How to Migrate from Salesforce Marketing Cloud to Insider in 4 Easy Steps

There’s no denying it—switching to a new marketing platform can be overwhelming, and with that decision comes significant risk. It’s often why marketers cling to outdated systems. But what happens when platforms like Salesforce no longer serve the purpose? 

Limited capabilities, lack of support, hidden costs, or the complexity of managing too many tools hold you back from real growth. At Insider, we’re dedicated to helping brands migrate from Salesforce without the typical risks or headaches. The Insider Switch program helps brands make the move from clunky cloud players to the #1 marketing leader with minimal effort, and zero downtime, and guarantees the quickest time to value.

In this article, we will walk you through the marketing migration process from Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) to Insider. Let’s start by learning about why marketing teams are leaving Salesforce for Insider. 

Why are more marketers switching from Salesforce to Insider?

With interactions being magnified and amplified across social media platforms, exceeding customer expectations is now more important than ever. To keep up, marketers need a platform that adapts quickly, offers flexibility, and streamlines data management. However, most marketers find legacy systems like Salesforce lacking the agility needed to support these demands. 

Although the Salesforce marketing cloud (SFMC) promises seamless omnichannel customer journeys, it often falls short. We have observed marketers frequently complain about a clunky interface, slow processes, and fragmented solutions that require significant manual effort. As a result, building and launching campaigns become a time-consuming nightmare—often involving multiple team members to manage even basic tasks.

Instead of helping marketers make data-driven decisions efficiently, Salesforce creates data overload with a lack of actionable insights.

These experiences are not isolated. Many marketers find that Salesforce’s complicated interface, lack of customer support, and slow processes lead to clashes between marketing and IT teams, further hindering productivity and progress.

Insider addresses these pain points head-on. Designed to be user-friendly and efficient, our platform offers marketers the agility they need to adapt quickly to changing customer behaviors. With Insider, you can build, launch, and manage campaigns with ease—no complex processes or multiple team members are required. We provide fast integration, comprehensive support, and the strategic expertise necessary for success in today’s dynamic marketing landscape.

Our customers frequently highlight the difference Insider makes: “Very fast product with efficient results. We were surprised by how fast and easy the integration process was. Insider’s team was helpful throughout, leaving no question mark in our minds concerning their tools.”

Switching effortlessly from a legacy platform like Salesforce to Insider empowers marketers to maximize their data, create engaging customer journeys, and drive growth—all while ensuring their teams have the support and tools they need to excel.

6 Reasons Marketers are Moving to Insider

Let’s explore the reasons convincing marketers that Insider could drive exponential long-term benefits for your enterprise.

1. Data and Event Strategy

Catalog Integration Wizard

Insider’s catalog integration hub is a user-friendly tool designed to simplify every step of your data integration process. From SKUs to events and attributes, it provides a step-by-step guide to help you integrate data manageably. The best part? Insider offers 100+ plug-and-play integrations to connect customer, engagement, and product data effortlessly across your entire tech stack.

Insider seamlessly into your existing infrastructure and workflows, based on your needs. These cover a wide range of categories, including CRM, analytics, paid advertising, social media, and more, ensuring comprehensive data synchronization.

 It allows you to effortlessly ingest, organize, and analyze your data. Plus, with the built-in progress tracker, you and your team can stay updated on the integration status in real time.

Web SDK Wizard 

Salesforce’s SDK aims to streamline the process however, its solution is primarily web-focused. Although it simplifies some tasks, it may not offer the depth of customization and personalization mobile marketers require. As a result, it can limit your ability to fully engage users across all channels, particularly in the mobile space where user experience and personalization are key.

Insider’s SDK-X is designed specifically to meet the needs of mobile marketers, whether you’re a large enterprise or an SMB. Unlike Salesforce’s more web-centric approach, Insider’s SDK-X offers a lightweight and versatile solution tailored to create seamless and personalized mobile app experiences at scale. This means you can deliver web-like experiences to your mobile users, enhancing their time spent on your app. 

Data Planning

Salesforce takes a cautious approach to data integration, which leans more on data virtualization and discourages unnecessary data replication. While this might be effective to avoid data duplication and technical debt, it can lead to a complex and fragmented integration process. Users may find themselves navigating multiple platforms and APIs, which can be cumbersome and require significant technical expertise.

Unlike Salesforce, Insider focuses on not just integrating data but also activating it. It enables marketers to unify customer data from diverse sources, offering a single, accurate customer profile. This unified approach makes it easier to analyze, segment, and act on data without overcomplicating the martech stack. Moreover, Insider’s flexible API allows for virtually any system connection, and the platform’s customer support ensures efficient and hassle-free integration tailored to your business needs.

Insider goes beyond mere data integration by combining data unification with advanced personalization and customer journey orchestration. With Insider’s cross-channel customer journey builder, you can seamlessly tie all touchpoints into a consistent experience for each customer, directly translating integrated data into actionable marketing campaigns.

2. Omnichannel Marketing Capabilities

Salesforce provides a wide range of omnichannel capabilities—focusing on unifying customer experiences across desktop, mobile, email, digital advertising, and more. Salesforce connects with multiple channels but often relies on its extensive library of integrations, which can lead to a more fragmented user experience.

Insider offers unmatched channel breadth, supporting over 12 native channels, including web, email, push notifications, SMS, WhatsApp, and more—all within a single platform. This extensive range of digital channels allows businesses to engage customers seamlessly across every touchpoint. 

By providing native channel support, Insider ensures that customer journeys are cohesive and consistent, reducing the need for multiple vendors or complex integrations. This native integration results in unified customer profiles and a more detailed understanding of customer behavior and preferences.

3. Customer Support and Account Management

One of the main gripes users have with Salesforce is the consistent dissatisfactory customer support. The users often experience long response times, a lack of proper guidance, and frequent changes in account management. This leaves them to fend for themselves. 

This lack of proactive support often results in customers using Salesforce’s tools merely for basic functions, like sending emails, without fully leveraging the platform’s potential for automation and personalized marketing.

In contrast, Insider takes a proactive measure by providing a comprehensive support system with dedicated onboarding resources, tailored training, and local expert support. 

Our team ensures a seamless transition so that you can start implementing effective marketing strategies right away. This hands-on approach steers clear of losing existing workflows and ensures that your business can quickly adapt and thrive on the new platform.

4. Migrate

Now comes the actual migration. This stage often makes marketers anxious. That’s why around 70% of digital transformation fail. With Insider’s expert technical team and our Automatic Migrator, you don’t have to spend sleepless nights screwing up the process. We make it go much faster than your typical migration while handling with our white glove service. 

You’ll get consistent one-on-one support from one of our technical team all the way through the process to answer any questions and offer any support needed. The migration phase includes setting up your workspace, activating key channels, and defining your data and event models.

The data & integrations process involves transferring your data feeds using our Automatic Migrator—like moving from traditional file transfers through SFTP to cloud-based data ingestion directly into Insider. By transferring data in a more direct and secure manner, you eliminate the need for data to be extracted or temporarily stored on intermediary platforms, significantly enhancing security and data integrity.

Asset & Campaign Migration involves a thorough review of your existing marketing materials, setting a new content strategy, and choosing the most effective format. Any templates you want to move can be transferred via our Automatic Migrator. This step also checks if your campaigns are migrated, and ready for ongoing optimization and operational efficiency on the Insider platform.

5. Total Cost of Ownership and Consolidate 

While Salesforce provides a comprehensive suite of marketing tools, the total cost of ownership can be high due to various add-ons, customizations, and potential hidden fees. As your needs evolve, the expenses for additional features and increased contact list sizes can quickly add up. Furthermore, user reviews frequently mention the need for extensive support and training, which may require additional investment due to the complexity of the platform.

Insider focuses on delivering value without the hidden costs. The platform comes with a variety of native channels and advanced personalization features built into its pricing. Moreover, Insider offers free setup and marketing migration services, as well as tailored support, helping businesses maximize ROI without unexpected expenses. Insider also provides access to SaaS experts and contract analysis through Vendr, helping businesses secure the best deals and avoid overpaying.

Insider offers a more straightforward cost structure, with services like setup, migration, and support included in the price. This comprehensive approach helps businesses avoid hidden fees and additional costs, ensuring a more predictable total cost of ownership.

6. Interface and Development Dependence

One of the most unavoidable challenges that comes with using Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) is its heavy reliance on development and IT teams to launch campaigns, make iterations, or perform tests. This dependency often slows down the marketing process, creates bottlenecks, and reduces agility in responding to market changes or consumer behavior. 

Unlike Salesforce’s complex and fragmented platform, Insider’s single code layer removes any barrier around data management, process orchestration, and customer journey creation. This means, marketers can quickly go live with their campaigns and execute operational tasks more efficiently.

The cherry on top? We provide a library of ready-made templates tailored for different industries, use cases, and metrics, enabling marketers to launch campaigns right away. This means you don’t need any coding knowledge. 

4 Key Stages of Migrating to Insider

Every company has its unique migration needs, but successful migration follows a fairly formulaic process. Let’s dig into the four stages of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud migration project in detail.

1. Evaluation 

It’s essential to define clear goals, identify pain points, and establish KPIs to measure your progress of migration. Start by determining which objectives are essential to address immediately and which can be added to a “wishlist” for later phases. 

Align and get agreement from all internal stakeholders and your dedicated Insider implementation team to keep everyone on the same page. This upfront clarity prevents a bottleneck down the line.

Review the current platform to identify any missing features, gaps, and areas for improvement. Weigh the benefits and potential drawbacks of re-platforming. Create a detailed list of migration requirements, including labor needs, costs, and timelines.

Chart a migration plan. With the budget, tools, and resources in place, it’s time to build a clear roadmap. A well-defined plan with clear milestones and deadlines will prevent any costly burden, no matter how you choose to migrate. Anticipate potential challenges and devise strategies to tackle them proactively. This ensures the project stays on time, within budget, and meets everyone’s expectations.

2. Inventory

The inventory phase involves a thorough evaluation of your current resources and processes. Marketers often accumulate large amounts of data and assets over years of using SFMC. That doesn’t mean every data point is still relevant or valuable for your current strategy. 

Our team collaborates with yours to audit every event, attribute, and custom attribute, mapping them to new values while also cleaning and de-duplicating the data. This step is foundational and not optional—it sets the stage for everything that follows. This is an opportunity to remove outdated or irrelevant information. Once the audit is complete and your stakeholders are satisfied with the results, you’re ready to proceed to the next step.

Evaluate your current workflows and anticipate changes due to differences between SFMC and Insider. This is the time to redefine processes to fit Insider’s more intuitive setup. Before migrating, it’s recommended to test the process with a small sample of data to identify and resolve any issues upfront, preventing major problems during the full migration.

3. Workshop

Once the groundwork is laid, you need a workshop with our dedicated Insider team. This is where we dive into designing the optimal architecture and determine the best data sources and methods to achieve your goals. Our technical experts bring insights from leading brands like Toyota, Coca-Cola, and Virgin Megastore to ensure your migration puts you at the forefront of your industry. Our workshops consist of three key areas: 

Architecture & Integrations: During this session, we explore the mechanics of data flow, address specific use cases, and troubleshoot potential integration issues. This will create a smooth transition of all your systems to Insider.

Campaign Process & Messaging: We analyze your existing campaigns and workflows, identifying opportunities for optimization within Insider. While some processes may remain unchanged and others will be simplified to enhance efficiency and reduce any friction.

Timing, Prioritization & Resourcing: Our technical team draws up a migration blueprint with clearly defined priorities and assigned responsibilities. With Insider’s dedicated onboarding team, you won’t face additional costs for standard migration work. Our focus is on making your migration process as smooth and quick as possible.

4. Migrate

Now comes the actual migration. This stage often makes marketers anxious. That’s why around 70% of digital transformation fail. With Insider’s expert technical team, you don’t have to spend sleepless nights screwing up the process.

You’ll get consistent one-on-one support from one of our technical team all the way through the process to answer any questions and offer any support needed. The migration phase includes setting up your workspace, activating key channels, and defining your data and event models.

The data & Integrations process involves transferring your data feeds—like moving from traditional file transfers through SFTP to cloud-based data ingestion directly into Insider. By transferring data in a more direct and secure manner, you eliminate the need for data to be extracted or temporarily stored on intermediary platforms, significantly enhancing security and data integrity.

Asset & Campaign Migration involves a thorough review of your existing marketing materials, setting a new content strategy, and choosing the most effective format. This step checks if your campaigns are migrated, and ready for ongoing optimization and operational efficiency on the Insider platform.

Ready to make the switch to Insider?

Migrating from Salesforce to Insider doesn’t have to be a daunting task. With our seamless migration process, dedicated support, and powerful platform, you can leave behind the limitations of outdated systems and step into a new era of marketing excellence.

And it doesn’t stop there. Our AI capabilities predict customer behaviors, offer personalized product recommendations, and enable unstructured, two-way conversations—all aimed at helping you work more efficiently. Explore how Insider works firsthand with our interactive demos and self-guided videos.

Or request a demo with one of our SFMC Migration Experts to discover how we can tailor the migration to your unique needs and help you get started on the path to success.