Migrate from ELAINE to Nutshell

ELAINE Contacts migrate to Nutshell People as the primary record. We map standard properties (email address, name fields, phone, address) to their Nutshell equivalents and preserve any enrichment data added via the ELAINE API as read-only custom fields on the Person record. The Person record is the primary entity; all other records (Companies, Activities) link back to it.

When an ELAINE Contact record contains a company name or domain field, we extract that value and either match it against an existing Nutshell Company record or create a new Company during migration. The Person record in Nutshell receives the Company as a lookup reference. This produces the People-attached-to-Accounts structure that Nutshell's CRM model relies on for pipeline reporting.

ELAINE Target Group memberships are flattened into Nutshell Tags on the Person record. Each Target Group name becomes a Tag value, and the Contact's membership in that group is recorded as a tag assignment. Complex nested Target Group hierarchies require flattening during the transform phase; we document the full group tree before migration and note any nested relationships that cannot be preserved as a flat tag structure in Nutshell.

Alternatively, if a customer's Target Group model uses fixed group names rather than dynamic membership, we offer migration as a multi-select custom field on Nutshell Person. The customer chooses between tag-based and custom-field-based segmentation during scoping. Multi-select fields support up to 500 values in Nutshell; we flag if the group count exceeds this limit.

ELAINE Email Campaign records—newsletter sends, transactional emails, and A/B test variants—migrate to Nutshell Activity notes on the Person record. Each campaign generates a note entry containing the campaign name, send date, subject line, and open/click metadata where available. Nutshell does not have a native Campaign object; this activity-note pattern preserves campaign context on the Person timeline without requiring a custom object.

ELAINE custom fields on Contacts (text, choice, date, and calculated fields) require type mapping to Nutshell's supported custom field types: Text, Long Text, Currency, Date, Number, and Dropdown. Calculated fields from ELAINE have no direct Nutshell equivalent; we flag them during discovery and document the calculation logic so the customer's admin can replicate it as a formula field or manual process in Nutshell. All custom field definitions are pre-created in Nutshell before any Person records are imported.

Files attached to ELAINE Contacts or campaigns are downloaded during extraction, stored locally, and re-linked to the corresponding Nutshell Person record via a file reference field or documented upload instruction. We do not store files in Nutshell's native storage during migration; we deliver the file package and a mapping spreadsheet that tells the admin which files belong to which Person record for re-upload post-migration.

ELAINE Mail Sequences with multi-step triggers, delays, and conditional branches do not migrate as automation code. Nutshell's workflow tool handles task creation and field updates, not email cadence sequences. We extract every Mail Sequence definition (step order, trigger condition, delay duration, content block, A/B variant) and deliver it as a written automation inventory document with a Nutshell Workflow equivalent recommendation for each step. The customer's admin rebuilds sequences manually in Nutshell or a connected sales engagement tool.

External API integrations that enriched subscriber data in ELAINE (GDPR-compliant enrichment providers, data append services, webhook endpoints) are documented as a written integration inventory. We capture the endpoint configuration, data flow direction, and trigger conditions for each integration so that the customer's admin can re-establish these connections in Nutshell's webhook or Zapier ecosystem post-migration. We do not configure the new integrations inside the migration scope.