Why I’m Going to MOPZA27 Europe Summit: A Marketing Ops Conference Built Differently

A note on transparency: I’m paying to attend MOPZA27 Europe and haven’t been paid to write this post. I wanted to share why I’ve chosen to attend, what I learned from speaking to one of the organisers, and why I think the event could be interesting for others working in Marketing Ops, RevOps, GTM Ops or related fields.

There are conferences. There are industry events. And then there are those rare events where you come home thinking, “That was actually worth the time, money and three days out of the office.”

I’m hoping MOPZA27 Europe Summit will be one of those.

I’ll be heading to MOPZA27 Europe Summit from 7–9 April 2027, at Campus La Mola, just outside Barcelona. And while Barcelona is certainly not the worst place to have a work trip, the location isn’t actually the main reason I’m going.

The main reason is the people.

MOPZA27 Europe Summit is a conference built by and for the European Marketing Operations, GTM Ops and RevOps community. Rather than packing thousands of people into a giant conference centre, the organisers are deliberately limiting attendance to 150 senior practitioners.

There are no vendor demo stages and no sales pitches masquerading as educational sessions. Instead, the focus is on practitioner-led sessions, workshops, conversations and - most importantly - time to actually connect with other people doing the work.

And that got me thinking:

What is it about Marketing Ops that makes getting together in person so valuable?

Because, let’s be honest. We already have Slack. We have LinkedIn. We have webinars, podcasts, communities and enough Zoom calls to last several lifetimes.

So why get on a plane?

I wanted to understand what MOPZA27 Europe Summit is trying to do differently, so I spoke with Chloe Pott, one of the people behind bringing MOPZA to Europe.

Do we really need another Marketing Ops conference?

I’ll admit it: when I first hear about a new conference, my immediate reaction isn’t necessarily “Sign me up!”

I’ve been to plenty of events where I’ve sat through a 45-minute presentation that could have been an email, followed by a carefully disguised product pitch, followed by an awkward networking session where everyone is desperately trying to work out who they should talk to.

Marketing Ops conferences have their own particular challenge, too.

Our jobs are incredibly broad. We sit somewhere between marketing, sales, technology, data, process, operations and strategy. We’re expected to understand the platforms, fix the processes, make the data work, improve performance and, increasingly, figure out what on earth AI means for all of it.

So generic “the future of marketing” content doesn’t really cut it.

What I want from an event is pretty simple:

Show me something useful. Introduce me to people who understand my problems. Give me ideas I can take home and actually use. (That's not too much to ask for, right?!)

And, ideally, don’t try to sell me something every five minutes.

That seems to be exactly what MOPZA is trying to create.

For Chloe, the idea started at MOPZA24 in Anaheim. She was speaking at the event and noticed that several of the speakers had travelled over from Europe. That prompted a fairly simple question to Marketing Ops Community founder and CEO Mike Rizzo:

Why don’t we do this in Europe?

His response was equally simple:

“If you find the people, I'll bring you the conference.”

Chloe took that as a challenge.

Over the following couple of years, she started talking to practitioners across Europe and building those connections. What became clear was that people knew about MOPZA, but travelling to the US wasn’t always realistic - particularly when you factor in the cost, time and distance involved.

That, ultimately, is how MOPZA Europe came about: not simply because someone decided Europe needed another conference, but because there was already a community asking for one.

The more I talked to Chloe, the more I understood why this feels different from the usual conference format.

It’s not really about packing as much content as possible into two and a half days. It’s about creating the conditions for something that can be surprisingly difficult to find in Marketing Ops:

Time with people who genuinely understand the job.

And that brings me to the reasons I’m going.

1. Sometimes you just want to talk to people who “get it”

One of the best things about working in Marketing Ops is also one of the strangest:

A lot of people don’t really understand what we do.

Try explaining to someone outside the profession that your day involved fixing a lead lifecycle, investigating why a campaign didn’t sync correctly, redesigning a routing process, cleaning up CRM data and then explaining attribution to the leadership team.

Their eyes tend to glaze over somewhere around “lead lifecycle”.

But put a room full of Marketing Ops people together and suddenly you don’t have to explain.

You can start a conversation with:

“Has anyone else had this problem with…”

…and there’s a very good chance someone will say:

“Oh yes. We had exactly that.”

That kind of peer-to-peer learning is difficult to replicate online.

It’s also one of the things that stands out to me about MOPZA27 Europe. The event is intentionally limited to 150 senior practitioners, with the organisers choosing a smaller format because they believe it creates better conversations.

Chloe made another interesting point when we talked about the European community: a lot of people doing Marketing Operations work don’t actually have “Marketing Operations” in their job title.

They might be CRM Managers, Lifecycle Managers, Digital Marketing Managers, Marketing Automation specialists - or something else entirely.

As Chloe put it:

“I was trying to look for marketing operations people in Europe and couldn’t find them. I was looking at the wrong people.”

That’s an important observation.

The European Marketing Ops community may be considerably bigger than it appears if you’re simply searching LinkedIn for people with “Marketing Operations” in their title.

Perhaps that’s another reason to get everyone into the same room.

2. Because “interesting” isn’t enough anymore

I’ve sat through plenty of conference sessions that were genuinely interesting.

And then I’ve gone back to work and done absolutely nothing with what I learned.

That’s the problem.

I don’t want to leave an event with 37 pages of notes and a vague feeling that AI is important.

I want to leave thinking:

“I’m going to try that.”

That’s why MOPZA27’s practitioner-led approach appeals to me.

The program is built around senior operators sharing what’s working, what isn’t and the challenges they’re tackling. It includes workshops too, rather than relying solely on traditional conference presentations.

For Marketing Ops professionals, that distinction matters.

We’re not short of theory.

What we need more of is:

“Here’s what we actually did. Here’s what broke. Here’s what we’d do differently. And here’s what you can steal.”

Chloe’s view is refreshingly straightforward. You don’t need to have discovered some revolutionary new Marketing Ops methodology to have something worth sharing.

If you’ve solved a problem, it’s good enough for MOPZA.

I really like that philosophy.

Some of the most useful conference sessions I’ve attended haven’t been about groundbreaking innovation. They’ve been about someone explaining how they fixed something painfully familiar.

How they changed their lead scoring.

How they approached attribution.

How they dealt with lifecycle stages.

How they finally got sales and marketing to agree on something.

How they made a system work when the documentation insisted it should have been working already.

Those are the stories I want to hear.

3. Because 150 people sounds a lot better than 5,000

This is probably one of the biggest things that caught my attention.

MOPZA27 Europe Summit is capped at 150 attendees.

That’s very different from the usual conference model of “the more people, the better”.

And I can see the appeal.

At a huge conference, you might encounter hundreds of people. But how many real conversations do you actually have?

How many people do you remember?

And how many would you feel comfortable messaging six months later to ask:

“Hey, have you ever dealt with this?”

A smaller event changes the dynamic.

You’re not one person in a sea of thousands. You have a much better chance of actually becoming part of the community.

Interestingly, Chloe doesn’t see the 150-person limit as a way of making the event feel exclusive.

Quite the opposite.

One reason she wants to keep it small is to make it easier for people who arrive on their own to feel comfortable.

If you’re walking into a room of 5,000 people where you don’t know anyone, it can be intimidating. In a group of around 120 - 150, walking up to someone and starting a conversation feels rather more achievable.

That’s an important distinction.

The smaller size isn’t just about better networking.

It’s about making networking feel less like networking.

4. Because the best part of a conference might not be the conference

Here’s another thing I like about the concept.

MOPZA27 isn’t just “arrive at 8:30, attend sessions until 17:00, go back to your hotel.”

The event takes place at Campus La Mola, a private campus about 30 minutes outside Barcelona, with accommodation on site. Alongside workshops and sessions, the program includes meals together, a welcome reception, a DJ party and a choice of activities on the final day.

There’s something quite deliberate about that.

You don’t just bump into someone for six minutes while you’re both looking for coffee.

You might have breakfast with them.

You might walk with them.

You might end up sitting next to them at dinner.

You might have a conversation at 11pm that turns out to be more useful than the keynote you attended that morning.

And that’s often where communities are actually built.

Chloe described the venue as feeling almost like walking into someone’s enormous home - a 17th-century farmhouse-style campus with accommodation, communal spaces, swimming pools, a gym and plenty of places to spend time together.

That isn’t accidental.

The longer breaks, communal meals and activities are part of the design. The idea is to give people the time and space to build relationships rather than filling every available minute with another session.

Conferences don’t always get that right.

Sometimes the most valuable part of an event happens between the sessions.

5. Because Marketing Ops in Europe deserves its own room

There’s another reason I’m particularly interested in MOPZA27.

It’s European.

That sounds obvious given the location, but I think there’s something important about building a dedicated European Marketing Operations community.

We work across different markets, regulatory environments, languages, company structures and cultures.

The challenges might often be familiar, but the way we solve them isn’t necessarily the same.

There’s real value in having a space where European practitioners can compare notes.

Not just:

“Here’s what the industry says you should do.”

But:

“Here’s what we’re actually doing in our organisation, in our market, with our team, our systems and our constraints.”

Chloe’s own experience is a good example of why that peer network matters.

When she was working in-house and evaluating marketing automation platforms, HubSpot and Marketo were on the shortlist. She knew Marketo but didn’t know HubSpot particularly well.

Rather than relying solely on vendors to explain why their platform was the right answer, she went to the community and spoke to European practitioners who were actually using HubSpot.

That, for me, is the value of a platform-agnostic community.

It’s not about telling you which technology to buy.

It’s about helping you find someone who has actually lived through the decision you’re trying to make.

6. Because I don’t want another vendor pitch

I’m not anti-vendor.

Far from it. Technology is a huge part of what allows us in Marketing Ops to do our jobs.

But there’s a time and place for buying software.

And there’s a time and place for sitting down with another practitioner and saying:

“Our lead scoring model is a complete mess. How did you fix yours?”

MOPZA’s approach is clear: no vendor pitches and no demo stages. The event is designed around operators talking to operators.

For me, that’s an important distinction.

I don’t want to spend three days being told what a platform could do.

I want to hear what someone has actually done.

What worked.

What didn’t.

What they wish they’d known six months earlier.

That’s the stuff you can take back to work.

And I suspect that’s also why the community element matters so much to Chloe.

Her ideal outcome isn’t simply that someone collects 149 new LinkedIn connections.

It’s that someone leaves thinking:

“I met someone who’s an expert in this, and an expert in that. And when we’re ready to roll that out, I know who I’m going to call.”

Now that is a network.

7. And yes, I also want to have some fun

Let’s not pretend this is all about professional development.

We’re allowed to enjoy ourselves too.

One thing I like about the MOPZA program is that it doesn’t seem to take the idea of a “serious business event” too seriously.

There’s yoga. There are outdoor activities. There’s a community game. There’s a DJ party.

And on the final day, attendees can choose between a strategic thinking/team-building activity, a high-energy community game or an outdoor hike. The top two choices win! (I know what I voted for ;)).

I think that matters.

Marketing Ops can be intense.

Sometimes the best way to build a relationship with someone isn’t another breakout session.

It’s having a laugh with them.

And apparently, if you attend, Chloe’s advice is fairly simple:

Bring comfortable shoes. And a swimsuit.

I’ll leave that there.

Is MOPZA27 Europe Summit worth the investment?

This is probably the question most people will have to answer internally.

Because attending an event isn’t free.

MOPZA27’s first all-inclusive release is listed at €1,200, with later releases at €1,400 and €1,600. The all-inclusive ticket covers two nights’ accommodation, meals, sessions, workshops and event activities.

For me, the calculation is slightly different. I’m a consultant, so I’m paying to attend out of my own pocket. There’s no conference budget to dip into and no manager to convince. I have to decide whether the experience, learning and relationships are worth investing my own money - and my own time - in.

If I were working in-house, though, I’d probably be asking a different question:

“Can I justify this to my manager?”

And I think the answer comes down to what you can bring back.

If you return with a handful of practical ideas you can actually implement, a better understanding of how other teams are tackling the same problems, and a network of experienced people you can call on when you’re stuck, the value starts to look quite different from simply paying to attend another conference.

There’s also the value of avoiding mistakes. One useful conversation with someone who has already tackled the project you’re about to start could save hours of research, prevent a poor technology decision or give you a completely different way of approaching a problem.

That’s the sort of ROI I’d be talking about if I were making the business case internally.

Chloe’s answer to the ROI question is similar, but framed around the network.

Imagine coming back to work having met Marketing Ops professionals from across Europe.

Not just knowing their names.

Knowing what they’re good at.

Knowing what they’ve worked on.

Knowing who you can call when you’re facing a problem they may already have solved.

As Chloe put it:

The goal is to come away with something of a “Rolodex” of names and numbers you can actually call on.

That’s a very different definition of conference ROI - and one I find quite compelling.

Who should go to MOPZA27 Europe Summit?

I don’t think MOPZA27 is necessarily for everyone.

And that’s a good thing.

The event is aimed at senior practitioners working across areas such as Marketing Operations, GTM Ops, RevOps, CRM, Marketing Automation, Growth, MarTech and Data Enablement.

I’d say it’s worth considering if you:

• Live somewhere between marketing, technology, data and operations.

• Are responsible for making systems and processes actually work.

• Want to learn from practitioners rather than vendors.

• Enjoy getting into the detail of how other teams operate.

• Want practical ideas rather than just industry predictions.

• Are looking to build a genuine peer network.

• Have ever thought, “Surely I’m not the only person dealing with this?”

That last one might be the most important.

Because you probably aren’t.

You just might not have met the other person yet.

The question I really wanted to ask Chloe

Ultimately, an event like this isn’t really about the agenda.

It’s about what people experience.

So I asked Chloe what she hopes people will be saying when they leave Campus La Mola on Friday afternoon.

Her answer came back to the same idea that seems to sit underneath the whole event:

Relationships.

Not just that people learned something.

Not just that they attended some good sessions.

But that they met people they can rely on.

People they can call when they have a problem.

People who understand what they do without needing a 20-minute explanation.

And, ideally, people they actually enjoyed spending time with.

That’s a pretty good measure of a conference.

Why I’m going to MOPZA27 Europe Summit

So, why am I going?

Partly because I want to learn.

Partly because I want to meet other people working in my field - or somewhere adjacent to it.

Partly because I want to steal some good ideas. Professionally, of course.

But mostly, I think, because Marketing Ops needs its own room.

We spend so much of our time connecting systems, processes, teams and data that it’s easy to forget we need to connect with each other too.

And that’s why MOPZA27 Europe Summit appeals to me.

Not the fact that it’s near Barcelona.

Not the DJ party (although I suspect we’ll have a blast).

Not even the fact that there are only 150 spots available.

It’s the possibility of spending two and a half days surrounded by people who understand the weird, wonderful, frustrating and occasionally brilliant world of Marketing Operations.

People who don’t need you to explain what you do.

People who might already have solved the problem you’re currently staring at.

People you might still be talking to six months after the event.

That’s the kind of Marketing Ops conference I want to attend.

Hopefully, I’ll see you there.

MOPZA27 Europe Summit

7–9 April 2027 · Campus La Mola, Barcelona

150 places. Practitioner-led. Residential. Built for the European Marketing Ops, GTM Ops and RevOps community.

Find out more about MOPZA27 Europe Summit →