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How Darwinbox Used Cognism to Expand Its US Market Presence

Written by Karin O'Grady | Jun 14, 2024 3:01:25 PM

Darwinbox, the leading human capital management platform, uses Cognism’s B2B data to:

  • Enrich account and contact CRM data in existing and new target geographies.
  • Grow US target accounts to 4,000 and add 15,000 US-based contacts to its database.
  • Drastically increase the efficiency of its outbound motion. 
  • Increase call connect rates from 1% to 5%.
  • 10% increase in overall database quality.
Website: www.darwinbox.com
Number of employees: 1500
Industry: Computer Software
HQ: Hyderabad, India
Teams using: Marketing, Revenue Operations, Sales

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The company

Darwinbox is a cutting-edge, agile HCM Suite revolutionising HR management for enterprises and growing businesses worldwide. With a focus on automating day-to-day HR processes, delivering actionable insights, and fostering better workplaces, Darwinbox empowers organisations to thrive in today’s dynamic business landscape.

The company has over 850 clients and 1,500+ employees across India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. It has offices in Dubai and the United States. 

Driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), Darwinbox offers a lightweight, mobile-first experience that extends to every employee. Customers include industry leaders such as Adani, Kopi Kenangan, MatchMove, Starbucks, and Mahindra.

The challenge

We interviewed Siddhartha Jain, Head of Marketing Strategy and Operations at Darwinbox. 

What problems were you trying to solve?

“Darwinbox has a significant presence in India, with the majority of our customer base located there. We experienced rapid expansion in South East Asia, however, as we sought to extend our reach into the US and EMEA markets, we encountered a challenge: identifying the most effective means to pinpoint the right personas we wanted to reach."

“This is when I started evaluating B2B data solutions.”

Sid told us about the evaluation process he led:

“I identified several data vendors and narrowed down our selection to four or five top industry players and evaluated them based on two key factors: match rate and the percentage of enrichment occurring.”

“To compare each vendor on data quality, we took a sample of about 500 contacts where we knew the email addresses and phone numbers were correct, and analysed the contact details each vendor was giving for those contacts.” 

“Overall, Cognism had the most accurate contact details, and for US data alone, it was easily greater than 90% accuracy on data quality.”

“As for the percentage enrichment rate metric, we took a different sample set of 500 contacts that didn’t have an email address or phone number. Again, Cognism came out on top with over 75% match rate, higher than all other vendors.”

How did Cognism perform against competitors?

“After evaluating the data each vendor provided for the various regions we wanted to target, such as the US, Europe, and even Southeast Asia, we concluded that Cognism outperformed each of its competitors.” 

“Therefore, we made the decision to move forward with Cognism.”

“I’ve used several B2B lead generation tools before but didn’t feel they were a good fit. I needed a tool that was easy to use and integrated well with our CRM. I liked the idea of using filters to get really specific about the people we wanted to target.

“So, looking at our goals and objectives, Cognism was perfect.”

The solution

Who is Darwinbox’s ICP?

“Our Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) revolve around two key personas.” 

“Firstly, we target HR executives such as CHROs, Heads of HR, Directors, Senior Directors, and VPs of HR. They hold significant decision-making authority regarding the adoption and implementation of our solution throughout their organisations. This demographic represents the HR industry, and our focus is on engaging with HR leaders.”

“Secondly, we seek out leaders who have spearheaded digital transformation initiatives. Implementing an HR solution often entails significant organisational change.”

“Therefore, we target CIOs, Chief Digital Officers, and Chief Information Officers who can drive and oversee these large-scale transformations. These two personas constitute our primary targets for outreach and engagement.”

How does Darwinbox use Cognism?

Siddhartha told us about how the various teams use Cognism Prospector and the Chrome Extension for different workflows: 

“The Chrome Extension is primarily used by our inside sales team. They use it for outbound purposes and account and contact identification based on our ICP criteria.”

“By using the Chrome Extension over LinkedIn, they check the prospect’s LinkedIn profiles, send them connection requests and collect their contact details like phone numbers and email addresses. If that doesn’t work, they’ll resort to multithreading, phoning and emailing to follow up.”

“Prospector is used by our Events, Campaign Marketing and Data Enrichment teams, who all report to me. To identify relevant account and contact data, again within our ICP, they use Prospector’s filters to input our criteria and build lists to then export this information into our CRM, via the integration and enrich accounts and contacts.” 

“From there, the data is then used to run marketing campaigns. They’re constantly adding more details and ensuring our data is accurate and up to date.”

The results

How has Cognism helped Darwinbox?

“I think Cognism has significantly improved our overall database in terms of quality and accuracy of our data.”

“Since using Cognism, our database has improved tremendously. Previously, in our target geographies, our database maybe had about 20-30% accurate profiles.”

“Now, post-Cognism, this has increased to 40%, resulting in a 10% improvement, which for our database size is significant.”

“Having a higher-quality database has helped us be more effective in our outreach efforts, activating our outbound engine, and securing some really interesting deals.”

Siddhartha told us how Cognism was not only helping them enrich their contact database, but expand it:

“Since activating our US operations, we added approximately 4,000 accounts, predominantly powered by Cognism.”

“In addition, we added around 15,000 ICP contacts from Cognism to our database.”

“In terms of phone connection rates, we also saw a big increase where, previously, the volume of outbound calls was connecting around 1% with the right person.”

“Now, with Cognism, that connection rate has jumped to 5%. Cognism really helped activate our outbound motion.”

Have there been any intangible benefits to having Cognism?

“There used to be a heavy dependence on inbound and frustration with the data quality available to support outbound, but Cognism gave us accurate contact data and very relevant account insights, like recently when companies have recently raised funding.” 

“These sales trigger insights helped the success rate of our outbound efforts as we reached out at the right time. This subsequently increased the morale of our inside sales team.”

How did you find the onboarding process with Cognism?

“It was honestly very smooth. As soon as we made the purchase, our account was activated and our onboarding Manager was very proactive in setting up calls and getting us trained on Cognism. It all went very well.”

What are your top reasons for recommending Cognism to other organisations?

“Firstly, Cognism will massively improve the efficiency of your go-to-market teams, it did for us simply because of the quality of the contact data and volume of data it provides, especially for the US.”

“Secondly, the tools are very intuitive and easy to use, easy to adopt. Finally, it’s good value for money!”

Try Cognism’s sales intelligence solution

Over 3,000 sales and marketing teams around the world trust Cognism to:

✅ Build their ICP and discover their ideal buyers

✅ Connect with decision-makers in accounts that are ready to buy 

✅ Plan and launch their outbound campaigns

✅ Power up their social selling

✅ Meet and beat their revenue targets

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