LESSONS LEARNED FROM SWITCHING EMAIL PLATFORMS TWICE IN THREE MONTHS
I wish I could tell you the whole backstory of switching email platforms TWICE over the span of three months, but this post would be wayyy too long.
So I'm gonna give you the CliffsNotes version of this insane journey to be as straight to the point as possible so you can learn from my mistakes.
Timeline overview
Here are the three email marketing platforms I've used and the timeline of when I used each platform:
Active Campaign - December 2020 to October 2023
Drip - October 2023 to November 2023
ConvertKit* - November 2023 to now
I'm a bad news first type of gal so next, I'm gonna share the cons of each software followed by the pros.
Active Campaign
Cons:
I can feel my blood pressure rising as I type this so I'm not gonna go into detail, but the entire software was just painfully SLOW.
The email builder was horrible 🙅🏻♀️
The emails would look fine in AC itself, but when you send a test email to yourself the formatting somehow gets messed up.
It was starting to get expensive 🫠
The opt-in forms are very basic, so I ended up using the forms on Squarespace and used Zapier to make them "talk" to each other.
Somehow AC would always f up the pre-selected audience of the emails. For example: if I excluded a segment from receiving an email, they would still somehow receive it.
Pros:
Hands down the most versatile and customizable automation builder - this was the main reason I stayed with AC for so long.
AC integrates with a lot of other softwares without Zapier.
This was a "nice to have" thing, but as someone who loves to segment, I loved being able to add multiple tags at once.
Drip
Cons:
I can't add multiple tags at once in Drip.
I can't see who clicked a link in an email unless I set up trigger links beforehand.
I didn't love the email builder for one-off emails.
It doesn't connect with ManyChat natively.
I have a potty mouth and sometimes I like to drop some curse words in my emails to get my point across lol. WELL, I learned the hard way that Drip will put you in email jail and not send out your emails if they detect any curse words 🤬
Any photos/GIFs added to your email sequences will not automatically display for your subscribers unless you turn off a setting within each email to automatically display the image.
The onsite campaign redirect settings (more on this below.)
Pros:
The entire software was user-friendly and responsive (unlike AC.)
I LOVED the design of their opt-in forms AKA onsite campaigns, BUT remembering to check the mobile vs desktop form submission redirect was annoying.
The email sequences were easy to use and set up!
The automations were very robust like AC.
ConvertKit
Cons:
Similar to Drip, I can't add multiple tags at once.
The automation triggers, filters, and actions are not as robust as AC or Drip.
Pros:
ConvertKit's interface is very easy to use and responsive.
It integrates with almost any software without Zapier, including ManyChat.
Easy to design email templates.
It's not crazy expensive.
I love the concept of the Creator Network - this is a feature that allows other ConvertKit users to recommend your email list to their subscribers!
Everything in ConvertKit is super straightforward. While I loved how robust AC and Drip were, I love the simplicity of ConvertKit cause they make it easier to keep track of ALL the automations, triggers, link triggers, etc.
This brings me to....
Lessons I've Learned:
Make sure the new platform you are migrating to plays nicely with the existing software in your tech stack: double-check the native integrations and zap possibilities. THIS was the ultimate deal breaker for me with Drip. I rely heavily on ManyChat for my business and when I realized I would have to create a zap for all my existing ManyChat workflows just to connect the data to Drip, I knew it wasn't the software for me.
Determine which crucial user experience things matter to you: Yeah, it's a bit annoying that I can't add a bunch of tags at once, I didn't mind it too much because ConvertKit's interface is super quick and I can get things done really quickly within the platform, AND their email builder is perfect for me since I have absolutely no design skills.
Start by migrating over a small group of contacts: Whenever I do email migrations, I always migrate the contacts last. BUT I'm gonna change that rule to: migrate ALL the contacts last. If I were to migrate platforms again, I would practice sending out newsletters or one-off emails to a small group of contacts. This helps with familiarizing yourself with the email builder and making sure it is user-friendly for you.
PHEW. That was a lot!
I wanted to share all of that as straightforwardly as possible so you can easily see my thought process behind these migrations and hopefully avoid making some of the mistakes I made 😅
And if an email platform migration is in the near future for you, I highly recommend using the Email Migration Checklist to guide you through this process.
Seriously, that checklist saved my sanity in this whole process!
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