Your messaging technique is organized, your workforce is prepared, and your information is clear. Up subsequent: the technical integration.
Undoubtedly, your first query goes to be, “How long will it take me to get integrated with a growth marketing platform?”
A good query. A drawn out technical integration course of can derail your productiveness and disrupt the momentum you gained out of your detailed messaging and information preparation.
Here in Part 3 of our Growth Marketing Platform Migration Guide, we stroll you thru how you can personal your technical integration by getting ready your self for obstacles and selecting a platform supplier that may present useful help to shorten your timeline.
Scoping Your Technical Integration
The truth of the matter isn’t any two technical integrations are alike. And the reply to your query above will invariably be, “It depends.”
There are just too many components in play to create a common course of for every integration.
However! There are methods to mitigate dangers and hold your technical integration on monitor.
Here are 4 key components to remember. If left unmonitored, these might have a big impression on the size of your integration.
1. Data Clean-Up
We mentioned this in Part 2, however it bears repeating. In an excellent world, the information clean-up is accomplished earlier than you begin the combination.
That mentioned, the information clean-up ought to nonetheless be included as a part of the timeline. This means you may see the impression on the general size of integration. The extra clean-up you need to do, the longer the combination course of.
2. Points of Integration
A technical integration that’s merely a couple of API calls from one back-end system goes to be a lot faster than an integration that includes separate methods, comparable to an online, back-end, and cellular app integration.
Your total tech stack will even play a component right here. If you employ platforms that may combine with the expansion advertising and marketing platform you’ve determined to maneuver ahead with, this may velocity up the combination course of.
As an instance, if in case you have a buyer information platform like Segment that you simply’re already passing information into from a wide range of totally different sources, this might probably flip weeks of handbook integration work right into a only a day or two of setup.
3. Currently Existing Code
Your improvement workforce doubtless has code in place in your present system. If this code may be repurposed with slight adjustments, then this may velocity issues up.
For instance, your system is likely to be making API requests to your present advertising and marketing platform both to create and/or replace customers or to trace actions they’re taking. These might doubtless be up to date to make the most of your subsequent platform’s API with little effort.
4. Capability of Your Integration Team
It’s a little bit of an apparent assertion, however the savvier your improvement workforce is, the faster the method shall be. When drafting your timeline, contemplate the sources you’ve got in-house—each in amount and mixture of talent units.
Also consider the sources you’ll obtain out of your new development advertising and marketing platform vendor, who will act as an extension of your workforce.
For implementations at Iterable, you’ve got entry to a devoted implementation advisor, in addition to Solution Architects and your Customer Success Manager—all of whom are product specialists. When evaluating platforms, you’ll want to establish whom you’ll get to work with on the seller facet and perceive how they’ll assist your workforce.
It’s a close to inconceivable activity to put out the whole scope of your technical integration previous to getting began along with your new platform supplier. There will all the time be integration items you weren’t conscious of or that don’t work precisely the way in which you thought they did.
Combat this inevitability by using what you do know to get a normal sense of the work your improvement workforce has forward of them.
Your new development advertising and marketing platform supplier ought to have the instruments and workforce in place that will help you finalize your technical integration plan.
What to Expect From Your New Provider
The technical integration facet of the migration shouldn’t be one thing that scares you. If something, selecting a brand new platform ought to be one thing that excites your improvement workforce.
Your new supplier ought to have methods and groups in place to make the method easy, easy, and painless. For instance, new clients to Iterable are supplied with a template they’ll make the most of to put out their person schema in a means that is sensible inside the Iterable platform.
They additionally get to undergo a schema evaluate session with their devoted implementation advisor to verify they’re shifting ahead with a schema that may work effectively.
As corny because it sounds, there are doubtless technical features of your present platform that your builders don’t get pleasure from working with. Maybe they cringe each time you ask them to push a code change simply to replace the HTML of a triggered email.
Ideally, your new platform ought to be one which simplifies life for each the entrepreneurs and the builders.
The technical integration course of doesn’t need to be a burden. And it shouldn’t impede your progress. Take the time to search out the precise development advertising and marketing platform with the precise workforce to deal with your enterprise wants.
Owning the Technical Integration
Typical technical integrations are rife with obstacles to beat. There’s no denying it and, honestly talking, there is no such thing as a solution to fully eradicate all obstacles.
But you may assist your self by doing all of your due diligence. Focus on the important thing components that might derail your integration, keep organized along with your information and messaging, and vet your new supplier’s course of earlier than beginning the combination.
With the precise preparation—and an understanding of potential blockers—you may be working new campaigns very quickly.
Whether you’ve already loved our whole weblog collection or are simply becoming a member of us, you’ll want to obtain our full information to migrating to a development advertising and marketing platform.
