How To Migrate from ActiveCampaign to beehiiv

Switching to a new email platform probably isn’t something you’re looking forward to, except as a way to make your life easier. You’re probably doing it out of necessity and wondering if making a change is going to be smooth and easy, a frustrating time-suck, or a complete disaster.

You may be looking forward to superior functionality and even a better UX. But once you’re in there and trying to understand the platform, complicated software–and surprises like hidden fees–can make you wish you never started. Not all platforms are suitable for everyone, so step one is finding the ideal match.

Who Is ActiveCampaign Best For?

ActiveCampaign is designed for small to medium enterprises, with diverse automation in segmentation, sales follow-ups, and more. Whether you need more advanced email marketing, or fully automated marketing and sales processes, you’ll find it with ActiveCampaign.

Can ActiveCampaign Be Used as a CRM?

Yes, ActiveCampaign can be used as a CRM.

A database without an easy way to engage with everyone in it defeats the purpose of having an email platform. ActivCampaign’s comprehensive customer relations management functions greatly simplify your ability to communicate and engage with your audience wherever they are in your pipeline.

It’s recommended you set this up after you have migrated your contacts. ActiveCampaigns has a customizable CRM to fully automate internal and external processes for running marketing campaigns for small business and enterprise clients.

How Do I Import Data Into ActiveCampaign?

One function that is absolutely critical for your business is the ability to quickly and safely migrate data to a platform that better suits your needs. If ActiveCampaign is right for you, and you have a paid account, you can use their complimentary migration service to transfer your data.

ActiveCampaign only imports active contacts–those who have opted in, are current subscribers, and who haven’t bounced or converted to buying customers. ActiveCampaign also does not import tasks, activities, or custom coding for forms and other features.

How Do I Import Contacts Into ActiveCampaign?

Migrating contacts to ActiveCampaign is straightforward.

First, click on “Lists” in your account, and click on “Add New List.” Here, you’ll create a name for your list — starting with your master list of all contacts.

Once you’ve created your master contact list, click on “Contacts,” and then on “Import.” You can import a .csv file for each segmented list, or integrate services compatible with ActiveCampaign.

Then, you’ll need to create a source tag for the master list that shows where the contacts were imported from. Initial import will let you segment. Now you’re ready to click “Import Now,” and your list will migrate over.

Once your master list is on ActiveCampaign, you can segment them according to a variety of criteria, including characteristics and behaviors. Each segment will have a tag, which is essentially a summary of who is in each segment. It’s wise to create tags before creating any email campaigns so that emails are only sent out to the audience when you’re ready.

Now that you’re ready to start emailing your segmented audiences, we recommend recreating your old emails (from your old email platform) as new email templates in ActiveCampaign. This can avoid any formatting hiccups. There are several template categories to choose from.

Why Is beehiiv Better Than ActiveCampaign?

If ActiveCampaign isn’t meeting your needs, it’s worth exploring beehiiv. If you are a content creator who isn’t techy, but needs more functionality than you get on other email platforms, you will love that beehiiv is creator-friendly and features a comprehensive suite of tools that will help you grow and monetize your audience.

beehiiv features intuitive user-friendliness that makes the process of creating and monetizing emails, landing pages, and blogs easy for content creators. The ease of use has been likened to a video game. You won’t tear out your hair trying to figure out complicated dashboards or processes.

Features like quizzes and referrals make your content highly engaging; everyone wins. Plus, you can easily create customized newsletters and blogs and embed opt-in forms on your website. Your readers will love receiving fresh, relevant content.

You can write your newsletters right from your dashboard. Then, you can preview it to see how it will look on mobile and desktop devices. You can decide when you want your emails to send, whether to publish your content on your website or send via email (or both), and choose from a number of fun and engaging features your readers will enjoy.

The real benefit of migrating to beehiiv, though, is the ability to monetize a newsletter.

One way is to put exclusive, paid, subscriber-only content behind a paywall. This is a way to generate a monthly subscription fee, whether you already have a large and engaged audience or are just starting out.

Or, if you have over 1,000 subscribers, you can join the beehiiv ad network. The ad network makes monetization easy–apply, wait for ad placement offers, accept or reject them, and watch your bank account grow.

You can also make spreading the word about your newsletter easy with beehiiv’s fully integrated referral program, which makes growing your audience on auto-pilot a breeze.

beehiiv offers one free tier (for up to 2,500 subscribers), with three other tiers that serve the needs of content creators with more complex needs.

How Do I Migrate From ActiveCampaign to beehiiv?

You can use a service such as Integrately, whose migration service will import lists, contacts, tags, and custom fields, re-create opt-in forms and email templates, and recreate automation workflows.

Or, if you prefer a DIY approach, you can migrate your contacts list easily by uploading .csv files to beehiiv with a few easy steps:

1. Log in to your beehiiv account

2. Click on Audience, found in the left sidebar

3. Click on Subscribers

4. Click Import, and you will be asked whether you want to import a .csv file or manually type in email addresses. If you are importing a .csv file, simply copy/paste the url, check the box if you want beehiiv to set up an automated welcome email, and click Import Subscribers

You may manually type in email addresses separated by a comma, but this is only recommended if your list is very small, and currently the system doesn’t allow you to personalize emails when adding email addresses using this method.

If you have an email list greater than 5,000 subscribers, the beehiiv team will assist you in migrating your data and email list.

Don’t leave your content behind! Here are the simple steps for migrating content to beehiiv:

1. Log in to your beehiiv account

2. Click on Settings, found at the top of the page

3. Click on Import Content

4. You can drop the URL where your publication currently lives, or upload a zip file of your content that was exported from your previous content hosting site

5. Click Import

If you’re stuck, beehiiv offers a great video tutorial series that will walk you step by step through setup and special features, as well as a “Need Help?” option right under the “Import Subscribers” title.

Ready? Let’s Go!

Check out our email newsletter launch checklist to make it even easier to get started with growing and monetizing your audience on beehiiv.

beehiiv is designed with ease of use and functionality in mind. The process of migrating your list to beehiiv from ActiveCampaign is simple, with no hoops to jump through! If you’re unhappy with your current email platform and you want to take your newsletter to the next level, learn more about beehiiv here.