Case Study

Perpetual, a transatlantic executive search firm, inherited a CRM nightmare: a 160,000-contact database containing a large volume of unverified and scraped records, 10% hard bounce rates, and 12% open rates. After implementing Findymail's Datacare for automated CRM enrichment, they achieved under 2% bounce rates, 65%+ open rates (double the industry benchmark), and built a reliable scoring system that actually works.

Meet Perpetual

Perpetual is a transatlantic advisory firm specializing in executive search and talent development services. Working primarily in CPG industries like wine and spirits, beauty, food and beverage, and luxury, they help companies find top executive talent across the US and Europe.

In late 2024, they migrated from Salesforce to HubSpot as their CRM platform, using it to create deals with clients, send sequences, maintain relationships with existing clients, and convert new prospects. But when Marie Cornen joined as their CRM specialist, she discovered a database in crisis.

The challenge

When Marie joined Perpetual as a CRM Marketing Manager, she inherited what she calls "a mess." The HubSpot database contained over 160,000 contact records, but the reality was far worse than the numbers suggested.

"Before I joined, it was a mess. I had a database of more than 160,000 records. But we quickly realized that most of them were not relevant at all for the business." explains Marie Cornen, CRM Marketing Manager at Perpetual.

Unverified, scraped data

A significant portion of the database came from scraped LinkedIn contacts that were imported into HubSpot without verification. These contacts were immediately activated for marketing emails, leading to massive spam and bouncing alerts. With no system to verify if contacts still worked at their listed companies, the data quality was catastrophically poor.

Poor campaign performance

The numbers showed a serious problem:

• ✓ 10% hard bounce rate: a high rate bounce rate that destroyed sender reputation and deliverability.
• ✓ 12% open rates: far below their 32% industry benchmark, indicating massive targeting and deliverability problems.

"I had a lot of missing info or invalid data. So that's the reason why we wanted to look for an enrichment solution to try to keep the data clean, up to date, to get better insights and relevant data."

Impossible to build reliable systems

But poor deliverability was only the beginning. Marie's real challenge was building the infrastructure Perpetual had hired her to create: building a scoring system from scratch in HubSpot to help the sales team prioritize leads. But the scoring system relied on properties like contact location, industry, company size, and seniority, data they either didn't have or couldn't trust.

She also needed to build dashboards to measure marketing impact and give leadership visibility into performance. But with inconsistent and outdated data, none of it could be trusted.

"You can't do any CRM work if your database is not up to date, not clean, and you can't activate it in a safe way."

Manual work

To verify even a single contact, Marie had to manually check their LinkedIn URL, confirm their current company matched what was in HubSpot, and validate their email address. With 160,000 contacts, this approach was completely unsustainable. The data crisis was urgent, and manual solutions wouldn't cut it.

The solution

• ✓ Datacare integrates directly with HubSpot to automatically enrich every contact with verified, up-to-date data.
• ✓ Datacare verifies work emails before they're ever sent to, keeping bounce rates under 2%.
• ✓ Datacare alerts the team when a contact changes jobs, so the database stays current without any manual work.
• ✓ Datacare automatically fills in company size, industry, seniority, and location, giving the scoring model the data it needs to work.

By the numbers

Bounce rate: 10% → Under 2%: from catastrophically high to green across the board (deliverability was no longer a concern).

Open rates: 12% → 65%+: more than double the 32% industry benchmark. This dramatic improvement came from better targeting enabled by reliable enrichment data.

Database quality: 160K → real contacts: the database shrank dramatically as irrelevant contacts were removed, but what remained was actually usable. Quality over quantity.

"I think we are 20% above the benchmark industry rate. This is mainly because of the quality of the data we have. We are really better in the way we target the audience thanks to all the data we are able to collect now.

A CRM that actually works

With reliable data, Marie could finally build the infrastructure Perpetual needed:

Working scoring system: built from scratch with reliable data on industry, seniority, company size, and location. The sales team now has prioritized dashboards showing exactly who to contact first.

Meaningful dashboards: leadership finally has visibility into marketing performance and impact, built on data they can trust.

Pipeline generation: the original goal of hiring a marketing team, generating new opportunities from the existing database, became possible for the first time.

"I am able now to get a better comprehension of our scoring model with more reliable data. Now we are able to clearly identify the highest scoring leads we have in the database and to set priorities for sales."

Time and energy saved

Beyond the metrics, Datacare eliminated the manual enrichment work that had consumed Marie's time and the sales team's energy.

The sales team frequently shares feedback: "This is amazing to get the work email right away when I create a contact." Before Datacare, they used free tools with limited usage that often delivered incorrect emails that bounced. Now, enrichment happens automatically, accurately, and instantly.

Why Marie recommends Datacare

"Please do it now, because it saves time. It saves energy. Now we have dashboards, we have scoring, we have engagements in our campaigns, we have enriched and qualified contacts and companies. If we hadn't decided to integrate Findymail with HubSpot, we wouldn't be where we are now."

— Marie Cornen, CRM Marketing Manager



The impact

• From data crisis to data confidence: Bounce rates dropped from 10% to under 2%, open rates soared from 12% to 65%+ (double the industry benchmark).
• Systems that actually work: Built a reliable scoring system, meaningful dashboards, and GDPR-compliant processes on a foundation of clean data.
• Sales team empowerment: Automatic enrichment gives the team autonomy to prospect effectively without manual data work.
• Time and energy reclaimed: The team no longer has to enrich contacts manually or worry whether the data is accurate.