50 Years. Hundreds of High Points.
We’re feeling bubbly, and it’s not the champagne.
Surveying our adventures in education sales and marketing over the decades has revealed how far we’ve come as an MDR team, as a discipline, and as an industry. For MDR, it all started in 1969 kicking off 50 years of education focused sales and marketing. We’ve been inspired ever since to give our customers better options in outreach and engagement. Take a look at our journey...
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1969
1969 - MDR Begins
Market Data Retrieval is founded by Herb Lobsenz in NYC.
He took a train to Grand Central Station, got a few rolls of dimes, found a telephone booth where no one was sleeping and started Market Data Retrieval by dialing every educational marketer in NYC. By the time he was out of dimes he had a few appointments. By the end of the first week, Scholastic agreed to become MDR’s first customer.
- The MDR database began as a computer tape file of school district enrollments and budgets
- Companies began asking for mailing lists of public-school districts and schools selected by enrollment and expenditures
- We became profitable, we began to grow, and we took suggestions from our customers
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1970s
1970s - Enter the Computer
The 1970s saw our product line grow and our services improve.
- 1973 An arrangement with My Weekly Reader combined their teacher lists with MDR’s list of schools and school budget data
- 1977 Installed our first computer
- 1978 Acquired Curriculum Information Center (CIC) to add school district administrator names, public libraries, and school directories to our product suite
- 1978 Installed WATS lines so we could phone school districts directly to update the database
- 1979 Developed a computerized system to reflect the actual organization of the school market, making it possible to add more data and update it more quickly
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1980s
1980s - Teacher Names & Higher Ed
In the early 1980s we began compiling our own Teacher Name data.
- 1981 Teacher Name data collection begins
- 1981 Improved turnaround time from two weeks to five days or less
- 1981 Began compiling information on the use of technology in schools; 16,000 schools using computers during the 1981-1982 school year grew to 100,000 schools in 1994
- 1981 Purchased the My Weekly Reader teacher names list of 800,000 names and 12 job titles
- 1984 Introduced a day care list of 59,000 licensed day care centers and 27,000 director names to the market
- 1986 MDR was purchased by Dun & Bradstreet
- 1986 Expanded our product line into the college market
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1990s
1990s - Data Goes Deep
Postal regulation changes and a new postal discount structure caused us to develop services to help our customers keep postage costs down and deliverability up.
- 1990 Postal & database services are introduced
- 1990 Introduced School Construction Alerts service
- 1990 Added Microcomputer Models selection to database
- 1990 Launched a New Profiling system to help customers identify patterns in their data
- 1990 Educational Directory Online launched
- 1991 Teacher at Home file offered
- 1995 Buyers at School file offered
- 1995 Custom Name Matching service added
- 1996 School Directories go electronic with Easy Access on diskettes and CD-ROM
- 1998 Customer Pattern Recognition Profiles launched
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2000s
2000s - E-Everything
MDR developed the first education email database; the Internet provided faster, easier access to MDR data and products.
- 2001 Launches industry first email database and deployment services
- 2001 First in market to offer email append
- 2003 Online Order site launched, customers can purchase lists and publications online
- 2004 First in market to offer email services
- 2005 Market Research services offered
- 2005 Easy Access goes online
- 2006 School Funding Services launched
- 2007 MarketView launches
- 2007 Acquired MKTG
- 2009 Acquired QED
- 2009 Launched Affinity Modeling
- 2009 MDR hosted its first EdNET
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2010s
2010s - Making the Connection
We developed new and innovative ways to help our customers reach prospects and to connect with teachers.
- 2010 EdNET Insight subscription service introduced
- 2011 Acquires WeAreTeachers to expand focus on media and content marketing services
- 2012 Launched targeted Web Ads
- 2013 Added Charter School Management Organizations to database
- 2015 Integrated Marketing Services launched, expanding our customized marketing services with more content and media options
- 2016 School Leaders Now web and social sites launched
- 2018 Launched ConnectED Data – giving customers 24/7 access to education data
- 2019 50 years strong with new innovations on the horizon
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2019
2019 - Happy Anniversary
MDR celebrates 50 years of education focused sales and marketing.
So, thank you to all the customers who’ve made MDR what it is today. If you’ve been with us since the early days you’ve likely watched the evolution of our logo over time. Under any logo, we’re proud you’re with us.
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2019and Beyond
2019 and Beyond - Exciting new solutions are on the horizon!
We are bringing new and enhanced solutions that deliver stronger, faster results via MDR’s suite of capabilities. Follow on for highlights from our product and technology roadmap →
So, thank you to all the customers who’ve made MDR what it is today. If you’ve been with us since the early days you’ve likely watched the evolution of our logo over time. Under any logo, we’re proud you’re with us.
From the early days when Retrieval was a marketing word, to the angsty teen years when we kept moving around in relation to our parent company, to our warm and exuberant current look, MDR’s logo has always reflected our willingness to adapt to the times and the industry.