How to migrate off Outreach or Salesloft without losing data

Switching tools sounds scary; in practice it's an export-and-rebuild, not a database migration. Your sequences and templates are small amounts of text, your contacts live in your CRM or a spreadsheet, and the one thing you must not lose — your suppression list — moves in a single CSV. Here's the order of operations that keeps you safe.

Do this while your old contract is still active. Never cancel first.

What should you move first?

Your suppression list — the people who unsubscribed, bounced, or asked not to be contacted. This is the only piece of data you genuinely cannot recreate, and emailing these people after a migration is both a deliverability problem and a CAN-SPAM problem. Export it from your current tool before anything else, and import it into the new one on day one. In SEMAOS this is the suppression import; load it before you send a single message.

How do you move templates and sequences?

Templates: copy each active template's subject and body into the new tool. Most teams discover they have ten templates they actually use and forty they don't — migrate the ten and leave the rest. It's a content cleanup as much as a move.

Sequences: rebuild your active sequences step by step rather than trying to export structure. Write down each one as a list — email day 1, wait 3 days, follow-up, condition, and so on — then recreate it. A typical 5–7 step sequence takes a few minutes to rebuild, and you'll tighten the steps while you do it. Inactive or experimental sequences don't need to come at all.

What about your contacts?

Your contacts should already live in your CRM or a spreadsheet, not your sales-engagement tool — the engagement tool is a sender, not a system of record. Export them to a CSV and import that file into the new tool. SEMAOS brings contacts in by CSV import, so a clean export is all you need: map the columns once (name, email, company, title, and any custom fields you merge into emails) and keep the file as a backup until the switch is complete.

How do you set up sending so deliverability doesn't drop?

This is the step most worth slowing down on. Two paths:

• 1:1 sequences — connect your own Gmail or Outlook mailbox via OAuth. Mail keeps coming from the same address your prospects already recognize, so there's no reputation reset.
• Broadcasts — verify a dedicated sending domain (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, custom MAIL FROM). A brand-new domain needs warmup; SEMAOS enforces a 21-day ramp (100 / 500 / 2,000 sends per day) automatically so you don't torch a fresh domain on day one.

If you covered the four DNS records earlier in the deliverability series, this is where that work pays off.

How do you switch without a gap?

Run both tools in parallel for about two weeks. Point new sequences at the new tool while existing enrollments finish in the old one. Watch reply rates and bounce rates side by side — if the new setup matches or beats the old on deliverability, you've de-risked the move with real data. Only then do you stop new enrollments in the old tool and let your contract lapse at renewal.

What's the realistic timeline?

For a small team, a careful migration is a day of focused work plus a two-week parallel run — not a quarter-long project. The enterprise tools make leaving feel heavy because the contract is heavy; the data isn't. Once you've confirmed deliverability holds, cancel at renewal and keep your CSV backups. The last post in this series covers what you give up by leaving — honestly — so you can make the call with both sides in view.