How to login to multiple accounts of the same software

We work with a lot of companies that use the same software platforms for their sales and marketing. Some of these tools like HubSpot have great options when it comes to managing multiple accounts, enabling agencies/contractors/etc to login once - then switch between accounts. 

But other tools like Drift, Marketo, Intercom, etc require you to have a unique login to each and don't allow you to be logged-in to more than one from the same browser. 

Here are two quick tricks to make it much easier for managing these:

#1 - Use Google Apps or Gmail for all of your logins.

Google makes it ultra easy to have more than one email address. It's as simple as adding a + then whatever you need for each customer. 

So something like hello+customer123@marketingmigration.com and everything continues to go to your same email account. (You can change customer123 to literally anything you want.)

Additional tip -> get smart at your naming convention to keep track of each login. We try to keep them ultra short, so they are much easier to remember.

#2 - Use different Profiles within Google Chrome to stay logged-in.

So now you have different logins, but it's a hassle to have to log out and back in whenever you need to look in a different account. With Chrome Profiles you can stay logged-in to all of them at once and just have different Chrome windows. (Each profile maintains it's own cookies, so you won't run in to login issues.)

In Chrome click on your name in the top right corner of the window and go to Manage People. From there you can Add a Person and customize the name for each account you need. 

Now login to whatever account it is that you need and you'll be separate from everything else that you're doing in Chrome. 

I personally have 12 different Chrome profiles that I use to switch between different customers and ensure that I'm staying organized.

Hopefully this helps you save some time logging in and out of all your tools and focusing on the real work that needs to be done. 

What other pointers do you have for managing logins across many different tools?

Helpful tips for cleaning your email list

We work with a lot of customers that are moving between marketing tools and one of the big things that usually comes up is cleaning up the email list a bit and filtering out the contacts that aren't engaging anymore. 

Spent a bunch of time today in Excel and Google Sheets working through cleaning up a list and found a couple of things that would be helpful to share. 

I'm no Excel wizard, so if you are - this probably will be incredibly boring, but for the rest of you folks it may actually be helpful. 

#1 - DeDupe your List

You have a whole bunch of different lists, combine them together, and have no idea who is a duplicate. Ideally you want to filter those out to avoid creating a new mess, in your new tool. 

With Google Sheets it's incredibly easy with the built in Unique function. (The unique function is not available in Excel from what I can tell - but I imagine there is something similar.)

=Unique(A1:A)   - update this to include whatever the range you're looking to dedupe and it will do the rest of the work for you, spitting out only the unique email addresses. 

#2 - Remove people that are in another list

Working with another customer and we got them to a great spot with a cleaned up list of contacts they wanted to engage with for marketing, but wanted to be sure that they filtered out existing customers from that.

This is pretty simple if you create a spreadsheet in Google Sheets or Excel (this does work the same in both) and use a vlookup.

Here is the exact function that you need to use: 

=IF(ISERROR(VLOOKUP(A2,$C$2:$C$12, 1, FALSE)),FALSE,TRUE )

Update A2 to be the cell you're checking and the $C$2:$C$12 to include the range you're checking from. Just so you know the $ is there to keep that range despite moving the function on the page. 

Then just copy/paste it alongside all of the other emails you want to check, and filter for the ones that are false - which indicates they aren't in the other list. 

This will walk you through the whole process.

There you have it - all of your customers filtered out and your list is ready to go to get uploaded into your system. 

Hopefully this helps save you some time and Googling finding the answers when it comes time to clean up your list. (I selfishly wanted to post this so I could come here the next time I need to do it...) 

Don't hesitate to reach out sometime if you need help with your list cleanup. 

How to hide Intercom chat to use another chat/bot tool

We work with a number of clients that utilize Intercom for their customer support team and they are frequently interested in trying out another tool - often times including a chat bot to drive more conversations for sales. 

Maybe you want to use Drift for bot driven conversations or maybe have it replaced with HubSpot Messenger calendar booking. These are just two of the many options that we help our clients get setup with everyday.

Thankfully Intercom makes it pretty easy to hide their chat box from the pages where you would like to use something else. 

This help doc on their site goes crazy in-depth on how to do it, but no need to read all of it when it's super simple. 

Head to App Settings -> Messenger Settings -> then scroll down a bit. 

From there it's simple to add in the URL for the pages that you don't want to display Intercom on and be sure to hit Save.

That's all there is to it! Now you can setup anything you would like on those pages and don't need to worry about your different tools overlapping with each other. 

**One other quick note - there is an edge-case with identified users being able to see both, since Intercom does not have a rule for hiding the icon. All you need to do is add this simple line of code to the pages you want it hidden and you'll be all set.

<style>#intercom-container { display:none; }</style>

Need help getting something like this setup on your site - don't hesitate to reach out and we will be happy to help.

Finally did it!

This was originally posted on LinkedIn in January 2018:

I finally did it!

For those of you that know me well - you probably have heard about the variety of side hustles I've had over the years and wanting to build my own business. 

I'd just been too afraid to do it full time.

Even last year I made enough revenue to live off, but wasn't ready to pull the trigger. 

Well I did it - last week was my last week at Drift.

I'm building out MarketingMigration.com - the side business that I had from back in my HubSpot days which has been growing since then. 

We are a full service sales and marketing agency with a heavy focus in sales & marketing automation.  Have something you need help with today?

Let's get in touch! (kevin@marketingmigration.com or DM)

Thank you to everyone that had been pushing me to do this.

What is a Marketing Migration?

A marketing migration is what you need when you’ve found that the marketing tools you’re currently using no longer meet the marketing needs of today and tomorrow. When that time comes you need to find a replacement solution and move over everything that has been built to ensure you don’t lose any valuable content.

The process of a marketing migration is pretty straightforward, but with all of the moving parts it can easily get out of hand. Here is the standard process you will need to go through.

1. Find the new software solution and ensure that all of your needs are met. Many times a solution is chosen that misses a big chunk of the requirements and it will take additional work and potentially additional software to solve the problem.

2. Determine the migration path. This step often depends on your needs as an organization and if multiple tools are being consolidated into one. Plan the path at a high level of what is going where. When it is a simple email -> email tool migration it’s easy, but not all scenarios are like that.

3. Outline all of the content that needs to be migrated. How many templates, content pieces, pages, workflows, etc. need to be moved? Dig through your old tools and find everything that you want to keep - you’ll be surprised what you find!

4. Move everything to the new tool. Make sure you don’t forget to move the asset files like images, PDFs, and so on. We see it all the time; email templates get moved but still reference images on your old tool - then it gets shut off and you have broken emails.

5. Roll it live. Please don’t do it all at once! Start with one or two email campaigns and make sure you didn’t miss anything. Start linking to the new landing pages from your homepage and see the leads flow through. Once you feel comfortable with the setup, then make the full switch.

6. Don’t forget the redirects. Most of the time your URL structure for any pages will be changing a bit. Go through and ensure all of your old links still work by setting up 301 redirects. This makes sure that all of your shared links don’t break and that Google can find your new pages.

Going through a marketing migration is definitely not an easy task. The part that most people miss is staying organized throughout all of the steps. If there is a large marketing team in place, this can get to be a bit more difficult and the organization is even more important.

Don’t be afraid of working with external resources when it comes to a marketing migration. If you have an existing marketing agency they might be able to help or reach out to us and we’d be thrilled to help make the transition painless.