Systematic Digital Marketing Platform Migration

The need to move digital marketing platforms for social media, email, and/or your website is becoming more common as tools evolve and develop.  The change might be necessitated by external factors, like one platform acquiring another. Or it could be internal factors driving  change like finding more appropriate platform pricing or services.  Many trainers, consultants, or professional coaches procrastinate on making these changes for fear that it will be an arduous undertaking. If you focus on the principles of the digital marketing platform rather than the individual tool, it helps to simplify the requirements and make a migration much less daunting.

There are five basic components that can make up a digital marketing platform:

1. Audience

Contact lists can be time consuming for a system to export if they are large but it doesn’t need to be cumbersome for the digital marketer. If you export all your data to a spreadsheet file, it’s typically a simple process to set up matching categories on the new platform and import it so that you have a direct conversion.

2. Communications

Email/Communication templates can be challenging to migrate if you are relying on system generated layouts. However, most platforms offer a large variety of formats so matching up the new platform to something similar as the old platform is typically not hard.  If you happen to use custom layouts then the code can typically be copied over to a new platform and appear exactly the same.

3. Tracking / Analytics

It’s best to download or archive your tracking data from your digital marketing platform because it’s rare to have that migrate. If you archive your analytics as saved charts or in a spreadsheet then you can continue your standard analysis without pause until you have sufficient data on the new platform.

4. Call to Action

System generated calls to action like forms or tracked links often function on a template system. It’s best to analyze which of these calls to action are active so that you can create a duplicate on the new system and relink to that across your marketing channels. If calls to action are old and inactive then it’s a good time to let them expire.

5. Social Media

This is typically a simple setup to set and link up your social media accounts. As long as you have the login information for those accounts readily available, you can quickly integrate social media on the new platform

Of course making a migration will take some time and effort so it’s not something to undertake habitually.  However, if you need to migrate because your current digital marketing platform is no longer available or is no longer meeting your needs, it doesn’t need to be fretted over.  Rather than focusing on all the details that might be different, set a plan for the five elements above.  If you successfully get those five items migrated, you won’t lose any critical component and figuring out the nuances of the new platform becomes a minor task.