Cognism | Blog | Connect

UserEvidence Boosts Cold Calling Pipeline 33% With Cognism

Written by Karin O'Grady | Jul 22, 2024 2:15:33 PM

UserEvidence, the leading customer evidence surveying platform for GTM teams, uses Cognism to:

  • Generate on average 10 new opportunities per SDR.
  • Improve cold call connect rate by 8%.
  • Save ~10 hours a week on sourcing contacts.
  • Enrich accounts and contacts with accurate contact data.
  • Seamlessly export contacts and lists to HubSpot.
Website: www.userevidence.com
Number of employees: 10-50
Industry: Computer Software
HQ: Jackson, USA
Teams using: SDRs, AEs, Marketing

Scroll 👇 to view our latest case study! Or use the menu to skip to a section.

The company

UserEvidence helps companies create customer evidence for GTM teams, generating verified competitive intelligence, product stats, and ROI data from their entire customer base.

Using custom surveys, B2B marketing teams can continually capture customer stories throughout the entire lifecycle. This creates a self-serve library of proof points that makes it easier for your GTM team to credibly prove the value of your product.

The challenge

We interviewed Amanda Newman, SDR Manager at UserEvidence, about her role and experience with Cognism.

What problems were you trying to solve?

“My job is to enable my team of SDRs to do their job as effectively as possible. We sell mainly into the US market, with a bit of EMEA and Israel as well.” 

“One problem we kept running into was the low-quality US phone number data provided by ZoomInfo. This was a problem because cold calling is a successful outbound channel for us.”

“We had challenges in terms of data quantity, often finding records were missing, and accuracy of data. I began to evaluate other providers of prospecting data to see if I could find better phone data for my SDRs.”

Amanda explained the evaluation process she led. Before choosing Cognism, she considered other sales intelligence platforms like ZoomInfo, Lusha, and Apollo. Eventually, she narrowed it down to two finalists.

“After a research process that assessed Cognism as the likely challenger, we conducted a “Bake-Off” test between Cognism and ZoomInfo.” 

“We gave both the same sample list of contacts in our ICP pulled from LinkedIn Sales Navigator to make it a fair test, and asked them both to enrich it.”

How did Cognism perform against its competitors?

“Cognism blew ZI out of the water. Cognism’s match rate was 98% vs. 72% by ZoomInfo, and we found that Cognism returned a ton more phone numbers.” 

“When we called them to verify the numbers, the call connect rate was 22% with Cognism and 14% with ZoomInfo.”

“That convinced me to make the switch to Cognism even after using ZoomInfo for about 3 years.”

Here is Amanda’s team’s perspective after making the switch:

Maggie Wise, Enterprise SDR at UserEvidence, said

“Having emails green-star verified has been a game changer in strategising who to spend time and effort emailing.”

Peter Lopes, SDR at UserEvidence, added:

“Cognism provides a similar scope of data per contact (phone #, mobile #, email, etc.), but the in-app verification of these data points saves a ton of time when I’m prospecting.”

“I also rarely encounter an account with no data at all. Even in instances where a contact is missing an email, somebody at that account will have a verified email structure that I can copy.” 

“Prospecting with ZoomInfo just takes a lot of extra work to get the same breadth.”

The solution

UserEvidence implemented Cognism for their sales team, in the SDR and AE functions. They quickly saw great results across the board. 

Both teams use Cognism daily, giving them more confidence in the contacts they’re dialling and the deals they can get past the finishing line. Their marketing team also has a licence to bulk enrich CRM data.

Cognism’s efficient uploading and exporting streamlined every prospecting process, saving UserEvidence’s team multiple hours every day.

Who is UserEvidence’s ICP?

UserEvidence’s ICP comprises product marketers, customer marketers and marketing leaders located mainly in the US, with some in the UK and EMEA.

*Source from an internal survey UserEvidence conducted to their Cognism users.

How does UserEvidence use Cognism?

This is the workflow:

  • UserEvidence uses Cognism’s WebApp and Browser Extension to enrich a big list of prospects pulled from LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
  • Amanda’s SDR team goes account-by-account to find prospects.
  • Then, they use the WebApp or Extension to enrich their contact data and push it to HubSpot via Cognism’s direct integration. 
  • From there, they begin their outreach by adding them to cadences and cold calling them.

The results

How has Cognism helped UserEvidence?

Amanda said:

“Since onboarding Cognism, my team’s connect rates have risen substantially in just a few months.”

“We signed with Cognism in mid-March and by mid-June, my team of 16 SDRs averaged creating 10 opportunities each, with a total of 161 new opportunities.” 

“When looking at the 3 months prior with ZoomInfo and in the same period of 3 months, the same team of 16 were averaging 7.6 opportunities each, totalling 121 opportunities.”

“That’s a 33% increase in pipeline within 3 months.” 

Evan Huck, CEO at UserEvidence, shared via his LinkedIn post: 

“Across the whole team, we save about 10 hours a week to source the same amount of contacts, and as a result, we can source 500+ more contacts each week.” 

What does UserEvidence think of Cognism’s data quality?

Based on feedback from a survey conducted internally at UserEvidence using its own comprehensive survey platform, several testimonials were collected:

Evan Huck said:

“Cognism has super strong data quality and mobile/direct phone number match rate and coverage on our ICP.”

“And the UI is super slick and intuitive, which enables super fast contact sourcing on LinkedIn. My SDRs and AEs LOVE it.”

Peter Lopes, SDR, said:

“The mobile phone data over ZoomInfo wasn’t even close. Cognism has better coverage and they can often verify numbers on our behalf.”

Hanna Edens, SDR, mentioned the amount of time saved when prospecting: 

“Prospecting is vital to any org, but streamlining the process is hard to do and takes away from the sales team’s effectiveness.”

“With Cognism’s intelligent routing and ability to easily import/export lists, the amount of hours I save each week and each day is astronomical.”

Mike Morrissey, SDR, shared what he likes most about the WebApp: 

“The effortless ability to create large lists that you can seamlessly put into HubSpot. Before this process took multiple laborious steps. Now, with Cognism, I can get through triple the amount of accounts in half the time.”

Hayden Fake, SDR, commented on the confidence Cognism data provides when cold calling

“Cognism’s data is significantly more accurate than what I was getting from ZoomInfo. The confidence this provides when reaching out to new prospects is invaluable.”

From the AE function, a Senior Account Executive shared: 

“Data accuracy was by far the biggest thing.” 

“I’ve used competitors at several other companies that I’ve worked for and was always running into issues with getting invalid emails and phone numbers. I don’t run into that anymore with Cognism.”

Have there been any intangible benefits to having Cognism? Amanda told us:

“We’ve seen an increase in morale due to Cognism’s slick user interface. The interface is familiar to my SDRs, who are accustomed to using ZoomInfo while offering additional UX/UI enhancements. My team finds it much easier to export to HubSpot.”

“There’s also the peace of mind provided by something working reliably. My check-ins with Cognism’s support team are 10 minutes and done. We had no integration issues at all - it works seamlessly.”

How did you find Cognism’s onboarding process?

“Onboarding was seamless; in fact, Cognism has been the easiest part of our tech stack to integrate. It’s given us zero problems. My SDR team found there was practically no learning curve to using Cognism. They were up and running within a day.”

“In fact, they declined the last few training sessions because they already felt they could use it exactly as they wanted to. Cognism’s onboarding team answered our queries almost immediately.”

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

“The data says it all!”

“It’s just better. I would highly recommend Cognism to other organisations. The onboarding and setup processes are super easy. My team got access to the tool and started using it within one day.”

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

Why not see for yourself? Book your live screenshare here 👇