How to switch CRMs without breaking your email program

Plenty of nonprofits head into 2027 with a customer relationship management (CRM) migration on the planning calendar. 

The email team is rarely the one leading it, but it’s usually the first to feel it when something breaks.

Sally Heaven is co-founder of Raise HECK, a consulting firm that helps nonprofits choose and use technology, after 13 years as an account manager at Blackbaud. 

Sally explained where email programs take the most damage in a migration and what teams can do to protect theirs — starting long before launch day.

Sara Cederberg: What’s the most common way you see a CRM migration damage an email program?

Sally Heaven: If only your back-office CRM is changing, the risk is pretty low. 

The riskier ones swap one all-in-one (database, email, fundraising) for another, and staff has to learn a new tool while keeping the trains running in the old one.

Then there’s garbage in, garbage out. 

If you’ve had poor sending practices on your old system, brand new IPs won’t magically absorb that weight, because your reputation is your reputation.

SC: From your years on the vendor side, what does a sales demo tend to gloss over when it comes to email?

SH: Sales teams know their software and have solutions engineers for the technical pieces, but they can’t tell you how to be a good sender.

Those amazing-looking slides about average deliverability aren’t a guarantee if you come in with a bad reputation. 

What you get out of deliverability is what you put into it.

SC: Is there ever a good time to migrate?

SH: There’s no best time, but there is a better one. 

Something always delays a migration, so if your plan has you launching September 30 and warming up your IPs in October, back that up by at least two months.

Start in mid to late January with a goal of wrapping up by July 30, and then, fingers crossed, you’re all set for end of year.

SC: How do you surface segmentation and suppression rules ahead of a migration that were never documented?

SH: Translating something from your head onto paper can feel painful. 

I’d start with a picture, like a flowchart of who’s in each audience and what the suppression rules are, and then write an explanation to go with it.

George Bernard Shaw once said, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” It’s always better to over-explain.

SC: What email data should teams fight to bring over, and what’s fine to leave behind?

SH: Engagement history only needs to come over as static segments for warming up your IPs. 

Subscription preferences are really important to bring over, so people keep getting the email they want.

And the behavioral data you collect from email clicks, like whether someone clicked on a photo of a dog or a cat (if that’s important to you!), belongs to your organization, so don’t give it up. 

Grab it from your old system and store it in your CRM or a data warehouse, but if you haven’t been storing and acting on it already, don’t try to grab it wholesale during the migration.

SC: What do you typically see go wrong with deliverability in the first few weeks?

SH: If something is going to go wrong in the first few weeks, it’s usually spam complaints, which are a huge stone in the shoe of deliverability. 

People who never clearly opted in or can’t find your unsubscribe link will click spam, and so will someone who gets the same email twice because the new system handles suppressions differently.

Above 0.1%, Google and Yahoo will ding you; above 0.3%, you’re in the spam doghouse, which can take up to three months to get out of. 

So check Google Postmaster Tools daily, and if complaints spike, pump the brakes.

SC: Where does the tension between email and IT come from, and what does a healthy working relationship look like?

SH: IT tends to care about the technical rightness of the configurations and may push the email team to keep segments as tight as possible. 

The email team probably wants to expand that audience as much as is safe, because email helps programs reach as many supporters as possible, and IT is responsible for the health of the pipes that enable that.

Migrations are stressful, so if those relationships start to deteriorate, someone needs to notice and facilitate conversations where each side can understand the other’s priorities.

The bottom line
Sally’s parting advice: if email doesn’t already have a seat at the table for technology decisions, a migration is a great opportunity to get one. 

If your organization has a 2027 move on the calendar, get your email lead in the room before anyone signs a contract.

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‘Til next time!
Sara