5 points to remember when migrating from an ESP to a Marketing Automation Platform
Have you been using an email service provider to send out blanket email messages to your target audience? Have the traditional email service providers helped you realize your short-term marketing goals? Do you think your business is growing, and it is time to up your email marketing game? If the answer is yes, it is time for you to take the next step in the email marketing journey. It is time to invest in a marketing automation platform.
This article will take you through the importance of migrating your email marketing efforts into an email marketing automation platform and how to do it. But before that, let’s understand the basics.
What is an ESP?
An email service provider (ESP) makes it easy for people to build an email list, design emails, and send it to a list of subscribers. Small and medium businesses use ESPs to create emails, manage mailing lists, evaluate email campaign success, and so on. Some well-known email service providers are Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Sendinblue, Campaign Monitor, etc. These companies also provide additional features such as dynamic content in emails, A/B testing, segmentation, lead capture forms, and website tracking and analysis.
What is a Marketing Automation Platform?
There is a common misconception that email service providers and marketing automation platforms are similar. While they both are used for sending mass marketing and sales emails, a marketing automation platform is capable of handling a lot more. A marketing automation platform is capable of creating and sending personalized emails, building and launching landing pages, conducting SEO audits, tracking user behavior on websites, hosting webinars, providing market insights, and much more. Hubspot, Marketo, Pardot, etc., are some of the best marketing automation platforms available currently.
Why should you make a switch from ESP to Marketing Automation Platform?
While ESPs are a good start for businesses that are new to email marketing, for those who want to take their marketing strategy a few notches higher, a marketing automation platform is a great option. They offer a plethora of advanced features for creating, launching, tracking, testing, and optimizing email campaigns. Marketing automation platforms allow you to:
- Collaborate between sales and marketing through CRM
- Create high-quality email templates
- Create targeted campaigns based on user behavior
- Build segmented, targeted, and personalized emails for your campaigns
- Launch and track campaigns
- Test and optimize emails
Apart from these benefits, it allows marketers to allocate resources to specific tasks, which saves a lot of time and effort and makes it easy for campaign managers to scale the campaigns and execute them faster. It helps the sales and marketing teams to work collaboratively and work on only quality leads, thereby cutting down the average cost per lead. Moreover, with an automation platform, you can better segment and personalize your emails, which helps you in creating better customer experiences. Additionally, it gives you detailed insights into data across multiple channels such as website, social, email, etc. This can be used to optimize your campaigns for better results.
How to Migrate from an ESP to a Marketing Automation Platform?
Now that you know why you should move all your email marketing efforts into a marketing automation platform, here’s how to go about it.
Step 1: Choose the platform
The first and foremost step is to choose the right marketing automation platform for your business. With thousands of options available, it can be difficult to choose the best fit for your business needs. Hence, it is important to carefully analyze your marketing needs, budget, feature requirements, training, and support needs, etc. You need to have a clear idea of your marketing goals and requirements, and align them with the features and functionalities of the available platforms to come to a conclusion.
Step 2: Prepare for the migration
Once you have selected the platform, you must prepare for the migration. See where your business stands currently and analyze how the migration will hamper your ongoing strategies. Keep a check on your company’s performance and take necessary actions to make the migration smooth. Make sure you keep your email marketing activities going during the switch to keep your subscribers engaged and maintain a good reputation.
Step 3: Export all your data properly
To make the transition smooth, make a list of data that need to be migrated to the new platform and those that need to go away. Your email service provider database might have old email lists stored in which are not relevant anymore- such as unsubscribed users or incorrect email addresses. So, when you export and migrate your data into the new platform, it is important to delete all such irrelevant data and move only the useful ones.
Step 4: Set up automation
Your marketing automation platform will have a lot of automation options as compared to your email service providers. Hence, once the transfer of data is done, it is important to set up automation for your campaigns. Make the most of the available features to set up automation workflows, trigger-based emails, event-based messaging, etc. Set up different workflows and analyze their results to know what will work best for your specific campaign needs.
Step 5: Train your team
Since it is a new platform for your company, you might need to train your people to use it. Invest in training your team to use the platform efficiently to make the most out of it. The providers have a training and onboarding session to make your company familiar with their software. Take help from the marketing automation platform’s customer support from time to time to get a grip on the platform. Hiring an expert will help a great deal.
Wrapping Up
It might seem like a daunting task to migrate from your current ESP and start using a new platform. But if done right, it can bring unparalleled benefits to your overall email marketing strategy. If you need help with migrating to a marketing automation platform, an email marketing agency like ours can help. Get in touch with our experts today!
Author: Kevin George is the Head of Marketing at Email Uplers, one of the largest Email Templates production company which specializes in converting PSD to email templates. He loves gadgets, bikes, jazz, and breathes ‘email marketing’. He is a brand magician who loves to engage and share insights with fellow marketers.