes for all marketing assets, landing pages, email templates, etc, created in your new MAP before and after migration.

    8. Optimize

    Optimizing a marketing automation system means analyzing data to find out what is working and what you can improve upon. Test as well as track your marketing campaigns to see how functional they are and change them if and when the need arises. Keeping up with the current market trends, making changes, and managing them should be an ongoing process. Send engaging email campaigns to woo your prospects and customers.

    How Can Grazitti Help?

    With this checklist, we’re sure your MAP makeover will make way for new opportunities for you. If you’re looking for a shoulder to lift those migration weights, Grazitti’s got your back. We are glad to talk about ways to scale marketing operations.

    We have been part of several MAP migration journeys and we pride ourselves to have assisted several customers with smooth transitions over the years with minimal or no data loss.

    That’s not all folks!

    We know the word ‘automation’ makes us think that it’s a simple plug and play but it requires a systematic approach and implementation. You may also want to learn an array of additional tactics which you can leverage marketing automation for:

    The migration ride can be a bit tricky, fret not. Feel free to drop us a line at [email protected], and we’ll take it from there!
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