Migrating to Kajabi Communities

Updated

Learn to successfully migrate your community to Kajabi Communities.

In this article:

Why move to Kajabi Communities?

Engage and empower your customers with Kajabi Communities.

By utilizing the many features on Kajabi alongside Kajabi Communities, you can save money, build powerful automations, and design campaigns from your favorite all-in-one platform.

What can you do with Kajabi Communities?

Whatever your reason may be, there are a few best practices that can help ensure that your move is a success. 

Prepare for migration

Building and growing a community takes a lot of work. And migrating probably seems like a daunting task. But with the right preparation, you can set yourself up for success to take full advantage of all the features Kajabi has to offer.

1. Take inventory

First things first. You will want to take inventory of your processes, integrations, data, custom code, and users. Knowing what you have and what you need is an important step when migrating platforms.

We recommend mapping out the important information that you need to know for your move in an external doc (like Google Docs or a Word Document).

2. Plan your move

After determining what you have and what you need, begin outlining your migration strategy. In this stage, you will want to identify how you want to roll out the change (e.g., all or none, phased rollout, etc.).

In this stage, you will want to consider the impact a move can have on your users and your business. Take the time to strategize a migration plan to create the lowest impact on your audience and business.

3. Communicate early and often

Be prepared to articulate your move to your audience. To have a successful online community, buy-in is key. As you strategize your move, you want to keep the following three things in mind: be transparent, consistent, and considerate. 

Communicating early and often serves as a way to help your customers move with you, but it is also meant to engage and encourage adoption. 

If you have a free community, you can use a landing page with a form to encourage your community members to join your waitlist in preparation for your move. Then, when you are ready to officially make the move, you can use your waitlist to grant access to your new community!

Example landing page copy:
“We have exciting news! We are moving to Kajabi Communities to improve your experience! This will allow us to have all of our content in one place, and help to remove any distractions outside our membership!”
Example form copy:
“Join our waitlist by filling out your information and get access to our new community!”

Learn to create a form.

Prefer to use a paywall or have a monetized subset of your audience? Use Offers.

Create a free or paid Offer and advertise your Offer on your social platforms and existing community. By purchasing the Offer, your community members will gain access to your new community.

Example Offer Checkout Copy (free or paid):
“We have exciting news! We are moving to Kajabi Communities to improve your experience! This will allow us to have all of our content in one place. Simply sign up here with the same login you use to access your membership and gain access to the new community!”

Learn to create an Offer.

4. Backup your content

Last, but certainly not least in the scheme of preparing for migration, back up your data and files. Ensure that your content is protected by importing your data, assets, and code into a separate location.

Regardless of migration, backing up your content is always a good way to protect and preserve your work.

This may come in the form of an export, depending on your current community platform, or keeping your old community as an archive until you and your business are ready to make the switch. 

Import your community posts

With Kajabi Communities, you can import your posts (including the number of likes and comments) directly into your channel. Learn more about channel. 

Note:
Your existing community platform will determine your ability to export your posts. If you experience issues importing your posts to Kajabi Communities, please reach out to Support for assistance.

To import your community posts:

  • Open your Product tab from your Dashboard.
  • Select your Community Product.
  • Click Go to Community.
  • Then, open your Community settings.
  • Under Import Content, select Channel.
  • Click Import:

migrating-to-kajabi-communities-google-docs.png

  • Download the sample CSV file.
Note:
The file must be saved in CSV format. Simply renaming the file will cause the upload to fail. It is important that the file you upload matches this format exactly. The CSV format should be the same as the template, even if there is no data for a specific column. The headers are case-sensitive and will break the import process if changed. The template can be found in the dialogue box when the "import" button is clicked.
  • Select the Channel you want to import your posts to.
  • Click Import CSV.
  • Select your CSV file from your file manager.
  • Then, click Import in the bottom-right corner of the modal.

When your posts have been imported successfully, you will be redirected to your Community settings page with a notification that your import has been imported.

Navigate back to your community and open your Channel to view your newly imported posts!

Note:
Your imported posts will show the number of likes and comments on the post, but it will not display any comments added to a post thread. Only higher-level posts will display when imported to Kajabi Communities.

Things to note for a successful import:

  • The file must be saved in CSV format. Simply renaming the file will cause the upload to fail.
  • The CSV format should be the same as the template, even if there is no data for a specific column. The headers are case-sensitive and will break the import process if changed. The template can be found in the dialogue box when the "import" button is clicked.
  • The "Created Date/Time" and "Post Text" are required fields. All other fields are optional (although the headers are still required).
  • The "Created Date/Time" must be earlier than the import date. It is not possible to import posts from the future.
  • If the author name and author photo are not provided, we will use the leader's information.

Migrating from other community tools

Migrating to Kajabi Communities will vary depending on your migration goal.

Do you want to replicate your existing community or start fresh? Do you want a similar experience to your existing community or revamp your member experience? Is this your opportunity to rethink your community, or do you want to continue your existing strategy?

Your migration goals will determine the steps you take to move to Kajabi Communities.

If you are ready to rethink what community means to you and willing to take this as an opportunity to improve your community approach and strategy, we recommend starting fresh. 

Identify your goal, determine your desired structure and layout, and begin building your new community on Kajabi.

If you want to replicate your existing community to provide a similar community experience to your existing community, there are a variety of methods for migrating to Kajabi Communities.

As always, you will first want to identify your goal and the outcome you wish to accomplish. This includes how you want your community to be structured and the layout you want to achieve. With Kajabi Communities, you can always make modifications along the way. 

To help you move your community we have provided a few tips and tricks for migrating from a few common community platforms. 

Click on the following to learn the best practices for moving from the following community platforms to Kajabi Community:

Kajabi Communities is a great way to create engagement and add value to your online business! Please vote below and let us know if you found this article helpful. We value your feedback. Thanks for being the best part of Kajabi!

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