This article is for those new to Emma and provides a checklist of steps to take before you migrate your email marketing and send your first Emma email campaign.

During the process of moving or migrating your email marketing to Emma, our aim is to optimize your chances of having your emails delivered securely and to do it in as little time as possible. To help make your transition as smooth as possible, we've outlined some useful steps that should be taken before you begin sending.

During your first 6 months with Emma, be sure to download this handy guide for quick links to other useful articles detailing everything that you need to know to create an effective and engaging email marketing plan. Feel free to also check out our Emma 101 page for a webinar, video tutorials, and more to help you get started!

Before you move or migrate your email marketing

Step 1: Review your signup methods

Take a moment to review where your subscribers have come from, so you can prepare to redirect these subscription sources to your Emma audience. Ask yourself:

• Have the contacts in your audience explicitly opted in to receive marketing messages from you?
• Can you list where your subscribers came from?

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In order to adhere to best practices, as well as federal and international laws, we have certain permission requirements, so if any of your subscribers don’t meet these requirements, it's important that you DO NOT import them into your Emma audience; doing so could result in your account being suspended. For more information, please refer to our Services Agreement, Acceptable Use Policy, and Anti-Spam Policy.

Step 2: 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 identify why?
• Review your email templates: Are they optimized for mobile? Rest assured that our editor creates responsive, on-brand templates, whether you use a pre-built template or make your own from scratch.

Step 3: Export your contacts and reports

Knowing who not to email is just as important as knowing who to email. That's why honoring existing opt-outs and removing inactive or invalid email addresses is fundamental to a healthy email marketing strategy.

Exporting reports containing your historic engagement metrics (opens, clicks, unsubscribes, etc.) helps you set benchmarks for future email campaigns and make informed decisions about your email marketing strategy. All email marketing services are different, and this can be evident when comparing campaign reports. Learn more about how Emma calculates performance metrics like opens and clicks, as we may differ from your previous provider.

Before you leave your existing email marketing service, be sure to:

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

Step 4: Review your audience for engagement

If a contact has not engaged with any of your emails or purchased something from you in the last 12 months, then you should not continue sending to them. Instead, opt them out so that they no longer receive emails from you. While this might seem counterintuitive, removing unengaged contacts actually helps protect your sending reputation and can improve your deliverability. It's important to review and validate your audience for engaged email addresses on a regular basis.

Step 5: 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 that you might have forgotten.

Before you send your first email campaign with Emma

Follow the steps below before sending your first campaign with Emma to give yourself the best chance at positive delivery and engagement.

1. Set up a custom domain for sending

   Free webmail addresses (Yahoo, AOL, Gmail, Outlook, etc.) used as the “From” address look more suspicious than those from custom domains, and emails sent from these domains are almost always rejected by receiving servers. This is true no matter which ESP you use.

2. Authenticate your domain

   Set up authentication to reduce the likelihood of your emails being sent to spam or rejected completely. Many major inbox providers require DMARC and DKIM authentication, at minimum, so it is vital that you do not skip this step.

3. 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. However, if you've been sending from a freemail address, like those described in step 1, that is an exception to this rule; in that case, it is far better to switch to a new sender email using a domain that you own, than it is to stick with a freemail sender email that you've used for a long time.

4. Unsubscribed and bounced contacts

   Export all of the unsubscribed email addresses from your old ESP and import them into Emma. Once the import is complete, change their status to Opt-out. Follow the same steps for error / bounced contacts in a separate import by changing their status to Error. This will help make sure that you don't accidentally send to any contacts who have already unsubscribed or whose email addresses are invalid.

5. Active, engaged contacts

   Create a new audience group and import your contacts. During this step, you will also be able to map additional contact information, such as addresses, states, countries, and more to your custom contact fields.

6. Segment your audience

   Create segments to divide your audience into subsets based on subscriber data. Segments are dynamic and will update automatically when a contact's information changes.

7. Customize signup forms

   Create a new or update the existing default signup form. You can also customize your Subscription Center, which is what your contacts will see when they click Manage preferences in your email footer.

8. 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 audience at once, you may want to consider smaller, targeted sends to increase your engagement rates.