A marketing tool migration comes down to eight points: take inventory, map the fields, rebuild the forms, clean the database, don’t read the import as a signal, reconnect measurement, check the alerts, and keep an export before cutting the old tool. Here is the list, with what got in the way on mine.
I moved an entire site, forms, webinars and follow-ups, from an old marketing automation tool to a new one, while the site was being redesigned. These are the points that cost me the most time.
1. Take inventory before touching anything
List everything that exists: forms, scenarios, segments, fields, internal alerts, and the site pages that embed each form. I started with 31 forms. Two more were created in the old tool during the project and one was dropped: in the end, 32 forms rebuilt and published.
A tracking workbook serves as the reference: old ID, name, theme, new ID, target page, integration script. Without it, you can’t say what is left to do.
2. Map the fields, and decide before writing
I drew up a table of 75 field pairs. The most important part isn’t filling the table, it’s spotting what doesn’t match:
- Two competing fields for the same information (a dropdown and a free text, both called “job function”).
- Legacy duplicates from the old tool, to be ignored.
- A group of fields with no one-to-one equivalent (“latest resource”): you need a business rule to decide which one feeds what.
Nothing gets written in bulk until these ambiguities are settled.
3. Rebuild the forms from master templates
Rather than start from the new tool’s raw templates, which don’t have the right fields, I built a few master templates by hand: one with four fields, one with five including the phone number, one for press, one in a dark version. Then I duplicated them through the API to produce the 32 forms. The fine wiring (hidden fields, interests to tick) stays manual, in the new tool’s builder: I produce a task table rather than doing it for the user.
4. Clean the database before GDPR does it for you
The import had been done too broadly. I compared it against the old tool’s “addressable” segment, the one that already excluded hard bounces, unsubscribed contacts and customers: about 6,800 contacts outside that segment were deleted from the new tool. About a hundred contacts remain that are in the segment but not in the new tool, to import afterwards. Keeping a database clean and aligned with what is legitimately addressable avoids importing a liability.
5. Don’t read the import as a signal
In the following days, about 7,500 contacts showed up as recently “created”. I nearly read them as a spike of inbound leads: it was the database import, whose creation date is the import date. When a volume jumps recently, suspect an import, a migration or a change of measurement tool first. Same trap with a break in the visit statistics when the analytics tool changed: don’t compare either side without saying so.
6. Reconnect measurement
- Email links: without UTM parameters, clicks arrive as “direct” traffic. Set one convention (source, medium, campaign name) before the first sends.
- The masked source: if the form is hosted on a different domain from the site, many conversions seem to come from that domain. Exclude it from referral sites.
- Goals: check that the thank-you page is actually counted.
7. Check internal alerts end to end
Each form triggers an alert for the sales team. Submit a real test for each one: the notification must arrive, with the right subject and the right source page. A duplicated alert template easily keeps the mention of the previous page.
8. Keep an export before cutting
When you cut the old tool, its API stops: I found that the authentication address returned a 404 error. Before the cutover, keep a full export of submissions, with email, company and sales status, for example from 2020 to the cutover date. That is what lets you compare before and after afterwards.
Key takeaway
A successful migration doesn’t come down to the tool, but to the starting inventory and to discipline about ambiguities: competing fields, forgotten forms, import spikes, alerts still pointing to the old page. Write the list before starting, tick it off afterwards.