What to Expect When You’re Expecting…an ESP migration
March 19, 2023
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This is a great opportunity to clean your existing database before transferring it over. Merge similar fields, delete old ones, and fill in any data gaps. It's likely that there are several fields you’ve not been using, especially if you’ve changed ESPs in the past. Now is the time to get rid of them, so you don’t carry any unnecessary data with you. Clean and concise data is the holy grail of CRM success!
Alongside the active contacts you’ll have to transfer to your new platform, you’ll also need to load your unsubscribes. This ensures suppressed contacts don’t start receiving newsletters suddenly. It’s also a good idea to be supplying daily files of contacts who unsubscribed via old emails during the first month of the transition.
A key component of migrating to a new ESP is warming up the IP address. In simple English, this means allowing time for Inbox Providers like Gmail, Hotmail etc. to get familiar with your new IP address and recognise your emails as not spammy.
In order to make that happen, you need to create a send plan that includes daily sends of small volumes, segmented by Email Provider, starting from your most engaged subscribers.
Apart from creating buckets of data per Inbox Provider, ranked by engagement level, you should also segment your data by country or region of activity, e.g., UK/US or Europe/Americas.
This way, you can serve relevant content to your segments, increasing the chances of engagement and helping improve your deliverability.
Setting up the new proofing and seed lists in the new ESP will make your life-or the email marketer’s life-easier; both when it comes to approving campaigns and making sure all relevant stakeholders have a record of recent email campaigns.
It’s a great time to review these lists before setting them up in the new ESP, to ensure they’re still relevant for the current team structure and email production process.
Allow plenty of time for testing at this stage as tech platforms don’t always align perfectly with each other.
When the warm-up has been completed, it is time to connect the sign-up forms with the new ESP so that they feed straight to the new database. Allow plenty of time for testing at this stage as tech platforms don’t always align perfectly with each other.
Once this is done, you’re ready to launch your welcome program in the new platform, hooray! Right after you’ve tested the customer journeys vigorously, of course.
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Applying campaign best practices is always important, but it becomes even more important when you’ve just switched to a new ESP in order to prevent your emails from getting caught in the spam folder.
For example, maintaining a balance of text and image within the email, using alt tags in every image and A/B testing subject lines to achieve the optimum open rate in each send are all good ideas to increase engagement and achieve higher deliverability.
In our experience, having a capable migration team both on the company and the ESP side is the key differentiator between a smooth, successful migration and a two-month headache that ends with your brand’s reputation being damaged.
Weekly check-ins will ensure the project is on track. At Matterra, we always make sure to double-check all work being delivered from our client and the ESP migration team. It is astonishing how many mishaps can be caught just in time by taking this extra step.
Schedule training for any relevant team members a few days ahead of the launch on the new platform.
This way the whole team has time to get familiar with the new ESP before the first send, which can save a lot of stress on the first day and prevent mistakes from happening.
In the first weeks of launch, keep on top of any customer comments and complaints that relate to email marketing campaigns – and act on them, fast.
You’ll be able to course-correct quickly, rather than finding out about an issue that has been affecting your whole base for weeks before you figure it out yourself.
We hope this gives you a flavor of what to expect and how to prepare for a successful ESP transition. If that still sounds overwhelming, we’re here to look after it for you!
Drop us a line if you’d like our expert team to take it off your hands and deliver a successful and smooth ESP migration for you.
Why is data cleaning important during an ESP migration?
Cleaning your data ensures that only accurate, relevant information is transferred, which helps improve CRM success and email deliverability.
What is IP warming?
IP warming is the process of gradually increasing the volume of emails sent with a new IP address to build a positive reputation with ISPs.
How do I manage unsubscribes during the migration?
Ensure that your unsubscribed contacts are transferred to the new ESP to prevent them from receiving unwanted emails.
Why should I segment my data during the migration?
Segmenting your data helps tailor content to specific audiences, improving engagement and email deliverability.
