Looking for email marketing conferences to attend? Here’s a list of the best email marketing events arranged by time of the year and continent!
Here at Get A Newsletter, we’ve been to our fair share of email marketing conferences over the years – so we know what’s hot and what’s not! (Indeed, here’s our founder Martin at one!)
Some were good. Some were not so good.
A few of them were local. A few of them were global.
Plus, we’ve talked to plenty of people who have been to hundreds of events we couldn’t make it to.
So, in this blog we will take you through 20 email marketing conferences we think you should attend over the next year 😁, firstly in Europe and then in North America.
For all the events we’ve selected, there’s a link to the conferences’ home pages where you will be able to find:
- Agendas and speaker lists
- Details on how to register, pricing – and discounts, if applicable!
- Information about the event locations, how to get there, and where to stay
Of course, it goes without saying that these are all subject to change throughout the year!
Best Email Marketing Conferences in Europe
No matter where you are in Europe, you can be sure there will be at least one big event in your area. And if you’re able to travel, there’s A LOT of choices!
Late Spring 2020
- Elite Camp, Laulasmaa, Estonia – June 11 to 13. Not for beginners, this is a highly practical, small-scale event focused on conversion.
- eTail Europe, London, UK – June 23 to 24. One of a global series of events, eTail Europe promises to bring together thousands of retailers and “hundreds of strategic takeaways”.
Summer 2020
- Ad:Tech and ECommerce Expo, London, UK – September 30 to October 1. This is a huge marketing-wide double event that attracts thousands over a three-day program.
- Infoshare, Gdansk, Poland – September 23 to 24. Central and Eastern Europe’s biggest tech conference, which has been rescheduled from May, Infoshare promises 6,000 attendees.
Autumn 2020
- Festival of Marketing, London, UK – October 7 to 8. A truly enormous event in East London’s Tobacco Dock. The Festival of Marketing covers a lot of ground, but it compensates with scale and star power.
- Nordic E-commerce Summit, Stockholm, Sweden – October 13. One for our home market here in Sweden!
- Email Innovations Summit, London, UK – October 20 to 21. Workshops, speakers, and networking for beginners to expert level.
- Emailing 2020, Prague, Czech Republic – October 21. Now in its fifth year, Emailing is the Czech Republic’s biggest channel conference.
- Web Summit, Lisbon, Portugal- November 2 to 5. 23 – yes 23! – stages of keynote speakers and one of the biggest and most cosmopolitan marketing audiences out there.
- Advanced Email Conference, London, UK – November 3. A brand-led conference for experts.
Winter 2020 and Early 2021
- E-Commerce Berlin Expo, Berlin, Germany – February 18, 2021. Amsterdam’s B2B Online Europe has been pushed back until December 2021. Here’s a good alternative.
- Email Summit, Odense, Denmark – March 16, 2021. A great one-day event up here in the Nordics.
Best Email Marketing Conferences in North America
Sorry, Canada! We know you’ve got some great events, but all our picks seem to be in the USA…
Late Spring 2020
- Email Innovations Summit, Las Vegas, USA – June 1 to 3. A huge international affair, hosted in the Caesar’s Palace casino hotel!
Summer 2020
- MozCon, Seattle, USA – July 6 to 8. Not an email conference exclusively, but every year MozCon brings together the world’s best and brightest online marketing minds. Surely worth a visit simply for the experience!
- MediaPost’s Insider Email Summit, Deer Valley, USA – July 8 to 11. After MozCon, dash down to Utah for this email-only event postponed from April.
- MailCon, New York, USA – July 26. MailCon is the world’s biggest one-day, email-only marketing conference. Plus, it’s one of the less expensive global events out there.
- EiQ, Denver USA – September 2. The “intelligent email gathering” has been put back to September this year.
Autumn 2020
- Content Marketing World, Cleveland, USA – October 13 to 16. If you’re looking to improve your email copy then pay a visit to the world’s premier content expo.
- DreamForce 2020, San Francisco, USA – November 9 to 12. SalesForce’s annual conference is a news event in itself. Every year, it offers up agenda-setting announcements and developments, which change the game even for non-SalesForce customers.
Winter 2020 and Early 2021
- Unspam 2020, Greenville, USA – March 2021, TBC. And finally, a different kind of email marketing conference that sets itself up in opposition to all the usual expo hype. No date for 2021’s event as yet, but 2020’s Unspam took place in March in South Carolina, so here’s hoping they do it again next year!
So why should I go to email marketing conferences?
The life of an email marketer can be a lonely one.
Of course, there are plenty of online resources available (such as this blog!), but sometimes there’s no substitute for going out and meeting fellow email experts face to face.
Hundreds – sometimes thousands – of people just like you, with the same interests, concerns, and problems all gathered together in one place.
So, marketing conferences allow you to:
- Meet and network with like-minded professionals
- Learn email best practices from expert speakers
- Get new ideas and challenge your own assumptions
- Make contact with potential leads and customers
- See and test a wide range of new products and services
Of course, you CAN do all those things from the comfort of your desk.
But sometimes, you need the fully immersive experience of thinking about nothing but the conference theme for a day or two to really make the most of it.
That’s the million-dollar question.
Email marketing conferences vary in quality, size, and – of course – price.
They can be very specific, with a local or sector focus.
On the other hand, they can be enormous, general affairs, where email is just one of many focuses.
Some of the time, they are full of students or people trying to sell to you.
Meanwhile, some attract the cream of the marketing profession.
As usual, you must decide what is most important to you:
- WHERE IS IT? There are conferences all over the globe. How far away an event is and how much it will cost to travel has to be weighed up against the benefits of attending. Often it can be more cost-effective to stay small and local than to blow the budget on an international trip.
- HOW GENERAL IS IT? Some of the big, wide-ranging events attract the best speakers and delegates purely because they are so big. If you’re an online business owner or a general marketer who does email as one of many channels, a general conference may be better than a really niche one.
- STRATEGY VS TACTICS? Check the speaker list and topics to see whether the focus of the event is broad, general theory, or practical “things you can do right now”. Different events have very different emphases, and you should research this in advance.
- HOW MUCH DOES IT COST? Some great events are free. But some terrible events are incredibly pricey. Your budget should be your guide, but you should also be on the lookout for early-bird discounts and other ways to save money.
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