Below is a checklist to help you with moving your email marketing to Campaign Monitor. Use it to optimize your chances of getting email delivered, and to get sending in as little time as possible.

Each step is essential to ensure your future email marketing is as successful, if not more so than before. If you have any questions, please contact us. Our team of email experts is here to help you get started.

Before you move

Use the checklist below before switching to help make your transition as smooth as possible.

Review your subscription methods

By taking a moment to review where your subscribers have come from, you can prepare to redirect these subscription sources to your Campaign Monitor subscriber lists. This will also help you work fast and effectively with our deliverability and compliance team to get your lists approved for sending.

• Have the people on your email list explicitly opted-in to receive marketing messages from you?
• Can you list where your subscribers came from?

Review what's not working

There's always room for improvement with email marketing, and transitioning to a new email marketing service is a great opportunity to make impactful change.

• Review your metrics. Are some emails doing better than others? Can you see why?
• Review your email templates. Are they optimized for mobile? Our email builder creates responsive, on-brand templates.

Export your email lists and reports

Knowing who not to email is just as important as knowing who to email. Honoring earlier unsubscribes and removing inactive and invalid email addresses is fundamental to a healthy email marketing strategy.

Exporting your reports helps you set benchmarks for future email campaigns, and our team to assess the health of your subscriber lists and make recommendations.

Before you leave your existing email marketing service, don't forget to:

• Export your email subscriber lists.
• Export unsubscribed and bounced/held email addresses.
• Export previous email campaign reports.
• Export subscriber engagement reports.

Review your lists for engagement

We recommend only sending to email addresses that have shown some engagement in the last 12 months. After vetting your lists, for extra peace of mind, you can use an email data validation service such as datavalidation.com or kickbox.io.

• Review and validate your lists for engaged email addresses.

Plan a gradual transition

While it might be tempting to export all your data and immediately shut down your old email marketing account, we recommend keeping both accounts open for a week or two. This way you can gather any final unsubscribes and bounce reports from your old platform, and give yourself time to export any data you may have missed.

• Wait 1-2 weeks before shutting down your old account.

Before you send

Follow the steps below before sending your first campaign with Campaign Monitor, to give you the best chance at delivery and engagement.

• Add all the unsubscribed and bounced/held email addresses you exported to your account's suppression list. This will prevent sending to email addresses that have already unsubscribed, or are invalid.
• Create a new subscriber list and import your email subscribers. During this step you will also be able to map additional subscriber information, such as addresses, states, countries and more to custom fields.
• Set up segments to split your subscriber list into groups based on subscriber data, which you can then send individual campaigns, or show specific content in your email campaigns with dynamic content.
• Update your signup forms and apps to sync with your subscriber lists.
• Set up authentication to increase the likelihood of your email being delivered successfully.
• Set up a custom domain so that all links in your email campaign use your own domain name, and so you can log into Campaign Monitor using that domain name.
• Consider your From name. If you've been sending from a specific name or email address for a long time, your best bet is to stay consistent, unless you've had a chance to inform subscribers in advance of the change.
• Review your send history. If it's been a few months since your last campaign, it might be worth sending a re-engagement campaign. Instead of emailing your entire list at once, you may want to consider smaller, targeted sends to increase your engagement rates.
• Set up a draft campaign and add your recipients, to prepare for the approval process. Subscriber lists above a certain size are subject to a routine review by our Deliverability and Compliance team prior to sending. By starting this process early, you can get an early start and can avoid potential delays to your sending.

Reporting

All email marketing services are different, and this can be evident when comparing campaign reports. How Campaign Monitor calculates performance metrics like opens and clicks can differ from other providers.

If you have any questions about your campaign results or the advice in this guide, please contact our support team.