Frank, Bright & Abel, the well-established creative communications agency uses Cognism’s B2B data to:
- Gain a consistent 97% email deliverability rate.
- Triple its email marketing campaign lead count.
- Uncover qualified audiences using the ‘job title’ filter.
- Speed up its sales workflows by seamlessly integrating with Salesforce.
- Support a successful email marketing strategy in Pardot.
Teams using: Sales & Marketing
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The company
Frank, Bright & Abel was founded in 2013 by Rebecca Price and Andrew Gibbs. The agency is a creative communications consultancy working across brand, employer brand, marketing and communications implementation.
They work across a range of sectors, predominantly B2B, with law firms, asset managers, FTSEs, global B2B organisations, as well as housing associations, membership organisations and higher education institutions. Their mission is to be direct, creative and thorough for customers, which include Selecta, Freshfields, APM, The Housing Network and Konica Minolta, to name a few.
The challenge
We interviewed Michael Coleman, Business Development Director at Frank, Bright & Abel, about his experience with Cognism.
How did they source new business before Cognism?
“As a well-established marketing agency, most of our opportunities came from our network, events and word-of-mouth. But we couldn’t ignore the other marketing channels out there to help widen our opportunity base even more.”
Michael explained that prior to Cognism, they were using another lead generation tool. He told us more:
“We previously used an email list provider. While the database provided accurate B2B data for the organisations we wanted to go after, the volume of leads was minimal. Six months before joining Cognism, we pivoted our lead generation approach and started using LinkedIn Sales Navigator.”
What were the drawbacks experienced with LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
“I was spending two days a week manually creating lists. The rest of the time consisted of cleansing the database and sending follow-up emails one by one. My role is primarily about cold calling, booking meetings and building relationships with prospective clients. But a large part of my time consisted of making sure we had enough data to send all of our communications to.”
Frank, Bright & Abel have been a customer since 2021. What about Cognism appealed to them?
“We analysed a variety of providers in the vendor evaluation process. But compared to Cognism, they weren’t up to scratch. For example: one company had a lot of passive data, so if we searched for a marketing decision-maker, finance titles would appear. The data was up-to-date, but the job titles were incorrect.”
“A core requirement was finding a sales prospecting tool that integrated with Salesforce. We looked at data.com, a Salesforce partner which retired soon after. While the integration was ideal, the accuracy and coverage of data did not perform as well as Cognism’s ample supply of contact details.”
“Cognism ticked all the boxes with world-class data and a direct integration with Salesforce. It was my dream B2B data tool.”
The solution
Michael runs the sales function and is the main end-user of Cognism.
What is their target audience?
“We typically approach UK decision-makers in marketing, communications, brand, HR, employer branding, diversity & inclusion and graduate recruitment roles. Our main target industries are legal, investment firms and financial services.”
How was the onboarding and support process with Cognism when they first signed up?
“The onboarding team were very friendly and attentive. Whenever we have a minor technical issue, the support team replies rapidly. The excellent client service function is an exceptional value-add.”
How is Cognism’s Salesforce integration used at Frank, Bright & Abel?
“I have a bank of searches related to our ICP saved in Cognism’s Sales Prospector. Depending on the audience I’d like to target in a given week, I select a search and bulk export the list of contact details en masse to Salesforce in one click.”
“These contact details are added to a marketing list which runs in Pardot, our B2B marketing automation tool built inside Salesforce. It distinguishes our most engaged prospects allowing us to segment our warm leads to feed them into a drip email campaign to be nurtured with relevant content. It’s a win-win as the leads receive valuable content, and we can simultaneously boost our brand awareness.”
Michael explained how Cognism’s granular ‘job title’ search function has been instrumental in finding their ideal fit prospects:
“Diversity and Inclusion' is one of the specific disciplines we are targeting. Previously, there was very little information available on this job function. Someone internally had to scavenge to find the best people in this space."
"But Cognism has enough data to run entire email campaigns to just these decision-makers.”
Alongside the always-on email nurture campaigns, Michael also sends campaigns inviting prospects to events. He told us more:
“We run six to eight hybrid or in-person events per year. Part of our marketing strategy is to send invites to the engaged leads in Pardot. Those that attend are well and truly in our sales funnel as I create qualified opportunities off the back of the event.”
How is Cognism Enrich used to enrich stale data in the CRM?
“We have a database of leads who have engaged with our communications over time. Cognism Enrich is used to refresh stale records and fill in missing data gaps. Especially with those who have moved jobs. It’s superb because it sparks traction with any missed sales opportunities from the past.”
The results
Frank, Bright & Abel have seen quantifiable results since using Cognism.
“The majority of email sending platforms require a 95% or higher deliverability rate otherwise they have questions surrounding the credibility of the data origin. With Cognism, it's above 97% and has certainly exceeded previous statistics.”
“Typically, we used to send email campaigns to 5,000-6000 people. Now it’s at least 15,000-20,000. The marketing lists have almost tripled since using Cognism due to the breadth of data available. This means we are hitting more inboxes and are top of mind for many more businesses.”
How have we helped increase their lead count?
“Cognism is essential to our outbound engine. Our sales cycle can vary from one to two years, depending on the size and nature of the business. We have been a Cognism customer for two years. I anticipate that many of the Cognism opportunities yielded over this period will turn into closed-won deals this year.”
"Cognism opens the door to opportunities that we wouldn't otherwise be able to get in touch with."
The top reasons why Frank, Bright & Abel would recommend Cognism
1. Exceptional data quality and coverage
“Concrete B2B data isn’t easy to come by but Cognism’s database is a diamond in the rough. I can sleep at night knowing my email campaigns are reaching a significant number of people in our ICP accurately and compliantly.”
2. Accelerated prospecting and less admin
“We’ve invested heavily in Salesforce, and any new tools we buy must be native to it. A technology tool is redundant if it doesn’t integrate with your CRM as it creates an avoidable added layer of work.”
“B2B prospecting used to be a drain. With Cognism, I can export lists at the click of a button directly into Salesforce. It’s that simple. As a small business, everyone is very busy. So having a tool that alleviates the tiresome admin work that comes with prospecting is a huge perk.”
Michael concluded that:
“We’ve signed up for another two years. This was an easy decision from the top down because our partners are keen to invest in MarTech to help us get our content out there as efficiently as possible. We look forward to spurring on our prospecting even further with Cognism.”
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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