 
Background
Ranked as one of Britain’s largest companies, dmg world media is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Daily Mail & General Trust plc (DMGT), one of the most successful media companies in the world.
dmg world media is an international exhibition, conference and publishing company that produces more than 300 events each year, as well as publishing more than 45 related magazines, newspapers, directories and market reports.
Approached in 2003, we were simply asked to dedupe and merge half a dozen files containing the contact details of people and companies attending or exhibiting at various exhibitions / conferences in the Gas industry into one file. This merged file was to be used for a mailing / e-mailing list for the forthcoming gas conferences they were organising.
Brief
As time went on more files became available that needed to be included and it became obvious that the ‘Gas Master’ database was becoming a valuable resource that needed to be properly structured to be able to deliver all that was required of it.
The database would be held and managed by Motivation Marketing with any or all of the data being available for downloading upon request.
The database had to be capable of taking in any number of files in any format, .xls, .csv, .txt etc. These files would need cleaning beforehand to standardise fields and ensure correct spelling etc.
In addition, there would be occasions when records would need to be data captured and added manually. Ongoing amendments to the database would also be part of our remit.
Solution
Motivation Marketing has developed a range of procedures that cover all these requirements and today the details for some 86,000 records (73,000 individual contacts) from nearly 60 events are stored and managed within the ‘Gas Master’ database. The difference in numbers here represents the number of events that have been attended by any one contact.
The key to managing this database is flexibility as rarely are any two source files in the same format and often considerable cleaning is required before de-duping and merging can start.
All records are de-duped upon input to ensure that a person exists only once in the database and each source for that person is recorded to build up a history of their attendance at the various events. Furthermore, each person / company is categorised by their attendance type, i.e.: exhibitor, delegate, show visitor etc. In this way we can select upon request any combination data records by events / category / country for specific mailing / faxing / e-mailing campaigns.
We produce regular profiling reports so dmg world media can see at a glance the make up of the database by country, event, category etc.
Rebecca Oxley, Marketing Manager Energy Sector commented
“The database management forms an essential part of our business. It allows us to be able to provide the industries that we serve with the very best events and publications. Outsourcing the Gas Master database work to Motivation Marketing has been a key part of our success and they have provided us with these services in a professional and cost effective manner.”
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