The thought of migrating to a new platform can send shivers up the spine of any Performance Marketer.  It is certainly understandable given that it is the hub of all Performance Marketing operational activities, from configuring offers to managing the flow of money through those offers to helping provide the business intelligence needed to assess the overall performance of the business.

For those that have been impacted by the unexpected DirectTrack announcement last week, you are in luck – CAKE has struck a strategic partnership that should help you migrate your business without the significant hurdles that usually comes along with such an endeavor.

While every migration is unique due to specific business practices utilized by Performance Marketers, there are usually a few key considerations that help make a migration successful.  These considerations are:

• What data do you want to move to the new platform?  There is always a desire to ‘bring everything’ with you from one platform to the next.  But do you really want that offer that ran 5 years ago that hasn’t seen traffic in eons to be brought to the new platform, cluttering things up?  Drawing a line in the sand with what data to migrate is something that should seriously be considered.
• How will you communicate the changes to your partners (Advertisers/Affililates/Publishers etc.)?  Do you have the team in place to coordinate clear instructions to your partners about what needs to be switched out and when?  It is key in any migration to have your team ready to be on the front lines with your partners to ensure that any potential traffic loss is kept to an absolute minimum.
• Are there Accounting/Finance cycle timing considerations for such a move?  In some cases it may make sense to align a migration with the cutoff for a billing cycle.  In such a case, switching out of links needs to be much more carefully coordinated, but your Accounting team will be much more happy and we all know that is a good thing!
• Is your team prepared to potentially manage two systems in parallel?  This might be a need if there are timing issues, such as a campaign that simply can’t be migrated during the transition window because of the timing of the campaign.

As mentioned earlier, for those that are ready to make the leap from DirectTrack to CAKE, you will be happy to know that the team at CAKE has handled hundreds of client migrations from many different platforms, from very big in size to very small.  CAKE has a team of Trainers and Account Managers who are ready to work with you to define the best migration plan to suit your needs.  We look forward to hearing from you soon!