From RD Station to Postal, without reactivating those who left

Before changing anything, list what your account uses. Each item has a place in Postal, or does not, and it is better to find that out now. Do not close RD Station yet: you will need it until the very end.

• Whoever exports needs access to the Lead Base and to the RD Station account. Whoever looks after the website or DNS will need to publish records (next step) and swap the forms' code.
• Create your Postal account. The plan's contact limit is on Pricing: Free has 1,000 contacts, Pro 5,000 and Scale 50,000. Check in your RD Station account what your plan's limit is and how many leads the base has.

Under Domains, Postal shows a few records for whoever manages DNS to copy, and checks them on its own for up to 72 hours. The domain can stay authenticated in RD Station at the same time.

• Prefer a subdomain just for marketing, like news.exemplo.com.br. That way, whatever happens with your campaigns does not affect your system's emails.
• The names of RD Station's DKIM records are not in the help pages we consulted. Copy them from your account screen and check whether any is equal to postal._domainkey before publishing.
• Do not delete the RD Station records while any email is still going out through it. Old forms and flows keep sending until you turn them off.
• Turn on open and click tracking on the domain if your reports and flows depend on it. Postal notifies you through the domain.updated webhook when the domain becomes verified. See Domains and DNS.

The complete route is the CSV from the Lead Base. Open the Lead Base, choose the whole base or one segmentation, and use the list actions to export. You tick the fields, standard and custom, and enter the email address that will receive the file.

• RD Station's help describes two formats: the CSV adapted for Excel (fields separated by tabs) and the standard CSV (comma-separated). Postal detects commas, semicolons and tabs, and reads files in UTF-8 and Windows-1252: either one works.
• The file arrives by email, and a large base takes longer. Each row is a lead. Menu names have changed over time: if you cannot find it, search for “export” in the Lead Base.
• Export the whole base once and, after that, each segmentation you want to keep as a segment. The conversions export is a different one and brings one row per conversion: Postal does not import history, but keep that file.
• API 2.0 does not replace the CSV. It looks up one contact at a time (by uuid, email or phone) and returns the contacts of a segmentation with only uuid, name, email, phone and dates. Custom fields are left out. The limit is 120 requests per minute per account on the Light, Basic and Pro plans.
• The Company field does not come out through the contacts API or the segmentations API: it only appears in the body of webhooks. If it matters to you, tick it in the file.

An inactive lead in RD Station receives no campaigns or flow emails. Each reason for inactivity has a different destination in Postal. This is where you protect those who asked to leave.

• According to RD Station's help, a lead becomes inactive when it unsubscribes, because of an incorrect email address, a hard bounce, repeated soft bounces (five, according to the article), by being discarded or by marking an email as spam. You can also deactivate a lead by hand, from the profile.
• In the pages we consulted, we did not find how the exported file marks inactive leads. Before importing, open the file, look for a status column and compare the total with the active leads RD Station shows. If you cannot separate them, do not import as subscribed anyone you cannot prove is active.
• Unsubscribed: in their file, add an Unsubscribed column filled with sim on every row and point that column to the Unsubscribed (yes/no) field during import. For the active ones, do not map the column: for someone already in Postal, the file's value wins, and a “no” would reactivate someone who already left.
• Suppressed: during import, Postal ignores addresses that are on the suppression list. To suppress a large list, use the API (POST /suppressions/batch/add, 100 at a time) with help from whoever looks after your system; in the dashboard, Suppressions accepts one address at a time. Without the API, import them as unsubscribed: they will never receive campaigns, but they take up a spot in the plan's contact limit.
• Mind one difference: in RD Station, someone who unsubscribed by mistake or marked spam does not become active again just by converting on a landing page. Automatic reactivation is needed, with a confirmation email. In Postal, someone who signs up through a form receives emails again, even if they had unsubscribed before. To stay cautious, turn on double opt-in on your forms. An address on the suppression list cannot sign up.
• RD Station says it acts as a data processor and does not block sending to leads without a legal basis. You are the one responsible for the legal basis of sending, in both places. See the next step to keep the proof.

In Audience, on the Contacts tab, click Import CSV. Choose the file, say which field each column matches and check the preview before importing. The import runs in the background and you can follow the result.

• The column names in your file may be different: what matters is pointing each column to the right field.
• Each segmentation you want to keep becomes a static segment: export one per file and import each one choosing the segment. Only static segments receive imported contacts. You rebuild the dynamic ones in the next step.
• If you want to separate subjects, create Topics and select the topic in Subscribe to topics. That field subscribes every contact in the file.
• Leave the Trigger automations option off. When it is on, each new contact can start automations, and a large list may receive the welcome sequence all at once.
• Contacts that already exist are updated by email. Empty cells do not erase values, and repeated emails in the file count only the first time. Each file can be up to 20 MB: split larger ones. The import stops when the plan's contact limit is reached.
• Before sending, run the list through Email validation, which flags invalid and risky addresses.

Emails and campaigns do not transfer on their own. What you can take along is the HTML, and the rest is built again. RD Station imports HTML (from a public address or pasted), so if your emails started out as HTML, you still have it. The ones made in the visual editor need to be redone.

• RD Station's blog says the variables come from the editor's picker (name, first name, email, company and custom fields), but the documentation we consulted does not show how they appear in the HTML. Look in the code for whatever is between braces or slashes and replace it with the Postal equivalent.
• In the help, we did not find a button to download the HTML of an email made in RD Station's editor. If you only have the finished email, one way out is to send a test to yourself and copy the HTML of the received message. That HTML may include tracking links and RD Station's footer: replace them with direct links and with {{{POSTAL_UNSUBSCRIBE_URL}}}.
• In Postal, under Templates, build the email in the visual editor or paste the HTML. Campaigns also accept HTML. If your images are hosted on RD Station, upload them again before closing the account.
• To redo a campaign, open Campaigns and choose the segment (and, if you want, the topic), the sender from a verified domain, the subject and the preview text. Send a test and schedule it. Only contacts in the segment who are not unsubscribed, are not on the suppression list and, if there is a topic, are subscribed to it will receive it.
• Campaigns already sent are not imported. Keep the HTML and the reports before closing the account. Templates only replace variables: conditions and lists inside the email you handle in your own system.

Only the contacts come in the file. The segmentation rules, the scoring and the funnel stages you rebuild. In RD Station's API we did not find a way to read a segmentation's rules: it returns only the contacts.

• RD Station's Lead Scoring gives two scores: profile (each field's weight times the points of the lead's answer) and interest (the sum of points for actions in emails, flows and conversions, each action counted once). According to the help, it is on the Pro and Advanced plans. Postal has no point calculation: the automations documentation only shows writing a fixed value to a property.
• If today you use the score to decide who goes to sales, replace the score with a clear rule: for example, the “hot” segment is the contacts who clicked on 3 emails in the last 30 days and have a decision-making job title.
• Postal has a ready-made connection with RD Station CRM (not with RD Station Marketing). You paste the instance token (account menu, Settings, Integrations, API Token) and create contact and deal webhooks in the CRM, with the URL that Postal shows. Deal stages become a contact property or tag and can start an automation. In the other direction, email activity goes back to the CRM as an activity on the open deal or as a note on the contact.
• Postal does not move deals in the CRM or mark opportunities. If today RD Station Marketing is what marks opportunities and hands them to the sales team, decide how that continues: a webhook step in an automation can notify your system. The number of CRM connections depends on the plan. See CRM connections.

Flows do not transfer on their own. Open each active RD Station flow and build the equivalent in Automations. Take the chance to review what still makes sense: flows that have been idle for months do not need to come along.

• Postal adds the wait_for step (wait for the contact to open, click or reply, up to a deadline) and the A/B test (experiment, on the plans that include it).
• Each contact enters once by default (reentry: "once"). To enter on every trigger, use every_time. Imports do not start automations unless you turn that option on. Review who would enter before activating.
• RD Station's e-commerce events (checkout started, abandoned cart, order placed, paid, shipped, delivered, canceled and refunded) become events that your system sends through POST /events, with names you choose, such as order_paid. Postal has no ready-made integration with store platforms, so this takes a developer.
• Each plan has a limit of runs per month. See Automations and the automations reference.

RD Station forms keep sending people to RD Station as long as they are live. Rebuild each one in Postal and swap the address or the code on your pages.

• Under Forms, a submission creates or updates the contact, adds it to the form's segment and subscribes it to the chosen topics. The option to validate the email rejects disposable addresses and domains that do not receive email.
• If a form lives inside an RD Station landing page or pop-up, it only stops capturing when you take the page down. Remove the old code from your site once the new one is live and tested.
• New leads keep arriving in RD Station until you swap the last form. Export again close to the switch and import: contacts that already exist are updated by email.
• Postal notifies your system of the signup through the form.submitted webhook. See Forms and the forms reference.

If your site, your ERP or your store talks to RD Station's API 2.0, the calls change. The design is similar: a conversion event creates or updates the contact. Below, the same signup in both formats.

POST https://api.rd.services/platform/events?event_type=conversion
Authorization: Bearer <access_token do OAuth>
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "event_type": "CONVERSION",
  "event_family": "CDP",
  "payload": {
    "conversion_identifier": "newsletter-site",
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "name": "Ana Souza",
    "cf_cidade": "Campinas",
    "tags": ["newsletter"],
    "available_for_mailing": true
  }
}

POST https://api.postal.so/events
Authorization: Bearer ps_sua_chave
Idempotency-Key: newsletter-site-ana-1
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "name": "newsletter.site",
  "contact": {
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "first_name": "Ana",
    "last_name": "Souza"
  },
  "contact_properties": { "cidade": "Campinas" },
  "properties": { "origem": "site" }
}

• Prefer an SDK? Postal's (Node.js, PHP and Laravel) use this same API. See SDKs and CLI and the events reference.
• Postal's request limit is per plan (Free 5 per second, Pro 10, Scale 20 and Enterprise 50). See Limits.

RD Station's Webhook Service sends leads, not email events. In Postal, webhooks cover emails, contacts, forms, suppressions and domains. Create the endpoint under Webhooks (dashboard or POST /webhooks) and keep the signing_secret.

• The URL must be HTTPS and public, and you choose the events for each endpoint. Send a test event from the dashboard before switching over.
• Test addresses ([email protected], [email protected] and others) generate real webhooks without using your quota. They depend on the plan.
• Take the webhooks off RD Station only after switching all the traffic: whatever still comes in through there keeps generating calls.

Switch one flow at a time, with RD Station still on. Start with test addresses and with yourself, compare deliveries and bounces in the first days and only then move the rest.