Transition of exising memberships onto a new website.

Hi,
We have CB and CB Subs installed.

We have added 2000+ member registrations to CB with fields identifying a number of membership categories and CB Subs plans along with membership expiry dates and general member information etc.

We are setting up CB Auto Actions to recognize expiry dates and generate renewal notices, downgrades etc. Membership will then be renewed using CB Subs. Once recognized in the CB Subs component a user can be mostly managed within the Plans area (including Integration > CB Fields etc) and in the CB Subs Mailer.

In the documentation we have not found any guidelines on the "best practice" for transitioning from an externally managed membership system to CB Subs - is there any documented advice available?

Some questions that I would like to get answered:
Does the CB Subs Mailer work effectively for CB users (not yet with a CB Subs subscription) based only on the values in CB fields?
Is there any particular advantage of locating all Mailer generation in the CB Subs Mailer?
Where a particular task can be done in either Auto Actions or in CB Subs (e.g. Plans, incl Integration) is there any particular advantage of one over the other?

Regards, Robert



anq

In the documentation we have not found any guidelines on the "best practice" for transitioning from an externally managed membership system to CB Subs - is there any documented advice available?

The best way to handle that is using the Import functionality. See CBSubs > Import as you can import by several different means. This would be a one time import and you'll be done. The CBSubs manual covers the import functionality as well.

Does the CB Subs Mailer work effectively for CB users (not yet with a CB Subs subscription) based only on the values in CB fields?

Yes, it can be used to send emails off other conditions other than just subscription information.

Is there any particular advantage of locating all Mailer generation in the CB Subs Mailer?

Yes, all your mailings would be managed and triggered from a single location.

Where a particular task can be done in either Auto Actions or in CB Subs (e.g. Plans, incl Integration) is there any particular advantage of one over the other?

Depends on your usecase. CB Auto Actions provides a lot more control at the cost of simplicity. CBSubs integrations like SQL Actions of CBSubs Fields is simpler as you don't need to be concerned with triggers or conditions, but you lost the options of adding additional conditions or using format functions for example. So it really just depends on your needs.