Four years of partnership, smarter delegate data and a continuously evolving audience. Discover how The Data Business helps Open Banking Expo keep its marketing database relevant, accurate and ready for growth.

Client: Open Banking Expo
Sector: Financial Services, Open Banking and Fintech
Services: Data Enrichment, Data Cleansing, Database Management, Audience Segmentation and Bespoke Data Building
Partnership: Over four years

The Results at a Glance

Result	Business value
55%	Email open rate reported following the June 2026 data refresh
4+ years	Ongoing partnership as Open Banking Expo’s dedicated data partner
4 audience segments	Created through the June 2026 enrichment and classification project
International growth	Audience development supporting expansion into North America

The Challenge: Your Event Audience Is Growing. But Is Your Database Keeping Up?

For a successful international conference, building an audience is only half the challenge.

The other half is keeping that audience connected.

People change jobs. Businesses merge. Decision-makers move into new roles. Email addresses become invalid. Entire markets evolve.

And with every change, the value of an event organiser’s database can quietly decline.

For Open Banking Expo, a leading international conference and exhibition series bringing together banks, fintech companies, regulators and technology providers, maintaining a relevant and engaged audience is fundamental to its growth.

Its events connect professionals shaping the future of financial services.

But reaching those professionals requires more than simply keeping a list of previous delegates.

It requires a continuously updated understanding of who those people are, where they work, what they do and how they fit into an evolving global industry.

That is where The Data Business comes in.

For over four years, we have worked as Open Banking Expo’s dedicated data partner, helping maintain its delegate database, identify new audience opportunities and support international expansion.

The objective has remained consistent:

Keep the database accurate, maintain audience reach and help the organiser connect with the right people at every stage of its growth.

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Why Event Databases Lose Value Over Time

An event database might contain thousands of contacts, but that does not necessarily mean those contacts are accurate, reachable or commercially relevant.

Every year, the people within that database change.

A delegate who attended as a banking executive may now work for a fintech organisation.

A technology decision-maker may have changed employers.

An email address that worked during the previous event campaign may no longer be valid.

Without regular attention, these changes can create significant problems for event marketing.

1. Outdated Contact Information Reduces Campaign Reach

When contact information becomes inaccurate, marketing messages fail to reach the people they were intended for.

This can lead to unnecessary email bounces, reduced deliverability and wasted campaign activity.

For an international event series, those problems become increasingly important as the audience grows.

2. Incomplete Data Makes Audience Targeting Difficult

Knowing someone’s name and email address is rarely enough for effective B2B event marketing.

Organisers also benefit from understanding their audience’s job functions, seniority, organisation types and professional interests.

Without this information, it becomes harder to create relevant communications for different groups.

3. New Markets Require New Audience Intelligence

Expanding an event into another country is not simply a matter of using the existing database in a different location.

New markets contain different organisations, professional networks, decision-makers and commercial opportunities.

When Open Banking Expo looked towards North American growth, it needed access to relevant contacts within that market.

4. Premium Delegates Need a More Targeted Approach

Senior executives, industry leaders and influential decision-makers can contribute significantly to the value of a conference.

However, identifying those individuals requires careful research.

A broad database may contain relevant contacts, but it does not automatically reveal which people are most important to an event’s objectives.

Open Banking Expo needed a partner capable of identifying high-value prospects rather than simply supplying larger contact lists.

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Our Approach: A Dedicated Data Partner, Not a One-Off Database Project

The Data Business works as an extension of the Open Banking Expo team.

Rather than conducting a single data cleansing exercise and handing back a spreadsheet, our role is to support the ongoing quality, development and usability of its audience information.

The partnership focuses on three connected services.

1. Event Database Management: Keeping Audience Information Current

The challenge: A database begins ageing as soon as it is created.

Our ongoing work involves maintaining and validating Open Banking Expo’s delegate information to help keep its marketing database usable.

This includes updating contact details, reviewing job titles, maintaining company information and identifying records that need attention.

The purpose is to preserve the organiser’s connection with its audience.

Why this matters

Every outdated contact represents a potential communication that never reaches its intended recipient.

Every inaccurate job title can weaken audience segmentation.

Every duplicate record creates unnecessary work.

By managing these issues continuously, we help Open Banking Expo maintain a stronger foundation for its marketing campaigns.

Instead of repeatedly repairing the same database before each event, the organiser benefits from information that is regularly reviewed and improved.

The benefit: A maintained database that supports more consistent outreach, more relevant targeting and lower email bounce rates.

2. Audience Development: Supporting International Event Growth

The challenge: Reaching the right people in a new market requires more than expanding an existing contact list.

As Open Banking Expo developed its international presence, particularly in North America, it needed access to new audiences within the banking, fintech and financial technology sectors.

The Data Business supported this expansion through bespoke prospect database development.

Our work involved researching relevant organisations, identifying professional contacts and building targeted datasets aligned with the event’s audience requirements.

Why this matters

International event growth depends on establishing relationships with the right professional communities.

An organiser entering a new market needs to understand which businesses operate there, who the relevant decision-makers are and how to reach them.

Carefully researched audience data provides a practical starting point for those conversations.

The benefit: Targeted prospect databases that support Open Banking Expo’s efforts to develop new international audiences.

3. Bespoke VIP Prospecting: Identifying the People Who Matter

The challenge: Not every delegate contributes the same type of value to an event.

Senior executives, influential industry figures and relevant decision-makers can help create the networking opportunities that attract other attendees.

For Open Banking Expo, identifying these individuals is an important part of audience development.

We research and deliver bespoke lists of premium prospects based on the objectives of individual events.

Rather than relying on broad professional categories, this work focuses on the relevance of specific individuals and organisations.

Why this matters

The value of a conference is not determined by attendance numbers alone.

Audience composition matters.

Bringing together relevant industry professionals gives attendees more opportunities to make connections, exchange knowledge and develop business relationships.

The benefit: Better access to targeted senior-level prospects who can contribute to the value of the event.

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Project Spotlight: How a Database Refresh Delivered a 55% Email Open Rate

In June 2026, The Data Business carried out a focused delegate database refresh for Open Banking Expo’s UK and Ireland audience.

The objective was straightforward.

Improve data quality, maintain audience coverage and provide the marketing team with a stronger foundation for its next campaign.

The work followed four stages.

Step 1: Identify the Relevant Audience

We began by identifying records belonging to the UK and Ireland audience.

This provided a clearly defined dataset aligned with the campaign’s geographic requirements.

Rather than attempting to enrich every available record, the work focused on the contacts that mattered to the project.

Step 2: Validate Existing Contact Information

Next, we carried out contact and email validation.

The purpose was to distinguish valid records from those that were no longer suitable for outreach.

This helped the team identify outdated information and understand where audience coverage needed attention.

Step 3: Enrich and Segment the Data

Using our TDB-AI system alongside the expertise of our data team, we enriched the valid records and classified contacts into four audience segments.

This introduced a more structured understanding of the people within the dataset.

The segmentation provided a basis for tailoring marketing communications according to different audience characteristics.

For an event serving banks, fintech businesses and technology providers, that additional context helps support more relevant messaging.

Step 4: Replenish the Database

Removing invalid records is important, but it can also reduce the size of an available marketing audience.

To address this, we identified fresh contacts to replace invalid records.

This helped preserve database coverage while improving the quality of the information available for future campaigns.

The approach combined two objectives that are sometimes treated separately:

Improve the accuracy of the database without unnecessarily sacrificing audience reach.

The Result: A 55% Email Open Rate

Following the refresh, the Open Banking Expo team reported that the replenished data achieved a 55% email open rate.

This provided encouraging evidence of campaign engagement following the validation, enrichment and replenishment work.

While an email open rate alone does not establish registration conversions or revenue impact, it was a positive result for the client and demonstrated the value of maintaining an audience dataset that could support effective outreach.

What the Client Said

“The replenished data got a 55% open rate! Wow! Very happy with that. It’s a brilliant result and certainly suggests the refresh has done exactly what we hoped it would.”

Open Banking Expo
Feedback following the June 2026 database refresh

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The Bigger Picture: Building a Database That Improves With Every Event

The June 2026 project is one example within a partnership that has continued for more than four years.

The wider value lies in maintaining an audience database that can support repeated marketing campaigns and evolving event objectives.

Better Data Quality

Ongoing cleansing, validation and enrichment help keep audience information accurate and relevant.

This supports email deliv