Migrate from HubSpot to ActiveCampaign

Despite the size of your business and the amount of data that needs to be migrated, the migration process can be a challenging task. At the same time, it's a great time to reassess your marketing strategies, identify what needs to be improved and consider new trends.

In this article, we'll walk you through the key steps of the migration process to help you migrate your customer data and share our best practices.

Before we begin, it’s important to point out the different terminologies that both platforms use:

HubSpot	ActiveCampaign
Contact Properties	Custom Fields
Email	Campaign
File Manager	Image Manager
Lead Flow	Site Message
Smart List	Segment
Static List	List
Workflow	Automation
Workflow Settings	Automation
Workflow Goal	Goal (in Automation Actions)

Cleaning your import file

Aside from terminology, the other main difference to point out is the number of Contact Properties, or Fields each platform offers. Hubspot has around 200 standard Contact Properties, whereas ActiveCampaign offers six default fields with the option to create as many custom fields as you like.

The six standard fields that ActiveCampaign offers are: Full Name, First Name, Last Name, Phone, and Organization.

We recommend reviewing your Hubspot export and pare down the number of fields to only what you need. This will keep you and your team more organized and it will be easier for you to locate data.

For more tips on cleaning up your file, be sure to check out the troubleshooting imports article.

Learn how to import contacts with multiple tags. Learn how to import contacts with multiple values in the same field.

Exporting from Hubspot

Save two versions of your file

Make sure to save your original Hubspot export file and then create a new, clean file for importing. That way, if at a later date you find that you do need certain fields in ActiveCampaign, you can easily re-import your contacts with those fields.

Just make sure to check the “Update Contacts” field on the import page.

Export contacts with all fields

1. Log into your hubspot account.
2. From the main dashboard, click “Contacts” located in the top navigation.
3. Select “Contacts” from the drop-down menu.
4. You will be directed to the Contacts page. Click the “Options” menu, then click “Export.”

Export all contacts with specific fields

1. Log into your hubspot account.
2. From the main dashboard, click “Contacts” located in the top navigation.
3. Select “Contacts” from the drop-down menu.
4. Click “Add filter” and select the properties you wish to export.
5. You then have the option to export directly with those properties, or save the filter and export later.

Importing to ActiveCampaign

Checklist

• Create your ActiveCampaign account
• Import your contacts
• Segment your contacts into lists
• Setup your templates
• Rebuild your automations
• Update your Hubspot templates for ActiveCampaign

1. Create your ActiveCampaign account

If you haven't already, create an account with ActiveCampaign.

2. Import your contacts

The first step when setting up ActiveCampaign is to import your contacts. It’s generally safest to do this before you create any automations or campaigns, so that no messages are sent accidentally.

• Click "Contacts" in the left-hand navigation
• Click "Import" in the top right menu
• Click "Import File" and select the CSV file you exported from Hubspot
• Map the columns in your CSV to the fields in ActiveCampaign
• Select a list you'd like to import these contacts into (optional)
• Click "Import Now"

Once the file has finished importing you should be able to verify that the contacts were imported by clicking on ‘Contacts’ in the left-hand navigation.

Tags

If you used tags in Hubspot, you’ll notice an option to import these with your contacts. Some users prefer to start from a clean slate (particularly if their tagging system had become unmanageable) while others choose to preserve this data. This is completely up to you, and will likely depend on how you use tags.

3. Segment your contacts into lists

With your contacts imported, it's now a good time to segment them into lists. You could recreate the 'Segments' that you used in Hubspot or start from scratch.

We recommend keeping your lists broad (e.g. leads, customers, lost customers) so they're easy to manage. It's worth noting that ActiveCampaign allows you to send emails to segments of a list, so there's no need to be too grnular with your lists.

4. Setup your templates

ActiveCampaign comes with a wide range of well-designed templates that you can use out of the box. If, however, you wish to import any custom branded templates that you were using in Hubspot now is a good time to import these.

You can either rebuild these using ActiveCampaign’s Email Designer, or you can copy and paste the HTML that you saved when you exported these from Hubspot.

This is also a good time to upload any visual assets that you’ll likely want to use in your email campaigns. If you have a folder of logos, product images, and other brand assets you can import these by clicking “Content” in the left-hand menu.