Migrate from Keap 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.

Terminology

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

ActiveCampaign	Keap
Automations	Automations
Campaign	Campaign
Custom Objects	Custom Fields
Segments	Tags
Forms	Forms
Unsubscribed	Unsubscribed / Unmarketable

Exporting from Keap

Export your contacts

• Click Contacts > People in the left navigation. Click here to learn how to filter contacts.
• Select the contacts that you want to export or check the select all box at the top of the list.
• Click "Export" at the bottom of the page.
• The next step depends on your number of contacts:
  • For exports of 1,000 contacts or less, your export will be downloded directly as a CSV.
  • For exports of 1,001 contacts or more, enter an email address to receive a link to download your export and name your report if desired.
    Note: Your email will be provided in the field by default, but can be changed to any email. However, the recipient of the email must be able to log into the Keap app to download the file.
    • Click "Ok, got it".
    • Check your email for your export. If you gave the export a name, it will be included in the email subject.
    • You or the recipient of your email may be prompted to login to download the export if your session has timed out or you may be using a new device.
    • Your export will download automatically. Click "Ok, got it"
    • Locate the downloaded file to access your data.

FAQs

Importing to Activecampaign

Checklist

• Create your ActiveCampaign account
• Import your contacts
• Segment your contacts into lists
• Setup your templates
• Rebuild your automations
• Update your Keap 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 Keap
• 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 Keap, 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 Keap 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 Keap 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 Keap.

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.