How to Migrate Your Contacts from MDirector to emBlue for MD Free Accounts – MDirector Help Center

MDirector is now part of emBlue, an omnichannel platform from which you can efficiently manage all your actions and contacts.

For this reason — and only if you have an MD Free plan — this article provides a step-by-step guide to create you account and migrate all your contacts independently to your new emBlue account.

If you are a paying-plan customer, you can reach out to your usual agent or contact us at support@mdirector.com if you have any questions.

Steps to Successfully Migrate All Contacts from MDirector to emBlue on Your Own

Create your account in emBlue

Within the MDirector application, once you have accepted the modification regarding the CPS, you will be able to create an account in emBlue with the same data and with special features available only to MDirector users. To do this, click the yellow 'Migrate account' button to start the process.

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It is very important that you complete this process from here. Otherwise, you will have a more limited account with fewer features.
Clean up your database

Before you begin migrating your contacts, it is important to perform a preliminary cleanup—still from within MDirector—of your contact lists to avoid transferring outdated information or inactive contacts.

We recommend:
- Removing contacts with reputation 0 and inactive contacts, especially those who have not opened any email in the last 12 months.
- Checking for duplicate lists or repeated contacts so you can merge them before exporting.
- Ensuring all contacts have valid consent, especially those imported long ago or from old campaigns.
Create the standard MDirector fields as custom fields in emBlue, and also add your own custom fields

Before importing your contacts, it is essential to replicate in emBlue the fields you used in MDirector so all information is transferred correctly. MDirector has standard fields such as Name, Surname, Phone, Country, Date of Birth, or Province. Below you will find which of these already exist in emBlue. You will not need to create those. To preserve fields that do not exist in emBlue, you must create them as custom fields.

We recommend:
- Reviewing the fields you actually use in MDirector and making a list of those you need to keep.
- Creating in emBlue one custom field for each field that does not exist there, keeping the same data type (text, number, date, etc.).
- Standardizing names and formats from the beginning (for example, always using 'name' or 'customer_name', but not mixing both).
- Removing obsolete fields you no longer use and only add noise to your database.
- Avoiding the creation of fields that already exist as standard fields in emBlue, to prevent duplication. For this purpose, we provide a table showing the equivalence between standard fields in both platforms. All fields highlighted in yellow are standard MDirector fields that do not exist in emBlue and must be created there, while those in white already have a corresponding field. The fields highlighted in blue are those that allow you to transfer contact activity from one platform to another. Keep in mind that these fields will no longer update automatically in emBlue. For example, the field 'last MD open date' will no longer update with the latest open date— it will only serve as a reference showing the last open date recorded in MDirector before exporting. From now on, this type of data will update based on emBlue’s own activity fields.
  
  To create these custom fields in emBlue, go to the dropdown under your name —top right— and select 'Settings'.
  
  From there, select 'Contacts', then 'Custom fields', and click the + icon in the top right.
  
  A window will open where you can create the field. You can enter its name and define its type. Repeat this process for every new field you need. Remember to also add the custom fields you had created in MDirector.
Export your contact lists from MDirector

To do this, go to the 'Contact lists' section in the 'Email/SMS Marketing' module and select one of the contact lists you want to migrate to emBlue. Click the 'Export list' button.

A window will open where you can select which standard and custom fields you want to export. Considering everything explained in step 3, select only the fields you need.

Click the yellow 'Export' button and a CSV file with your contacts will download.

We recommend renaming the files with the list names so you can easily identify them during import.

Now repeat this process for each contact list you want to export.
Import them into emBlue by matching the fields

Go back to the emBlue platform, go to 'Contacts', click the '+ Create' button and select 'Contact import'.

Click 'pick' and select one of the CSV files corresponding to your exported MDirector lists.

Click 'Import contacts' to move to the second step. This is where you will match the fields from the file with the standard and custom fields in your emBlue account. Make sure 'ORIGIN' is set to 'utf-8' and 'DELIMITER' to 'Comma'.

Keep in mind that for the 'Gender' field you must select the 'F - M' format, and for the 'Country' field the 'ISO 3166 (3 digits-alpha)' format, as these are the formats used by MDirector during export.

Once this is done, click 'Continue' to move to the next step. There, you will see the breakdown of new, updated, and non-imported contacts, plus a summary of the assigned fields.

In the final step you can create a list —known in emBlue as a 'group'— in which to save the contacts. Simply select 'Assign them to a group in my list or create a new one', enter the group name, click the '+' button and confirm the import.

If in the future you want to add more contacts to this same group, you can do so the same way, but simply select the existing group from the dropdown instead of creating a new one.
If you had segments created, you can recreate them in emBlue

Segments, by their nature —they are a filter with selection conditions— cannot be exported, since they are subject to changes if the contacts that make up that filter stop meeting the defined conditions. Keep in mind that while emBlue does not offer exactly the same segmentation filters as MDirector, they are very similar.

To create a segment, go to the 'Contacts' section, then the 'Segments' subsection, and click the '+ Create segment' button.

You will notice that emBlue’s segment creation module is even more complete than MDirector’s and, in addition to creating a custom segment, it also offers many predefined segments, known as emBlue recipes.

To recreate one from MDirector, select the 'Custom segment' option and give it a name.

For example, let’s suppose you want to recreate this MDirector segment that filters users who opened an email in the last two months.

To create this same segment in emBlue, filter by 'Activity' > 'Last opening' > 'in the last' and enter the number of days —in this case, 60.

During this process you can recalculate the number of contacts matching your filters as you add them, using the 'Recalculate' button. Filters are added by clicking the 'Add filter' button.
Migrating unsubscribes and bounces

It is very important to carry out this final step. This action will largely determine whether you maintain a good sender reputation.

To migrate the unsubscribes and bounces you have in your MDirector account to your emBlue account, follow a similar process to the contacts: export them from the first platform and then import them into the second.

To export unsubscribes and bounces from MDirector, go to the Email Marketing module, then the 'Settings' section, and select the 'Unsubscriptions and bounces' tab. By default, you will land on unsubscribes, not bounces. To download these unsubscribes, do not select any specific date range. Just click the 'Download all unsubscriptions ' button.

A window will open to select which fields to export. Select them and click 'Export'. A CSV file with all unsubscribes will download.

Go to the bounces section and click the 'Download all bounces' button. This will download the file.

Return to the emBlue platform to import both files into a contact group (or list) that you should name 'MDirector Unsubscribes List'.

Once this is done, go to this group in the contact groups module, select all contacts in the group and click the pause icon to suspend them.

Keep in mind that this will prevent those contacts from re-subscribing on their own. If in the future any of these contacts wishes to receive your communications again, this suspension must be manually removed in emBlue.