- November 25, 2014
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How to Duck Today’s Biggest eMail Migration Mistakes
Email migration mistakes could send your company’s reputation south for the summer – or longer, according to a recent MarketingProfs article, which describes five potentially fatal platform-switching blunders and how best to avoid them.
Switching’s OK. Struggling Isn’t.
For reasons ranging from pricing gotchas! to platform peccadillos, companies often change ESPs (email service providers) – about every two years, by one provider’s account. The feeling of having outgrown the platform and wanting to move on is another oft-cited reason for making such a switch.
Regardless of your reason, however, your migration will fly along more smoothly if you avoid these common mistakes.
On average companies switch email service providers every 2 years. Source: Clickmail
Not cleaning your list before jumping ship. Bounces, spam tags and other deliver-ability issues can be a major source of frustration for technical and marketing teams. Before migrating, spend time cleaning and optimizing your list. While you’re at it, look for opportunities to segment or re-segment your contacts, and reconfirm their interest in receiving future messages.
Expanding your platform but not your expertise. A bigger, cleaner, more robust mailing list is great for business. But if not properly nurtured, managing it can quickly get out of hand. After you switch ESPs, monitor team effectiveness and output quality
(along with open rates and click-throughs, of course). If, for example, design, headlines, subject lines and other creative essentials are not up to snuff, provide some additional training. If results are really below expectations, consider hiring someone with a deeper skill-set, prior platform experience, or both.
Damaging your prized reputation. Failing to migrate your list’s previously collected integrity and deliver-ability data, such as bounces, unsubscribes and spam complaints, can deal your “good mailer” reputation a near-fatal blow, the MarkingProfs article says. Make sure 100% of all such historical information transfers over before closing your current ESP account.
Not authenticating sender identity. Apologies to Cool Hand Luke’s Captain, but what you may have here is a failure to authenticate. Sender identity, that is. Without getting too technical, your IT staff will want to implement a couple of essential authentication methods in support of the migration, such as server verification and safeguarding against in-transit email hacks. The tech types will know what to do. But all the better if marketing is aware.
Getting complacent. Companies can inadvertently undo a successful email migration by assuming it’s finished when the data port-over is. In reality, it’s the beginning, not the end. Keeping up with compliance laws and preventing new deliverability issues make platform changing a living, breathing process, one that must be continually tested, monitored and refined to keep risks low and ROI high.
Following these steps can streamline your migration and preserve your hard-earned reputation as a virtuous, non-spamming emailer. Use this popular Tango tip list after you switch over to goose engagement and deliverability even further.
