An award-winning creative agency use Cognism's sales intelligence platform to:
- See ROI in just a few months
- Hit the right person at the right time generating half a million pounds in opportunities
- Cut prospecting time to focus on closing deals
- Generate quality leads from one centralised database
- Send tailored and personalised emails to hundreds of prospects at the click of a button
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The company
Courts Design has evolved for over 30 years into a full-service creative agency providing 2D & 3D Animation, Brand Identities, Video Production, Digital Platforms, Exhibitions, Website and Creative Brand Comms.
The team is on a mission to be the first-choice creative partner by sharing their expertise, innovation and commitment to help clients achieve their goals.
Courts Design prides itself on long-standing relationships and is currently working with several global companies.
The challenge
We interviewed the Account Director and Client Services Manager about their experience using Cognism.
What problem were they trying to solve?
Despite having prospecting tools in place, the company found they were spending too much time manually storing all the data in one place and not enough time actioning it.
The Account Director explained:
"We had all the tools in place such as Salesforce, Campaign Monitor, Hootsuite and another data provider. However, the challenge was once we got the data, it was really hard to action and capitalise on it. We were manually downloading the data then transferring it to each tool. It got to the point where we were only doing one large send a year, it was heavily time-consuming."
How did COVID impact their prospecting efforts?
The Client Services Manager explained:
"I work in business development and would spend my day cold calling and following-up with emails. Since COVID, everyone started to work remotely so you couldn’t ring the office and speak to a prospect. It was harder to call, and it became more time-consuming to craft and send a personalised email, so we started to look at ways around this."
How did they hear about us?
The Account Director explained:
"I saw a LinkedIn pop-up banner advertising 25 free B2B leads with Cognism so I was curious to check it out."
Did they consider other solutions?
"We did speak with another competitor, but they were really pushy, over-complicated and did not listen to our requirements. When we spoke with our BDM at Cognism, they were so plain-speaking, and listened to what we wanted. Overall, Cognism was really accommodating about how we could use the data."
The solution
What departments are using Cognism on a regular basis?
The Client Services Manager handles the day-to-day usage of Cognism and the Account Director oversees the campaign strategy.
How has Cognism facilitated personalised outreach?
The Account Director explained:
"Previously we sent e-shots to 5000 people in random industries which meant nothing to them. However, with Cognism the email references their industry and what we’ve done for another customer in that industry. This makes them bite a lot more, allowing us to increase the effectiveness of our email campaigns."
The Client Services Manager added:
"The big email campaigns sent before were clearly a mass email, whereas with Cognism, they are tailored to you. One of the leads we got from Cognism said they felt our approach was really personal and they appreciated that. As we are a service offering, we need our outreach to be customisable and that’s what Cognism allows us to do effectively."
What did they think about the quality of Cognism’s premium B2B data?
"The data is usually spot on. I set up specific UTM links for Cognism leads so I can see where that lead has come from, find who the contacts are in the platform, pick up the phone and ring them. It’s that easy and accurate."
How easy is the platform to use?
The Client Services Manager explained:
"Cognism makes it easier for us to get on with what we want to do. It’s very non time-consuming. I can set-up a campaign in half an hour which includes me pulling the data, setting up the sequences, the email copy and the UTM links. I can then hit send and we’re sending up to 1000 emails per day across various email addresses."
Ross went onto describe how they can now automate all the data in one place:
"Even the bounces and unsubscribes are all automated in the background, we don’t see it. When we were prospecting previously, I had to make an unsubscribe list every week in our CRM. It was so manual and time-consuming."
Do they find the customer success function valuable?
The Client Services Manager explained:
"We had a dedicated Customer Success Manager who trained us, and we were up in running in a couple of weeks. In the first few months, we were very much finding our feet and having a play around to see what came back. After that, we started to refine our target audience and messaging accordingly. Our CSM would always suggest other ideas on calls on how we could maximise use from the platform, which we would never have received from your competitor."
He further praised our technical support team:
"We did encounter an issue a few months ago, so I emailed tech support for help. They were very responsive and resolved the issue for us super quickly."
The results
We asked them what volume of leads they’ve seen with Cognism.
The Client Services Manager said:
"My days are full now because we’re getting responses from Cognism…the platform generates opportunities that maybe we wouldn’t have got without Cognism. It allows you to hit the right person at the right time. We’ve seen some incredible results."
Have they seen ROI from Cognism?
The Client Services Manager explained:
"Our sales cycle depends on the size of the client as we aren’t a click to buy service. One of our quickest conversions from a large aviation company came through Cognism in just a couple of days."
The Account Director explained the monetary gains from Cognism:
"We saw ROI in the first few months of signing and it generated well north of half a million pounds in opportunities."
The Client Services Manager mentioned how Cognism has generated recurring client revenue as well:
"We aren’t bothered about the quantity of clients but rather the quality. The actual number of clients from Cognism isn’t massively high; about 8 or 9 customers who have now become recurring clients. In particular, we’re doing two projects per month with that large aviation client from Cognism. They are the absolute perfect client for us."
The Account Director went on to explain the other benefits seen from using the platform.
"Using Cognism takes away the hassle of having to do individual follow-ups. Amongst the fact that it works, it’s very good at saving you time, and that has been extremely valuable for us."
The Client Services Manager further elaborated on how Cognism allowed them to send and centralize all the data in one place:
"Cognism allowed us to be more structured in our approach. We could generate the data and at a click of a few button we were able to send out thousands of emails all from one system. Before, we wasted a lot of time manually downloading and transferring the data across to other tools. As a result, we couldn’t run regular campaigns. Now with Cognism, we run email campaigns more frequently, have more time to spend on personalising emails to our target audiences and we’re seeing higher success rates."
Would they recommend Cognism to others, and why?
The Client Services Manager explained:
"We hired some business development managers before the pandemic which didn’t work. This is when we realised that we needed to find another solution. Cognism is now an extension of me."
Simply put:
"It works brilliantly! I’m always sceptical about providers that guarantee you leads. We did once try outsourcing to a B2B telemarketing company who promised us X amount of leads and they didn’t deliver…I can’t give a higher praise or recommendation to Cognism. We’re really pleased to have a bought software that works and has delivered on the expectations initially set out."
Try Cognism’s sales intelligence solution
Over 3,000 revenue teams around the world trust Cognism to:
✅ Build qualified B2B contact databases
✅ Plan and launch their outbound campaigns
✅ Power up their social selling
✅ Meet and beat their revenue targets
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