How ISPO Grew Its Event Database by 47% and Transformed Audience Targeting
A bigger database doesn’t always mean a better audience. Discover how The Data Business helped Raccoon Media Events expand ISPO’s contact database while making substantially more of its existing audience ready for targeted marketing.
Client: Raccoon Media Events
Event: ISPO 2026
Sector: International Exhibitions and Events
Services: Data Building, Data Cleansing, Data Validation, Data Enrichment and Audience Segmentation
The Results
| +47% | 62% → 98% |
|---|---|
| Contact database growth | Usable audience available for segmentation |
| A larger pool of relevant prospects for ISPO’s 2026 visitor campaigns. | A 36 percentage-point improvement in segmentation coverage. |
The outcome: A consolidated, enriched and expanded audience database, giving the marketing team more relevant contacts to reach and a clearer understanding of how to target them.
The Challenge: A Growing Event Needs More Than a Growing Database
Imagine having thousands of contacts in your event marketing database.
You’ve built relationships over time, collected information from different campaigns and developed an established community around your event.
But there’s a problem.
Some contacts appear more than once. Others have changed jobs or companies. Some records contain little more than a name and email address.
And while the database looks substantial, you don’t necessarily know how many of those people are still reachable, what they do or whether they fit the audience you want to attract.
Now add another challenge: you need to grow that audience for your next event.
This was the situation facing Raccoon Media Events as it prepared its ISPO 2026 visitor marketing campaigns.
The organiser needed to reconnect with its existing international community while identifying additional organisations and decision-makers aligned with its growth ambitions.
The contact information came from multiple sources, creating a substantial task before campaigns could begin.
Records needed consolidating, duplicates needed removing and contact details needed validating.
At the same time, the database needed additional business information to support more relevant audience segmentation.
And it all needed to happen within a short turnaround.
The objective was clear: protect the value of the existing audience while creating opportunities to reach more of the right people.
The Hidden Problem: Not All Audience Data Is Ready for Marketing
One of the most revealing findings was the proportion of the usable database available for audience segmentation.
At the start of the project, that figure stood at 62%.
This meant there was significant room to improve the information available for organising contacts into the audience groups that mattered to ISPO.
For an event marketing team, that limitation has practical consequences.
Without sufficient company, job role and professional information, it becomes more difficult to tailor campaigns to different audience personas.
Contacts may be reachable, but the organiser has less information to guide what those people should receive.
There was also the question of database growth.
Adding thousands of new contacts might increase the size of the audience on paper, but would those contacts match the organiser’s requirements?
Would they represent qualified businesses?
Would they include the relevant decision-makers?
And would the resulting database be sufficiently organised to support effective outreach?
Raccoon Media Events needed both audience growth and better audience intelligence.
That became the focus of our work.
Our Approach: Improve What Exists. Replace What’s Missing. Build What’s Next.
The Data Business brought together four complementary services to create a stronger audience foundation for ISPO’s visitor campaigns.
Rather than treating data preparation and audience expansion as separate projects, we approached them as connected stages.
1. Bringing the Existing Audience Into One Reliable Database
Data consolidation, cleansing and validation
Our first priority was to establish a dependable starting point.
We brought together contact records from different sources, identified overlapping information and removed duplicate entries.
We then validated contact details to distinguish usable records from those requiring replacement.
This helped create a clearer picture of the audience already available to the marketing team.
It also reduced unnecessary duplication within the information used for outreach.
Why it mattered: Before an organiser can confidently expand its audience, it needs to understand the quality of the database it already holds.
A consolidated, validated dataset gives subsequent enrichment and data-building work a much stronger foundation.
2. Making More of the Database Useful for Targeted Marketing
Data enrichment and audience segmentation
With the existing information consolidated, the next stage focused on making the records more useful.
Our data specialists combined TDB-AI with bespoke categorisation to enrich valid contacts with additional information, including company names, job titles, addresses and professional profiles.
This information was aligned with Raccoon Media Events’ audience classifications.
The objective wasn’t simply to add more fields.
It was to help the marketing team understand who was in the database and how different contacts could be organised into relevant audience groups.
For example, knowing someone’s professional role and organisation provides a much stronger basis for targeted communications than having only their contact details.
This supports a more considered approach to visitor marketing, where campaign messages can be developed around the audience personas the organiser wants to reach.
The result was significant.
The proportion of the usable audience available for segmentation increased from 62% to 98%.
That’s a 36 percentage-point improvement.
It meant substantially more of the existing dataset could support persona-led marketing activity.
3. Protecting Audience Coverage When Contacts Became Invalid
Targeted contact replenishment
Data validation often reveals records that can no longer be used reliably.
Removing those records improves the database’s quality, but it can also create gaps in the audience.
For example, a contact may no longer be reachable even though the organisation they represent remains highly relevant to the event.
Simply deleting that record risks losing a potential connection with an important business.
To address this, we researched replacement contacts, identifying comparable target roles within qualified organisations wherever possible.
This helped preserve coverage of relevant organisations and stakeholder groups.
Why it mattered: Improving database quality shouldn’t mean unnecessarily losing access to valuable parts of the market.
Contact replenishment helped Raccoon Media Events maintain relevant audience coverage while removing outdated information.
4. Expanding the Audience Through Bespoke Global Data Building
Targeted audience development
The final stage focused on growth.
Working from the audience profiles defined by Raccoon Media Events, we developed a bespoke global contact database to support concurrent visitor campaigns.
The research focused on qualified organisations and the decision-makers the organiser wanted to invite.
Rather than simply adding contact volume, the objective was to identify prospects aligned with the event’s audience requirements.
This provided additional opportunities for relevant outreach while complementing the existing database improvements.
The result: a 47% expansion of the contact database.
Raccoon Media Events now had a substantially larger pool of relevant prospects available for its ISPO 2026 campaigns.
And because the project also improved the usability of the existing data, the marketing team benefited from both greater potential reach and stronger audience segmentation.
The Results: More Reach. Better Segmentation. A Stronger Campaign Foundation.
The project delivered two particularly important measurable improvements.
47% Growth in the Contact Database
The bespoke global data build expanded ISPO’s contact database by 47%.
The additional contacts were selected against the organiser’s audience profiles, helping ensure the expansion supported its visitor marketing requirements.
This gave Raccoon Media Events a larger pool of relevant prospects to engage.
Segmentation Coverage Increased From 62% to 98%
Through enrichment and bespoke categorisation, the proportion of the usable audience available for segmentation increased by 36 percentage points.
This gave the marketing team substantially greater scope to organise communications around different audience personas.
A More Dependable Existing Database
Consolidation, deduplication and validation created a clearer, more consistent contact base.
Replenishment also helped preserve coverage of relevant organisations when existing records became invalid.
Better Prepared Visitor Campaigns
The overall result was a stronger foundation for ISPO’s 2026 campaigns, combining:
- More relevant contacts available for outreach.
- More consistent and validated existing records.
- More complete information for audience segmentation.
- Better coverage of priority organisations and stakeholder groups.
- Greater scope for persona-led campaign planning.
These improvements strengthened campaign readiness and potential reach. They should not be confused with verified increases in event registrations or attendance, which were not reported as part of this project.
What This Means for Event Organisers
The ISPO project highlights a common problem in event marketing.
A database can grow year after year without becoming more useful.
If contact information is incomplete, inaccurate or poorly structured, an organiser can find itself holding a significant volume of data but struggling to use it effectively.
Adding more records doesn’t automatically solve that problem.
In some cases, it makes it worse.
The more valuable approach is to understand the quality of the information already held, improve its usefulness and then identify the relevant audience that is missing.
That’s what we set out to achieve for Raccoon Media Events.
By connecting data cleansing, enrichment, segmentation, replenishment and bespoke data building, we helped transform a collection of contact records into a stronger foundation for visitor marketing.
The combination is what makes the results meaningful.
47% more contacts created greater potential reach.
98% segmentation coverage created greater potential for relevant communication.
Together, those improvements provided Raccoon Media Events with a more useful audience asset for its ISPO 2026 marketing activity.
Building an Audience for Growth, Not Simply a Bigger Contact List
For established exhibitions and conferences, growing an audience requires two things.
First, the organiser needs to protect and develop its existing connections.
Second, it needs to identify new businesses and decision-makers that represent genuine opportunities for future engagement.
These objectives are closely connected.
An accurate existing database provides continuity.
Enrichment and segmentation provide a better understanding of that audience.
Bespoke data building creates opportunities to extend reach into relevant organisations and professional groups.
The ISPO project brought those elements together within a single programme.
For Raccoon Media Events, the result was a measurable improvement in both the scale and usability of its marketing database.
And for other event organisers, the lesson is straightforward:
Before investing in a bigger audience, make sure your existing audience data is working as effectively as it could.
How Much Growth Is Hidden in Your Event Database?
If you’re planning your next conference or exhibition campaign, it’s worth asking whether your current database is helping you reach your audience or limiting your opportunities.
How much of your contact information is still accurate?
How many records contain enough information for meaningful segmentation?
Which relevant organisations are missing?
And could your next campaign benefit from a more targeted approach to building the audience you need?
The Data Business helps event organisers answer these questions through specialist data services.
Data Cleansing and Validation
Improve the accuracy, consistency and usability of your existing contact records.
Data Enrichment
Add relevant business and professional information to support more effective audience segmentation.
Data Building
Identify new organisations and decision-makers aligned with your target audience requirements.
Audience Intelligence
Understand the composition of your database, identify gaps and discover opportunities for audience growth.
Your Next Event Deserves a Better Audience Foundation
Whether you’re developing an established exhibition or preparing to enter a new market, the quality of your data influences the opportunities available to your marketing team.
Let’s explore where your audience data could be improved and where new growth opportunities may exist.
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