Escaping the horror of migrating your marketing automation platform

Migrating from one marketing automation platform (MAP) to another is supposed to be exciting. You’re moving into a smarter, faster, shinier home for your marketing. Better integrations, slicker automation, cleaner reporting... it’s everything you’ve been promised in those glossy vendor demos.

But if you’ve ever been through it before, you’ll know the truth: MAP migration feels a lot less like a dream home makeover and a lot more like a horror film marathon. One minute you’re feeling optimistic, the next you’re trapped in a maze of broken integrations, cursed data, and mysterious errors that only appear at 2 a.m.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Yes, migrating platforms will always be a complex project, but it doesn’t need to be a bloodbath. By recognising the real monsters that creep into migrations and knowing how to handle them, you can turn the horror story into a thriller with a happy ending.

Act one: The hidden monsters

Every good horror movie starts with a calm, happy scene. The new house looks perfect, the family is smiling, and nothing could possibly go wrong. Then the lights start flickering.

In MAP migrations, the flickering lights usually come in the form of data. On the surface, everything looks manageable, a few hundred thousand contacts, some well-used nurture programs, a couple of reports that leadership “must have.” But the moment you start digging, you discover the graveyard. Years of duplicate contacts, junk leads with fake email addresses, ancient campaigns that nobody has touched since 2017, and integration fields that no one can even explain anymore.

Drag all of that into your shiny new platform, and you’re not upgrading, you’re just importing ghosts. And these aren’t friendly, Casper-style ghosts. They’re the kind that break campaigns, confuse your sales team, and make every report look suspicious.

Then comes the timeline. Somewhere in the business, a decision gets made: The new system has to be live by “end of quarter.” Never mind that nobody has mapped processes yet, tested integrations, or trained the team. The deadline is set, and now the project feels less like a thoughtful transition and more like a slasher flick: lots of running, lots of screaming, and a very real chance that something gets left behind in the dark.

And finally, there’s the team. They’ve just about mastered the quirks of your old MAP, only to be told that everything is changing. The way they built campaigns? Different. The reports they relied on? Rebuilt. Even the login screen is enough to throw them off balance. If the change isn’t handled carefully, adoption drops like the classic horror movie character who wanders off alone into the woods.

Act two: Rewriting the script

Here’s where you take control of the storyline. You can’t stop a MAP migration from being challenging, but you can stop it from turning into a horror show.

The first step is accepting that a migration isn’t just a technical project. It’s a strategic reset. Treat it as an opportunity to tidy up, reimagine, and improve, rather than simply dragging the past into a new box. Think of it as a chance to burn the haunted house down and rebuild it properly, without the creaky floorboards and suspicious noises.

Start with the data. Yes, cleaning and standardising your database feels tedious, but it’s the marketing equivalent of an exorcism. Deduplicate, normalise, and throw out the records that no longer serve you. Don’t wait until after you’ve migrated to find the demons, by then, they’ll already be making themselves at home.

Next, map out your processes. Too many migrations fail because businesses try to force their old ways of working into a new system. But different platforms have different strengths and weaknesses. If your old MAP required three steps to build a campaign and your new one only requires one, don’t waste time recreating the same clunky workflow. Use the migration to redesign how you work.

Testing is the unsung hero of every successful migration. The marketing team that launches blind is like the character who ignores the warning signs and goes down into the basement anyway. Don’t do it. Test campaigns in parallel, validate data syncs, and make sure integrations are actually firing before you flip the final switch.

And then there’s your team, the people who are going to be living in this system every day. Migration isn’t just about migrating assets, it’s about migrating confidence. Train them early, let them practice in sandboxes, and communicate why this change is happening. When they see how the new platform makes their lives easier, they’ll stop seeing it as a monster and start seeing it as a weapon.

Act three: Surviving the sequel

Here’s the thing: Horror movies always have sequels. Your migration project doesn’t end on the day you go live. In fact, that’s just the beginning.

The first few months are about survival. Expect hiccups, expect confusion, and expect the occasional last-minute panic when a campaign doesn’t quite behave as expected. That’s normal. The trick is to treat the post-migration phase as part of the project, not an afterthought. Build in time for optimisation, additional training, and process refinements.

And remember: your new MAP isn’t just a new tool, it’s a new opportunity. Cleaner data means sharper segmentation. Faster campaign builds mean quicker time-to-market. Better integrations mean sales and marketing alignment that actually sticks. If you invest in ongoing improvement, you won’t just avoid the monsters, you’ll start writing a whole new kind of story.

The happy ending

So, yes, migrating marketing automation platforms can feel like stepping straight into a horror film. There will be scares, there will be stress, and there may even be a few jump-out-of-your-chair moments when a campaign suddenly vanishes into thin air.

But with the right preparation, pacing, people and consultancy, you don’t have to be the character who gets picked off early. You can be the survivor... the one who makes it out stronger, smarter, and ready for whatever comes next.

Because here’s the truth: the ghosts of bad data, broken processes, and unclear strategy don’t have to follow you into your new system. Exorcise them now, and you’ll not only survive your migration, you’ll thrive in it.

And that’s the kind of ending that doesn’t just close a horror movie.

It starts a whole new chapter.