Case Study

YCG, a subscription-based embedded talent acquisition firm, struggled with low-quality email data, high bounce rates (US: 10%+, EU: 5%+), and a slow, manual verification process. After switching to Findymail, they cut bounce rates to under 5%, reduced data processing time from 40 hours per 1,000 contacts to just 1 hour and doubled their revenue from outbound email.

Meet YCG

YCG is an embedded talent acquisition company offering contract and fractional talent partners to organizations across the UK, Germany, and North America. Unlike traditional recruiters who charge a fee per candidate, YCG operates on a subscription model - clients pay a fixed monthly rate over a 6 or 12-month contract to have YCG manage their recruitment end-to-end.

The company serves the construction, automotive, hospitality and tech sectors - it tailors its services to each industry's needs. Depending on the client's requirements, YCG can handle everything from initial audits and salary benchmarking all the way through to candidate onboarding and induction management - all at the same subscription cost.

The challenges

Before Findymail, YCG's outbound email process was slow, expensive and unreliable. Most of their contact data was sourced manually from the internet and LinkedIn. A dedicated freelancer spent a full 40-hour week processing just 1,000 lines of data, running each email through an online mail tester to try to verify it.

The results were disappointing. Online mail testers regularly returned false positives - confirming emails as valid when they weren't - and campaigns paid the price with high bounce rates and damaged sender reputation.

High bounce rates

Bounce rates were a serious issue. US campaigns were seeing rates above 10%, and EU campaigns above 5%. These weren't just vanity metrics - high bounce rates were actively damaging YCG's domain reputation and deliverability, threatening the effectiveness of every campaign they ran.

"Even though it would verify the email address is correct, actually it wouldn't be correct a lot of the time. So you would get false hope. And if we're paying a freelancer to manually do it and then the emails are still incorrect, it becomes costly and very time consuming." - Joshua Dixon, YCG

Slow and costly process

Beyond accuracy, the sheer volume of manual work was unsustainable. Processing 1,000 contacts took one person an entire work week. For a company trying to scale its outbound motion across multiple markets and industries, this created a hard ceiling on growth.

YCG had also tried other tools but found the data quality wasn't good enough to solve the problem. They needed something more reliable.

The solution

YCG discovered Findymail and was drawn in by one key claim: superior data accuracy. Joshua Dixon, who runs sales operations at YCG, decided to give it a try - and it quickly became the foundation of their outbound data workflow.

Automated lead sourcing at scale

Today, YCG's primary use case is combining saved prospect searches with Findymail's extraction capability. When new leads matching YCG's ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) appear in their saved searches, the team gets notified and uses Findymail to extract their contact information directly. Those contacts are then pushed into sales channels for outreach.

"I know that the quality is much better than other providers that are out there. So that was probably one of the main drivers at that time as well." - Joshua Dixon

Individual contact lookups

Beyond bulk extraction, the team also relies on Findymail's Chrome extension for individual lookups. Team members across the business - not just in sales - use it when they need to track down a contact who has changed companies, or when they want to reach out to a specific person without having to guess their email format.

"Being able to just click the button and it brings it up straight away is super helpful." - Joshua Dixon

Closing deals with phone finder

One standout moment came when YCG was chasing a US-based prospect who had gone quiet after weeks of email back-and-forth. Rather than letting the deal die, they used Findymail's phone number lookup feature. Within two days of calling, they got through - and closed what became a significant account.

"We ended up using the Find number feature... and then that client ended up signing. It had been like a two or three week gap where they'd not replied to emails. And then just by being able to find their phone number easily, it meant that we were able to close a deal." - Joshua Dixon

By the numbers

Bounce rates under 5% - down from 10%+: YCG's bounce rates dropped dramatically. Campaigns now run at under 5%, with first-email delivery rates around 96-97%. Joshua notes that some bounce-back is expected over a 6-month campaign window simply because contacts change jobs, but the initial data quality is no longer a concern.

Revenue doubled: the most striking result is business growth. YCG's email-sourced revenue has doubled since adopting Findymail. The team closed several five and six-figure deals they attribute directly to having better, more accessible contact data - including a $100,000+ client won in their very first month on the platform.

"Our revenues doubled. What we were getting from email before versus what we get after using Findymail is at least double." - Joshua Dixon

40x faster data processing: what once took a freelancer 40 hours to process (1,000 contacts) now takes about one hour with Findymail. That's a 40x improvement in throughput - freeing up significant time and reducing operational costs.

Grown from lowest to mid-tier plan: YCG started on Findymail's lowest package and have since moved up to a mid-tier plan - driven by the volume of revenue they were generating and the team's growing reliance on the tool. The ROI case was clear enough to get internal buy-in to expand their usage.

Why Joshua recommends Findymail

"If you're wanting to become more efficient with your sales data, Findymail is a very good option and one that you can almost guarantee you will get results from. Because we've been there, we've done it and we've seen that the results have been pretty astronomical really. For a small business to double in revenue from using a new tool, it makes the investment very much worthwhile."

- Joshua Dixon, Sales Operations, YCG