You have your environment. This is the order that saves people the most time. It takes a few hours spread over a few days, not a solid day of work.
Day one: your sending domain #
Do this first, even though it is the least interesting. Everything else you build sends email, and email that lands in a spam folder wastes the rest of the week.
Tell us which domain you want to send from. We set the SPF, DKIM and DMARC records for you and confirm when they have propagated. If you manage your own DNS, we send you the exact records to add.
Then set your sender name and reply-to address. Use an address a person actually reads. A no-reply address costs you replies from the people who were most interested.
Day one: bring your contacts across #
Export from your current tool as CSV or Excel, including tags, custom fields and consent dates if you have them. Send it to us and we import it, mapped to the right fields, with the subscription status preserved.
Check the count afterwards. If you exported 4,182 contacts, you should have 4,182 contacts. If the number differs, tell us before you build anything on top of it.
Day two: one form and one list #
Build a single sign-up form and point it at a single list. Not the full structure you eventually want, just one working path from a visitor to a contact record.
Fill it in yourself with a real address. Watch the contact appear. This proves the chain works before you have twenty forms to debug.
Day three: one automation, end to end #
Take the form from day two and hang a short automation on it: a welcome email, a wait, a second email. Run yourself through it.
Once one automation works, every other automation is the same pattern with different content. This is the single highest-value hour of your first week.
Day four: your shop, if you have one #
Create one product. Build one checkout. Place a test order using the test mode of your payment provider. Check that the order appears, the invoice is generated, and the contact record shows the purchase.
Then, and only then, add the rest of your products.
Day five: look at what is missing #
By now you know where the gaps are. Write them down and send them to us in one message rather than five. We answer faster when we can see the whole picture, and quite often the answer is “that already exists, here is where”.
What not to do in week one #
- Do not rebuild every automation you had. Most people find a third of them were doing nothing.
- Do not point your domain at the new site yet. Build alongside, switch when you are happy.
- Do not send a large mailing on day one from a new sending domain. Start with your most engaged segment and scale up.
