Announcing MarTech: The Marketing Tech Conference

Today, I am thrilled to announce the launch of MarTech: The Marketing Tech Conference — a conference designed expressly for you, leaders at the intersection of marketing, strategy, and technology.

The inaugural MarTech event will take place this August 19-20 in Boston at the beautiful Seaport Hotel and Convention Center. And I really hope you’ll be able to join us.

Click here to visit the conference website and receive details on registration.

A new brand of conference for a new brand of marketing

The world of marketing technology has exploded in the past couple of years. We have over 1,000 marketing technology companies, innovating like mad. Hybrid marketing technologist professionals are proliferating — including senior chief marketing technologist roles. This blog has grown from a couple of hundred monthly visitors to tens of thousands of regular readers. (Thank you!)

We’re now “inside the tornado,” as Geoffrey Moore would put it, forging a new mainstream brand of marketing. It’s tremendously inspiring to witness this unfold — and to play a part, as each of you do.

Marketing technology — as an industry, as a discipline, and as a strategic lever — has now reached a scale where I’ve been itching for our own dedicated conference, yearning for a gathering place where the amazing people who lead this field could come together to learn from and inspire each other.

So when I was approached by the team from Third Door Media — the folks with Danny Sullivan who run the popular sites SearchEngineLand.com and MarketingLand.com and produce the terrific SMX Search Marketing Expo conferences — to jointly produce a new marketing technology event, I leaped at the opportunity. (If you’ve ever been to an SMX event, you know that they consistently put on a fantastic conference.) And MarTech: The Marketing Tech Conference was born.

The team guiding the program content for MarTech

As the conference chair, I’ll oversee the program and speaker selection in collaboration with seven brilliant leaders from across the industry who have graciously agreed to serve on the MarTech Advisory Board:

Eduardo Conrado — SVP of Marketing and IT at Motorola Solutions, the model of a new kind of tech-savvy marketing executive, who has been widely recognized for the innovative way he has restructured marketing and IT under a common umbrella.

Sean Ellis — Founder & CEO of Qualaroo and GrowthHackers.com, who first coined the term “growth hacker” and has been a leading voice in the start-up marketing and growth hacker communities.

Mayur Gupta — Global Head of Marketing Technology & Operations at Kimberly-Clark, the epitome of a chief marketing technologist and a terrific writer, speaker, and ambassador on the subject, who also has a great background with SapientNitro.

Jane Hiscock — Founder & President at Farland Group, a highly experienced marketer, whose company organizes customer advisory boards and leadership forums with Fortune 500 CIOs and CMOs.

Terence Kawaja — Founder & CEO of LUMA Partners, the smartest investment bank team within the adtech/martech space, and the creator of those awesome LUMAscapes (which have inspired many imitators, including yours truly).

David Raab — Principal at Raab Associates, an amazing marketing technology analyst and consultant, who helps companies select and adopt these solutions (his Raab Guides for marketing automation and customer data platforms are epic), and author of the Customer Experience Matrix blog.

Virginia Sharma — VP of Marketing for the North America Systems and Technology Group of IBM, previously the CMO of IBM India, one of the earliest champions of the chief marketing technologist role globally, and author of the Desi CMO blog.

Together, they bring a wealth of perspective to the programming of this conference, from start-ups to global enterprises, from entrepreneurs to executives, and from operational strategy to M&A. I’m excited and grateful to have the opportunity to work with them on shaping this event.

An in-depth program for executives in marketing, IT, and digital

The MarTech agenda is being crafted for executives and experts in marketing, IT, and digital to provide an integrated and strategic view of marketing technology and its impact through three lenses:

STRATEGY
• Position your business to take advantage of technology-powered market trends
• Connect your business strategy with the right technology strategy to achieve it
• Explore new innovations in technology to enable new strategic opportunities

MANAGEMENT
• Transcend the traditional boundaries of marketing, IT, sales, and customer service
• Organize people and processes to take full advantage of marketing technology
• Govern investments in marketing technology — align the CIO, CMO, and CFO
• Coordinate multiple agencies and technology vendors in this new environment

MARKETING
• Craft compelling customer experiences with the latest marketing technology
• Leverage data science and marketing analytics to optimize marketing performance
• Synchronize marketing and sales with technology as a coordinating mechanism

These topics will be illuminated through a mix of practice-based theory and real-world case studies. Our goal is to demonstrate what is possible through sharing the experiences of those who have done it — and to distill those insights into frameworks that you can take back to your organization.

The format of the program will be a single-track, shared experienced with a combination of longer deep-dive presentations and shorter intensive talks, so as to give the best possible balance of breadth and depth. Integrated into the program will be opportunities to engage the speakers and your peers in discussion and a cross-pollination of ideas.

The program will vendor-agnostic and consist only of speakers selected for their expertise in the field. Programming is entirely independent of sponsorships. There will be no sales pitches permitted in program sessions.

The agenda for MarTech will be published this month — you can sign-up to be notified via email as soon as it’s released.

But the best part of MarTech promises to be you — a phenomenal intermingling of ideas and experiences from marketing technology leaders from around the world. This will be a unique gathering for our industry, and I really hope you’ll be able to attend.

Want to guarantee your seat now?

MarTech registration is now open. Early bird tickets are just $1,195 and include two full days of sessions, networking, breakfast, lunch and receptions.

Want to bring a team? Take advantage of our team rate discounts.

We also have a limited number of rooms at the Seaport Boston Hotel for the discounted rate of just $239 before tax. Register now to take advantage of the low rate.