A world leader in management education uses Cognism's premium sales intelligence to:
- Source 1,800 new prospects
- Boost conversion rates
- Focus on laser-sharp targeting
- Contact their target market at scale
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The company
Cranfield School of Management (CSM) is one of the oldest business schools in Europe and a world leader in management education and research. The school provides post-graduate degrees on a range of business-related topics, including finance, logistics, marketing and leadership.
Some of Cranfield’s notable alumni include Nick Jenkins, the founder of Moonpig, Sir Charlie Mayfield, Chairman of John Lewis, and Warren East CBE, the Chief Executive of Rolls-Royce. The executive development department, in particular, provides short courses and programmes for corporate clients.
The challenge
We interviewed the Marketing & Communications Manager at CSM about her experience with Cognism.
What previous new business challenges did they experience prior to Cognism?
"Part of the business development strategy of the executive education department consists in approaching cold audiences. To achieve this, the department has historically worked with data providers and email marketing firms."
"While the results were acceptable, there was a high level of perceived wastage and it was felt that higher engagement could be achieved through more refined targeting."
"What we were looking for was the ability to experiment with segmentation criteria and target niche audiences with very refined messages. This was simply not possible when working with a single set of 30-40,000 data sets."
"Sending the same message to that amount of data got us results by sheer statistics, but it wasn’t a smart way of working. We thought there must be a better way of doing this. This is the point at which the team began working with Cognism."
The solution
Using Cognism Prospector, they built individual and highly-targeted buyer personas of their ideal attendees and delegates.
The interviewee told us more:
"We experimented with different criteria and developed messages for each specific audience. For example, if one event or course was geared towards senior marketers. Cranfield’s business development team can then create that persona and search a B2B database to find exactly that audience."
"Prospector's email automation function is ideal for contacting our target market at scale."
She further praised Cognism's customer service team:
"I’ve been very impressed with the personnel at Cognism. The onboarding was quick and easy. If I ever have any queries, they’ve been answered straight away. They are always a pleasure to work with!"
"On the whole, Cognism has been very easy and intuitive to use. Creating buyer personas was a smooth process and the team helped us find just the right kind of people we were looking for."
The results
The team were delighted with the results from Cognism.
"We found 1,800 new prospects with Cognism over the campaign period."
"During that time, we A/B tested Cognism against another supplier. I’m pleased to say that in comparison, Cognism’s conversion rates were far superior."
"The fact that we could run our campaigns from our own work email address in addition to the CRM integration was another bonus for us. We could easily keep track of replies and follow-ups. Our email response rates increased."
Utilising Cognism meant a change in the way that Cranfield conducted its outreach.
"In data terms, with Cognism we are going for quality, not quantity. We aren’t targeting as many prospects as before, but the conversion rates are much higher."
"Cognism is a very versatile tool. It can be used to hone in on exact target audiences but it also has the flexibility to experiment with audiences that may not have previously been considered."
"I would recommend Cognism to anyone looking to develop laser-sharp targeting and engage with their ideal leads."
Try Cognism’s sales intelligence solution
Over 1,000 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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