During my talk at #OXS14 (here is the video) I spoke about how user migration presents an opportunity to engage with your user base. I talked a lot about the psychology and the emotional aspects that we need to focus on while preparing a migration for a large amount of users.

In this blog, I want to dig deeper and focus more on the processes, while still keeping the communication aspect of the user migration at the forefront.

The process of communicating a migration starts with internal preparation. Users today tend to choose their own communication channel without the showing us marketers the courtesy of staying within the appropriate behavior described for their demographic. Sometimes seniors prefer social media and Gen-Y prefer old fashioned snail mail based communication – or not at all. What this means for anybody who has to deal with ‘these people’, is to be ready to offer a mix of channels and communication strategies. Push and pull, interactive and directional: everything has to be available to the homogeneous user group. So we have to prepare. For everything that is.

• At the home base, we have to make the hit that will set everything else in motion. This is why first order of business has to be to check the available communications channels that we offer to our user base. Are all bases covered? Do we provide a good mix across all channels? Do we allow users to get the information when they want or need it? If that is the case, the most important part of the preparation is completed.

• Users will not only do what they want, but they also have different levels of tech- savviness. Now we have to provide collateral that not only guides the inexperienced user along the way, but also excites any ‘Big Bang Theory’ wannabe users. This, too, will only be achieved by mixing things up And this is where the channels will help. Twitter can be more technical, whereas Facebook should be entertaining and ‘family-proof’ in the way we communicate there. Blogs and members-only message boards can be more edgy and challenging. Using the channels for what they are and who they speak to and making use of this distinction will make sure we safely secure base #2.

• While stealing this base is very popular in the big leagues, we should try to leave that to the Major League pros. I would suggest covering this base with solid preparation work instead. Modern marketing has become digital marketing more than we realized it to be, or even more than senior marketers like it to be. Digital marketing is not just social media. Much rather, digital marketing makes use of the different ways we consume our news, messages and interact with peers, friends and families. Therefore, marketers have to think digital as well when preparing a big user migration project. As part of OXPP, we like to promote the use of an user focused landing page. Nothing that tries to sell, but rather a page that allows ours users to inform themselves. Graphics, pictures, light text and deep and deeper links to manuals and datasheets– that is the mix that needs to be available here, speaking to all the different user types.

• Getting back to home base and scoring now becomes a process of planning, timing and making use of the steps described before. Timing is everything as it often is. Any type of user wants to be informed ahead of time. What, why, when will be important questions that have to be answered during the different steps of the communication. As the graphic shows, there are different steps to the communication that have to be taken. It is a red-string that guides the user along this path of migrating from their legacy system to this new, shiny and user friendly platform, we call OX App Suite. However, the engagement has to start earlier and will not be completed once we score. Each inning has two parts – offense and defense. Once we sold the users and made sure they migrate, we have to stick with them and make sure they continuously have a good experience with this engagement platform. You created all the tools and learned the tricks it takes to stay in touch with your users. What it all comes to now is one essential question: Are you ready to engage?