Switching to a new Email Service Provider (ESP) is a common scenario for many marketers. The success of your entire sending program hinges on how effectively you and your new ESP approach the onboarding process. Therefore, meticulous planning and execution are crucial for a successful migration.
Proper onboarding is essential for every email marketer to leverage the system effectively and achieve their email goals. An optimized onboarding process can even present opportunities for critical improvements. It’s a win-win for both new clients and vendors, where avoiding reputation-damaging activities that could lead to lower deliverability is paramount.
The value of professional assistance during a vendor transition cannot be overstated. This is the ideal time to seek the expertise of an email consultant or the vendor themselves. A clear sign of a good new ESP is a dedicated team ready to help you get started.
As Alex Turnbull from Groove aptly puts it: “The onboarding period is, for a business, perhaps the most critical time in a SaaS customer’s life.” Vendors who master this phase often see significantly higher customer retention rates.
Why Are You Changing Your ESP?
The primary reason companies decide to switch ESPs often boils down to inadequate customer support. A growing number of decision-makers are actively seeking vendors that provide cost-effective, integrated solutions, coupled with robust, responsive support. The ability to tap into the vendor’s experience is an invaluable asset in today’s competitive email landscape.
Other reasons for changing email providers can vary widely, including cost, limited functionalities, lack of specific integrations, or persistent deliverability issues. Beyond your specific motivations, the first question to address before initiating migration is: When is the optimal time to begin?
When Is the Best Time to Transition Between ESPs?
Email marketing remains the most effective digital communication channel, consistently driving traffic and revenue for businesses. It’s no wonder that the thought of migration can induce a significant headache for marketers, especially high-volume senders managing extensive lists and complex ongoing email marketing and automation programs.
Data from FreshMail’s clients indicates that the majority of their migrations from other ESPs occurred during these periods:
- January – March
- June – August
There isn’t a single “magic date” for switching email vendors. The perfect transition time largely depends on the industry a company operates in. However, it’s generally advisable to avoid migration during high sales seasons, such as the November-December Holiday period in retail. Different business types experience unique peaks and troughs in sales activities. Before committing to a migration timeline, analyze your email statistics to identify your calmest periods.
How Long Does ESP Migration Take?
Completely onboarding a new email service provider can typically take anywhere from 30 to 90 days. It’s crucial to factor this timeframe into your planning. Maintaining an overlap when transitioning from one ESP to another is highly recommended. This allows for a smooth termination of your old contract and ensures your new platform is 100% operational, preventing disruption to your critical email and sending programs.
What Should a Good ESP Help You With During Onboarding?
Onboarding is the critical process of bringing new clients up to speed, enabling the vendor and client to collaborate effectively. During this phase, both parties gain essential knowledge, understanding, and tools to build and maintain a strong working relationship.
Service quality truly matters. Well-established Email Service Providers understand the challenges their clients face. Choosing an ESP that prioritizes deliverability is paramount. A good ESP should offer new clients a dedicated Deliverability Team to facilitate a seamless transition between email solutions.
Not every employee at your email service provider will possess in-depth knowledge of IP usage or strategies to avoid spam filters. Therefore, having a specialized Deliverability Team working directly with you is absolutely essential.
Deliverability and Technical Assistance
Transitioning between ESPs inherently affects your associated IP-based reputation with your subscribers’ various inbox providers. Consequently, maintaining your deliverability rate will be your primary focus during this period.
A proactive and consultative approach from your new ESP should cover all technical and strategic aspects. If your switch was prompted by deliverability issues, ensure your new ESP helps you diagnose the root cause and advises on better email practices. They might recommend a dedicated IP address or suggest a shared pool as the best choice for your needs. You should also expect comprehensive help with:
- Setting up authentication: This includes SPF records (highly recommended though not always essential), DKIM configuration, and DMARC if necessary.
- Handling your data structure and ensuring seamless data migration.
- Re-setting webform integrations to ensure continuous lead capture.
- Re-setting external integrations with other marketing tools.
- Providing thorough tool training and ongoing customer support.
An Action Plan for Seamless Onboarding Your New ESP
Whether you’re working with a dedicated representative from your ESP or managing the process internally, these are the crucial actions you must take during the migration process:
1. Set Deadlines and Milestones for Migration
Develop a comprehensive project plan. Start by evaluating your current email strategy, identifying what works well and what needs improvement. Clearly define your goals, outline a detailed plan, and set specific targets to strive for.
2. Clean and Prepare Your Email Lists
Before transferring any data, download all hard bounces, spam complaints, and unsubscribes from your lists stored in your previous email provider. This step will significantly impact your deliverability with the new ESP. Under no circumstances should you upload these email addresses to your new provider’s account. Contacting such subscribers using a new ESP will damage your email marketing campaigns and severely harm your sender reputation.
Next, identify the most active segment of your subscribers and divide them into groups that will be gradually added to the new platform and your marketing communications. Confirm that all your lists are permission-based and fully comply with all relevant email regulations.
3. Prepare Email Marketing Settings
Before you transfer your email database, ensure all your processes and email business rules are fully implemented into the new system. Create a detailed list of all data that needs to be transferred, including:
- Users and permissions
- Segments and selections
- Triggered email campaign rules
- External integrations
- Lists of opt-in forms, templates, and images, etc.
4. Warm Up the New IP Address
New IP addresses require a warming-up period before you can begin sending at full volume, which can typically take a few weeks. Your new provider should be able to assist you with this process, but it will undoubtedly require you to track every single campaign going out.
To best aid this transition and ideally avoid taking a hit to your deliverability, definitely stay away from uploading your complete email database into the new system all at once!
To protect your deliverability, first identify and export the top 30% of your most active subscribers from your existing lists and import them into the new system. Create and send your first campaign to this segment, subtly asking subscribers to add your new sender address to their contact list and informing them of the platform change.
Repeat this process with the next 30% of your original list over the following two weeks, making sure to send at least one (ideally two) campaigns. After another two weeks, move the final section of your list over and send a campaign.
This phased method allows your new infrastructure to be recognized by your subscribers’ inbox providers as a sender of highly engaged emails. It significantly mitigates any damage to your associated reputation caused by the change in sending infrastructure, drastically reducing the chance that your new IPs and sending domains will be flagged as suspicious, as they are now properly associated with your email campaigns.
According to Laura Atkins, it is both likely and normal to observe a change in deliverability or engagement metrics when moving to a new platform, sometimes because different platforms measure and report these metrics differently.
Important Risks and Costs of Changing ESPs
Each undelivered email represents a missed business opportunity. Your biggest concern during a transition is the potential for a new platform to cause a drop in your deliverability. Honesty is the best policy, so you should not hesitate to ask your potential vendors about risks related to their platform infrastructure, including any history of black-listed senders, domains, or historical underperformance in certain inbox domains.
Switching vendors invariably generates costs, but these are often for a good reason. Ensure you include the following potential costs in your plans:
- Costs of integration processes with your existing tools.
- Costs related to the time and training required for your team.
- Costs related to potential data loss during the transfer process.
A properly conducted onboarding process should empower you to clean your lists, maintain a well-segmented database, and, most importantly, experience a boost in your domain reputation.