Conference Overload

Conference Overload

Our little email/online marketing industry is overrun with conferences.  It’s completely out of control.  I’m surprised no one else has started complaining or blogging about it, so let me be the first.  Here’s an incomplete inventory of but a few months of what our team is attending:

February — DKIM Implentation Summit, MAAWG, DMA Financial Services Conference, RSA

March — DMA Leaders Forum, ARF Annual

April — ESPC Deliverability Boot Camp, Email Authentication Summit, Marketing Sherpa, DMA Direct Marketing to Business Conference, MRA 20th Anniversary Show

May — Catalog Conference, Mediapost’s Email Insider Summit, ISPCON, INBOX

June — DoubleClick/Epsilon Email Conference, DM Days, MAAWG, Ad:Tech, MRA Annual, AMA ART, CASRO

Plus a few other smaller local events and customer conferences.  All I can say is Whew!

I realize that some of the problem here is that our business is diverse enough that we get invited to a wider range of conferences, and we certainly never complain about speaking opportunities — but this is starting to get expensive and dilutive.  And it’s hard to say no to a conference when the conference organizers make sure your competitors are going to be there.