case study
Migrating a High-Volume Telehealth Brand From ActiveCampaign to HubSpot
Hubspot Implementation, Onboarding and Training
Client Overview
Our client is a fast-growing direct-to-consumer telehealth and wellness company that serves both patients and a network of providers. As the business scaled, it outgrew an ActiveCampaign instance that had never been properly built. Deliverability was slipping, core lifecycle automations were broken or missing, and their SMS program had gone dark. Patient and provider data was spread across a CRM, a billing platform, an EMR, and a quiz funnel, and none of it was flowing cleanly into their marketing.
They made the decision to move to HubSpot Enterprise and needed a partner who could do more than copy the old setup across. They brought in Automation Strategy Group to run the full technical migration: audit the legacy system, architect a new HubSpot environment, connect every integration, rebuild their lifecycle automations, and move roughly 100,000 contacts without damaging sender reputation, all inside a fixed launch window and under healthcare compliance requirements.
The Challenge
This was not a simple platform swap. Several problems had to be solved at once:
- Deliverability was declining. Email performance had dropped by roughly 10% after a jump in send frequency, and the sending domains had never been properly authenticated or monitored.
- The automation foundation was broken. Abandoned cart, welcome, and other lifecycle flows were either non-functional or had never existed, so the business was leaving revenue on the table every day.
- SMS was offline and non-compliant. A prior SMS setup had failed, opt-outs were not being tracked, and there was no consolidated, TCPA-compliant opt-out list.
- Data was arriving unusable. Records from Salesforce and other systems were landing without parsing or segmentation, so the team could not reliably target or report on them.
- The migration itself carried risk. Moving roughly 100,000 contacts to a brand-new instance, on a healthcare-compliant platform, without triggering spam filters or breaking engagement, required careful sequencing rather than a bulk import.
The goal was not to lift and shift a set of broken automations. It was to build a new, properly structured HubSpot environment from the ground up and migrate onto it safely.
Our Approach & Solution
We owned the full technical build while the client’s team supplied copy and design. The work came together across three connected pillars.
A clean pre-migration foundation
Before moving anything, we ran a full audit of the ActiveCampaign account, inventorying every list, segment, tag, custom field, form, and active workflow, and deciding what to rebuild versus retire. We then cleaned the database ahead of the move: suppressing hard bounces and invalid addresses, consolidating SMS opt-out records into a single TCPA-compliant list, and segmenting all contacts by engagement recency (active, warm, and cold). In parallel, we fixed the deliverability basics, configuring SPF, DKIM, and DMARC on the sending domains, checking blacklist status, and setting a pre-migration deliverability baseline in Google Postmaster Tools.
A properly architected HubSpot build
We configured HubSpot Enterprise for healthcare compliance and built the data model the business actually needed rather than a copy of the old one. That included mapping contact properties from ActiveCampaign tags and Salesforce data, structuring the CRM around their patient and provider journeys, setting up user roles and permissions, and installing tracking and reporting. We connected the full stack of integrations, including the quiz funnel, the EMR and patient-portal feeds, the CRM data parsing, the webinar platform, the billing and subscription events, the SMS platform, and GA4 for attribution. We also built a reusable drag-and-drop email template framework so the client’s team could create and edit campaigns on their own after launch, with no developer required and no compliance risk from raw HTML.
Lifecycle automation, phased migration, and IP warmup
We rebuilt the customer journey as a set of lifecycle automations covering welcome, abandoned cart, activation, post-consultation follow-up, webinar and event follow-up, upsell, and re-engagement, plus SMS flows with intelligent email-or-SMS routing based on each contact’s opt-in status. The migration itself was phased and paced to protect sender reputation: we ran a structured IP warmup, starting with the most engaged contacts and increasing volume week over week, and imported active, then warm, then cold segments in sequence. ActiveCampaign stayed live in parallel until HubSpot was fully validated, and every automation, send, and form was QA’d before final go-live, followed by a 30-day deliverability monitoring period.
The Results
The client moved off a broken, inherited setup and onto a marketing and CRM platform built for how the business actually runs:
- A new HubSpot Enterprise instance, configured for healthcare compliance, with authenticated domains and a deliverability foundation monitored from day one.
- Roughly 100,000 contacts migrated in engagement-based phases, with sender reputation protected through a structured IP warmup and a parallel run before cutover.
- Eight lifecycle automations rebuilt and live, including the abandoned cart and post-consultation flows the business had been missing.
- SMS re-enabled with consolidated, TCPA-compliant opt-out management and smart routing between email and SMS.
- Salesforce and other system data parsed, mapped, and segmented so the team can finally target and report on it.
- A reusable template framework that lets the internal team build and edit campaigns independently, and a projected 5%+ conversion improvement based on the client’s own estimates.
Why This Drives Retention and Sales
Rebuilding the automations was not the goal in itself. The goal was revenue, and for a subscription telehealth business that revenue comes from two places: converting more of the demand the business is already paying to create, and keeping patients active for longer. The eight flows map directly onto both.
Recovering and converting more sales. The abandoned cart flow alone recovers revenue that was previously walking out the door, reaching patients who started checkout on a high-consideration purchase and nudging them back before the intent fades. The welcome and post-consultation flows catch people at the moment they are most likely to buy, moving a new signup or a completed consultation into a started treatment plan instead of letting momentum stall. Webinar follow-up and upsell then convert educated leads and put the right next product in front of customers who already qualify for it. Together these are the flows behind the client’s projected 5%+ conversion improvement.
Keeping patients active longer. In a subscription model, retention is the business. The activation flow attacks churn where it is highest, in the first days after signup, by getting new patients to their first real milestone so they are far more likely to stay. The re-engagement flow catches patients going quiet and prompts a refill or a return visit before a silent lapse turns into a cancellation. And because SMS is back online with compliant routing, time-sensitive reminders reach patients on the channel they actually respond to, which supports adherence and continuity of care. Every month a patient stays is another month of recurring revenue, so small improvements in retention add up to a much larger gain in lifetime value than any single campaign could produce.
None of this works without the migration underneath it. Because patient, billing, and clinical data now flow cleanly into HubSpot, each automation fires on real behavior, a checkout left unfinished, a consultation completed, engagement dropping off, an upsell milestone reached, rather than a generic batch send. Right message, right trigger, right channel. That is the difference between a marketing system that simply sends email and one that actively defends and grows revenue.
Business Impact
For a company scaling quickly across both patient and provider audiences, the migration turned a fragile, inherited system into a foundation it can grow on. Marketing, sales, billing, and clinical data now connect inside one platform, the lifecycle programs that drive revenue are working again, and the whole operation meets the healthcare and messaging compliance standards the business has to hold. Just as important, the client is no longer dependent on a single poorly documented setup or an outside developer for every change. Their team can run day-to-day campaigns themselves, with Automation Strategy Group available for the deeper build work, and the platform is already set up for the next phase, from win-back journeys to a fuller lead-to-patient-to-retained lifecycle.
Seeing Similar Gaps in Your Automation Stack?
Whether you are outgrowing a platform that was never built right or planning a migration you cannot afford to get wrong, Automation Strategy Group handles the full technical move so your team lands on a system it can actually run on.