Operational Playbook: Migrating Legacy Contacts Without Losing Touch

Operational Playbook: Migrating Legacy Contacts Without Losing Touch

Hook: Migrating legacy CRM data is one of the riskiest activities for enrollment teams. Do it wrong and you harm relationships. Do it right and you unlock personalization and preference fidelity.

Common hazards we see

• Duplicate outreach causing unsubscribes.
• Lost preferences and consent flags.
• Broken attribution and historical context.

Step‑by‑step migration playbook

1. Discovery: catalog all sources (legacy CRM, spreadsheets, event platforms).
2. Schema mapping: map fields to the new system and define canonical IDs.
3. Cleanse: dedupe, normalize formats, and standardize country and phone codes. We highly recommend following the contact hygiene guide at How to Import, Clean, and Sync Contacts Across Devices Without Losing Your Mind.
4. Consent reconciliation: surface and reconcile consent flags and communication preferences.
5. Staged imports: import in batches and monitor for anomalies in sends and bounces.
6. Audit and decommission: retain immutable exports and safely decommission legacy sources.

Technical patterns that reduce risk

• Use an immutable staging table to compare pre and post import states.
• Hash canonical IDs to preserve privacy while enabling dedupe logic.
• Maintain an export of pre‑migration data for audit and rollback.

Communications plan for prospects

Notify prospects of the migration briefly and offer an easy way to update preferences. A friendly, human message reduces surprise and helps maintain trust; consider style guidance from communications research like Best Compliments by Personality Style when crafting empathetic language.

Testing and KPIs

Before wide rollout, test with a small segment and track:

• Duplicate rate post‑import.
• Unsubscribe and complaint rates in first 14 days.
• Match rate to canonical IDs.

Operational play: rollback plan

1. Pause outbound campaigns mid‑migration if error spikes.
2. Restore previous exports and notify affected prospects transparently.
3. Perform root cause analysis and reimport corrected batches.

Future proofing

Design your new system to support portability, export, and clear consent flags. Document everything so that future migrations are easier. For broader preference migrations, see Guide: Migrating Legacy User Preferences Without Breaking Things.

Closing checklist

• Complete discovery and schema mapping.
• Run dedupe and cleansing processes.
• Reconcile consent and preferences.
• Import in staged batches and monitor.
• Communicate with prospects and provide easy updates.

Migration is an investment in future personalization and yield. Treat it as a program — not a project.