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How to prepare for migrating your business to Ontraport

Do you need Ontraport support for a migration? Whether you are considering Ontraport as your next business move, or already started an account and are feeling lost, my aim here is to help you plan an easy and intentional migration for your existing business.

While you can certainly pick at random, or go for what feels easiest or most fun to try. Thinking through the steps and making decisions before you build anything will ensure that from the beginning you:

  • Know what is in your account and how to find it, and
  • Understand how the different elements and processes work together

This is an outline of the process I follow in planning a migration. There are many details to consider in a migration that are specific to each business. This should help you get an idea of what to think through and look out for when making your migration plan.

First, look at the big picture

Are you re-creating your systems as they exist, or are you taking this opportunity to streamline and make some changes? 

There isn’t necessarily a right or wrong answer to this. If you already run a tight ship, or you recently streamlined your offerings, then you probably want to bring over everything that’s still working for you. 

The idea is to get clear on which parts of your business are still relevant and important, and make a plan for how to migrate those. This will also help you decide if you need Ontraport support, or you want to handle it yourself.

Which of your programs, services or products do you still want to offer? 

Which of your free offers are still relevant and should remain live?

Then, evaluate your processes

Once you have decided which of your offers (paid and free) should remain live, look at the processes behind each. 

Some may be as simple as Contact submits form > Contact is added to campaign and sent 3 emails over 6 days > Contact is added to newsletter

But some of your offers, especially paid ones, may involve a lot more. This is a good time to review what happens when someone becomes interested in and then buys from you. 

Is there a sales page that leads to a checkout form? What happens when they check out? Is there a receipt? A confirmation email? Do you send a contract? Do they gain immediate access to anything? Are there any manual interventions from your team?

Your goal in this review is to find anything that you can simplify or automate to improve your efficiency. This is also a great time to find ways to improve the experience you are providing for your customers. 

When I help my clients with migrations, we talk through each process step by step, and I take notes and ask questions to plan how to re-build these processes using Ontraport’s features in a way that makes them easier and smoother for everyone. 

Ontraport support- example of process summary

Other processes to consider are: follow up on failed payments, abandoned cart follow ups, engagement tracking campaigns, etc. 

Inventory existing assets

Once you have made some big-picture decisions about what parts of your business are still relevant, it’s time to get into details. Look through your old systems and evaluate each asset that is present to decide if you still need them. 

I’m talking about all your tags, fields, forms, pages, automations, etc. I like to make a list of each asset type in a spreadsheet, and make notes about what is needed and what can be left behind. 

Use the decisions you made in Steps 1 and 2 to guide you. If you have been using your previous system for a long time, and/or have decided to cut out some of your offers, then you may have lots of items that are no longer needed.

Ontraport support - migration spreadsheet example
Review
  • Forms – identify which of your forms are still live somewhere, and decide if you want them to remain available for opt ins. 
  • Tags – go over your existing tags and decide whether you still need the information they provide. You will recreate the tags you want to keep in Ontraport and assign the same group of people to them (or replace tags with fields, but you can decide that later). For example, if you ran a challenge 5 years ago, but don’t care to know who signed up for it anymore, then you don’t need to re-create that tag in Ontraport. However, if you use a tag to identify people who are currently paying members of a program, then you definitely want to keep that.  
  • Landing pages – If you have landing pages not created in your WordPress website, figure out which of them are still in use and relevant.
  • Automations/sequences/campaigns – Review any existing automations in your current system, and identify which are still in use and should be re-created in your new Ontraport account. 
  • Emails – Aside from emails that are part of your automations, are there any other emails you want to save?
  • Products – How many different services/packages/programs do you sell? Which ones have you retired?
  • Order forms – What do you currently use to take payment for your services or products? Whether you plan to replace your current setup with Ontraport or not (but you probably should 😉 ), you should still identify what your current offers are and any places where they are currently available for sale. You will either replace them with Ontraport checkout forms, or make sure you connect your new delivery campaigns to your existing sales forms.    
  • Etc. – What other items might you replace with Ontraport? Do you have an affiliate program? A membership site? Do you send text messages? Are you using lead scoring?
Identify the location of relevant assets.

This step works in conjunction with the evaluation of forms and pages above. You should:

  • Review your existing website and identify all opt in forms that are currently working with your existing system. Then, decide which you want to keep, and therefore replace with Ontraport forms or hook up to Ontraport via integrations. 
  • Do you use landing page software to make pages (meaning, pages you build outside of your wordpress or squarespace site)? If so, identify which are live, and whether you want to integrate them or re-build them in Ontraport. 

Add urls to your spreadsheet where possible so it’s easy to find what you need later.

Make a plan 

Once you are clear on what should be part of your migration, make a plan for the order of things. 

Again, do this in a big picture way first, and then details. Decide which of your offers or processes to focus on first, rather than trying to tackle everything at once. And then, make a plan for each of those processes. 

Sometimes it makes sense to start with the smallest offer as you’re getting to know how Ontraport works. Sometimes it makes sense to go for the big one first because it will help you find the details you may have overlooked and will make everything else easier.  

In step 2, when you reviewed your processes, you likely sketched out how each of them will work in Ontraport. Now that it’s time to get building, I recommend starting with the building blocks, and then making all the connections. 

That means creating the emails, the pages, the forms, fields or tags that will be part of one system or process, first. And then tying them all together by building your campaign. 

As a general rule, I also follow this order when completing a migration: 

  1. Rebuild your systems in Ontraport
  2. Replace your public assets where needed (pages, opt in forms, checkout forms)
  3. Then import your contacts into Ontraport. 

Following that order ensures that you won’t have contacts falling through cracks and getting lost while you’re making changes.  

And speaking of importing contacts? You should definitely clean your list before you bring them into Ontraport. Only import valid email addresses, and preferably contacts that have been actively opening and engaging with your emails. 

Conclusion

In summary, review and evaluate your business starting with the big picture and ending with the details. Decide what stays and what goes. Make a plan for the order of things. Start building, one process at a time, making the elements first and then building your campaigns. 

Replace all public-facing assets, and then import your contacts into Ontraport

This is a high-level overview of the process of a migration. Each business has many specific details to consider in a migration, but getting help from an expert (like me!) can save you time and frustration.  

You can learn more about me and how I provide Ontraport support here.

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