The Business
Creative Spark
Creative Spark is an award-winning brand and marketing agency based in Manchester, with over 20 years of experience. The agency works with ambitious businesses across the UK and internationally — from newly funded start-ups to established manufacturers and professional services firms.
Their challenge wasn't expertise or credentials. It was reach — and a structured way to get in front of the right decision-makers at scale.
The Challenge
Creative Spark needed a systematic outbound marketing function: one capable of identifying target audiences, building contact databases and running campaigns that generated genuine commercial interest — consistently, not occasionally.
New business relied primarily on referrals. There was no structured outbound programme. No prospect database. No way to identify who was engaging and who was ready to talk.
What we build
JASi became Creative Spark's outsourced email marketing function — building targeted databases across seven sectors and running the full campaign programme:
• Mailchimp broadcast campaigns — tailored by audience with relevant case study content
• Hunter.io automated follow-up sequences — personalised outreach from named Creative Spark directors
• Monthly lead identification — surfacing highly engaged contacts for direct business development follow-up
• Monthly reporting — open rates, click rates, leads and pipeline signals by segment
259,000+
Emails sent across the programme — reaching decision-makers across seven target sectors: VC/PE, Recently Raised Funding, Product Manufacturing, Professional Services, Sports & Wellness, Property Developers and Food & Beverage.
7,973
Targeted contacts built from scratch. Every contact sourced, verified and segmented by JASi. A commercial asset Creative Spark now owns outright.
124
Highly engaged contacts identified in October alone — surfaced for Creative Spark's business development team with full engagement data by sector and company.
Cold outreach became sales conversations
The programme generated direct leads across venture capital, product manufacturing and sports and wellness — contacts who moved from the database into active commercial conversations.
27%
Average open rate on Mailchimp campaigns — above the UK marketing industry average of 20–22%. Best-performing segments: Recently Raised Funding (33.4%), Venture Capital & PE (24.9%), Professional Services (24.0%).
60%
Hunter.io follow-up campaigns: open rates up to 60%
Personalised follow-up sequences from named Creative Spark directors significantly outperformed broadcast averages:
• Recently Raised Funding: 59.7% open rate
• VC/PE: 57.3% open rate
• VC & Professional Services: 52.6% open rate
What changed
Before JASi: no systematic outbound function. New business relied on referrals.
After JASi: a database of almost 8,000 verified contacts, open rates consistently above benchmark, automated follow-up sequences generating leads at above 50% open rates, and a monthly pipeline of warm prospects identified by name and company.
Business development stopped depending on referrals alone. It became a programme.
What this means for your business
Most agencies are good at what they do. They're less good at making sure the right businesses know about them — consistently and at scale.
The Creative Spark story shows what a structured email marketing programme can deliver: the right contacts, the right message, and a clear signal of who's ready to talk.
That's what JASi provides.
Want to talk about
your marketing?
I'm happy to have a straight conversation about your business, your marketing and whether JASi is the right fit.