Website Migration Checklist for Moving into HubSpot
For every scaling business and those looking to expand their reach, there comes a time they outgrow their existing systems and software. Usually, conventional email systems and Excel spreadsheets can’t pace up at the rate an organization leader wants to grow.
Though, the migration process for most seems time-consuming, complex and sometimes expensive, but with HubSpot it’s different. The scalability and simple, yet infinitely powerful, automation functions are a few among the many reasons companies adopt HubSpot.
Here, we have pocketed some unskippable aspects of the HubSpot migration roadmap to ensure you successfully shift from alternative options to HubSpot from start to finish.
But, first…
Table of Contents
Prepare!
“Prepare” is the first and foremost step to migrating your website to Hubspot, ensuring you are all set to make a move. It’s a big commitment to make, and the entire migration process takes time, but you can ensure that everything moves smoothly by understanding what you are actually migrating to Hubspot.
The Must – “Understand What’s Migrating”
Often, you would have heard, “I’m migrating my company to Hubspot”. That is a broad-stroke statement to make – actually too broad. Instead, it would help if you acknowledged what you’re migrating.
Hubspot has five main products you could move your existing system into:
Marketing Hub
Landing pages, Marketing emails, etc.
CRM
Contact data, Contact activity and so on.
Service Hub
Tickets, Ticket pipeline, and many more
Sales Hub
Email sequences, detail, etc
CMS
The actual website, forums and so forth.
Here’s your handy checklist that will help you get the right mindset to undertake such a big change. Plus, have a transparent explanation of any limits that apply.
Well, you’ll see Hubspot’s limit isn’t that limiting at all!
Let’s start!
Marketing Hub: Revamp With Existing Content
Recreate your content within the Marketing Hub rather than opting for a migration.
Why?
Because with Marketing Hub, all your marketing tools and data are easy-to-use. Besides, Marketing Hub is created with scalability and optimization in mind, saving valuable time and getting all the context you need to attract and convert potential customers at scale.
Populate the current templates with your existing content, like marketing emails and landing pages. The drag-and-drop style editors are an excellent choice for new users who need to be tech-savvy.
Else, you can also use your earlier lead-scoring mechanics and populate your own lead scoring within the marketing portal.
CRM: Ensure Easy Imports
Hubspot’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool is dynamic, but if not used rightly, can prove to be a big chaos. So, before putting all of your contacts from your legacy system into Hubspot, consider the three-phase approach.
Phase One: Pilot Sample
It’s important to have an insight of mechanics to import your contact, ensuring you’re mapping the right contact fields.
Here, in Hubspot the key unique identifier is the contact’s email address. This will be crafting the new record. If you have companies related with contacts, locations, job title, phone number, etc, they all need to be precisely mapped.
💡 Tip: Don’t import more than 100 contacts in this pilot. Also, make sure the data is clean and organized.
Phase Two: Simple Contacts
Easily import your contacts that are simple and straightforward. Even, it’s okay if you don’t have all pieces of data for all contacts while importing.
Phase Three: Complicated Contacts
These consist of the contacts that are unique to your business, like:
- The one having multiple addresses
- Possibly key ambassadors
- High-value prospects
So, importing these contacts in a small group is advisable to avoid future mistakes like sending a poorly targeted marketing email to someone who is about to sign off on a big deal.
Service Hub: Migrate Over Five Days
It’s probably evident through earlier recommendations that I support migration instead of a one-time process. I recommend Service Hub, which most companies often use for a ticketing and help-desk-style support system.
During the five-day migration, like the first day (Monday), migrate all earlier closed tickets into Hubspot with the naming convention that consists of the word “Historical” or put them in a pipeline to ensure they don’t get mixed with new tickets.
Besides, for the rest of the day, any new tickets will go through Hubspot instead of your legacy system. Moreover, during 1-4 days allow your team to close out any open tickets from the legacy system.
On the fifth day, migrate recently closed tickets, and then import the pending open tickets to Hubspot.
Sales Hub: Migrating Deals
The big piece of migration for the Sales Hub is the “Migration of Deals”.
There are two methods to achieve this:
- Rebuilding them
- Importing them
Mostly, a two-part approach is recommended.
Part One – Import Closed Won-Deals
Having closed-won deals from a legacy system – probably hundreds or thousands – portrays an import might be the best and most efficient route. , export the data from your legacy system, clean and format it within Excel, and then import these into a pipeline or a closed-won stage in your main pipeline.
Part two – Deal Owners Migrate Open Deals
The core objective behind recommending deal owners migrate their open deals is to help them understand and get familiar with Hubspot and ensure the data captured through the migration is present.
Also, this migration phase is an excellent choice for using templates, sequences, and snippets. Though earlier, many companies didn’t have access, if yours had, this is the right time to craft and organize from the beginning.
CMS
Your present website, a CMS, is an inescapable element of your web presence.
You have done hard work in the past several years to build strong search engine optimization (SEO) and create web traffic. Besides, there are numerous pitfalls when it comes to migrating a CMS and website properly, that of course include URL structures, redirects temporary and permanent, technical SEO functionality and HTML markup.
So, to avoid any slipups, it’s better to evaluate whether or not this is the right time for a new website build, or better to bet on migrating your current website over. And, if you are migrating, it’s advisable to ask an experienced company to execute the successful migration for you.
If you are wondering WHY?
It’s because if things don’t go as planned or there’s a misstep, who will you rely on to come to your rescue? Each minute your website is down, you are losing potential leads and customers.
So, here a highly skilled team who has performed migrations in the past will know where the pitfalls are and can ensure a seamless transition.
Finally…
In a nutshell, the complexity level within your migration from your previous solution into Hubspot will drive the strategy, timelines, and approaches to ensure a seamless and straightforward process.
So, without any second thought, use a HubSpot migration checklist, like the one discussed, create a plan, test the plan, carry migration, and then track your progress to ensure you are harnessing all that Hubspot has to offer.
If you still need any help with migration, get in touch with marketing experts to kickstart!
Amrita Jaswal
What do I love about my work? Helping small business owners find uncomplicated ways to grow their own businesses. I’m always on the lookout for businesses who are interested in applying innovative tech strategy to their marketing plans.
When I’m not helping small businesses get better, you can find me on my couch watching Friends or Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Latest posts by Amrita Jaswal (see all)
- Website Migration Checklist for Moving into HubSpot - December 2, 2022
- RPA Benefits vs Cost of Integration – Deciphered! - October 27, 2022
- RPA Use Cases In The Real World [Updated 2022] - October 18, 2022
