The Challenge

“While Pipedrive is a great system, we’d pretty much utilised all of its features. To get what we needed next would’ve required costly add-ons — and even then, it couldn’t give us the visibility we were looking for.”
— Calvin Michel, Zappshelter

Zappshelter had been using Pipedrive successfully for several years, but as their business evolved, cracks began to show:

• Siloed Sales & Marketing: The sales team couldn’t see marketing activities or how they affected contacts.

• No Source Attribution: Pipedrive couldn’t track digital source touchpoints or marketing ROI.

• Manual Workload: Limited automation features meant repetitive tasks had to be done manually.

• Feature Ceiling: Unlocking key functionality required extra tools, increasing cost and complexity.

The team knew they needed a platform designed for scale — and for full-funnel alignment.

Why HubSpot — and Why Cogent?

After seeing a live demo tailored to their processes, the Zappshelter team quickly recognised that HubSpot could offer everything they were missing — from flexible pipelines and calling features to powerful marketing tools and structured data objects like contacts, deals, and leads.

They were especially impressed by HubSpot’s ability to deliver real marketing attribution, automate tasks, and give both sales and marketing teams a shared view of the customer journey.

When it came to onboarding support, Zappshelter explored a range of HubSpot-certified partners — and even considered handling it in-house. Ultimately, they chose Cogent Connective based on responsiveness, clarity, and proximity. As a UK-based partner, Cogent offered the ability to meet face to face, plan collaboratively, and respond quickly as the project evolved.

The Onboarding Process

Led by Daryl from Cogent, and working closely with the Zappshelter team, this project delivered a full-service onboarding over the course of several months. This included:

✔️ Migrating and mapping all data from Pipedrive
✔️ Building sales pipelines, automation workflows, and task queues
✔️ Setting up the marketing hub, including lead capture, segmentation, and campaign tracking
✔️ Implementing source attribution and reporting dashboards
✔️ Providing tailored training for both the sales and marketing teams
✔️ Weekly working sessions to iterate, adapt, and embed best practices

Results & Impact

Once onboarding was complete and the team had been fully trained, Zappshelter quickly saw the benefits of having everything in one place. With HubSpot’s unified platform, both sales and marketing could now work faster, with far greater clarity and alignment.

The system felt logical and intuitive, and automated workflows began to take the strain off the sales team by removing repetitive admin tasks. As Calvin Michel put it, “We all found having many tools in one place made work faster and easier. HubSpot is just a more logical system — and the automated workflows take away the repetitive jobs.”

More importantly, the team gained complete visibility into every contact’s journey — not just calls and emails, but key marketing insights like which pages someone had visited or how they came into the funnel. That kind of visibility helped the team anticipate conversations, tailor their outreach, and make smarter decisions.

“Now the whole team knows where each contact first came into touch with us,” Calvin shared. “Being able to see which website pages they visit, for example, is very helpful to understand the areas of interest so we can anticipate what future conversations will be about.”

Ongoing Support

Zappshelter continues to work with Cogent Connective post-onboarding. Weekly meetings tackle new operational challenges, explore fresh ideas, and make sure their HubSpot setup grows with them.

Thinking of switching to HubSpot?

Whether you’re outgrowing your current CRM or just want a clearer, more connected way to run your sales and marketing — we can help.