On 12 November, the European Marketing Operations community gathered for a relaxed, very human debrief of MOPsapalooza 2025. Forty-nine minutes later we’d laughed about jet lag, swapped highlights, and left with a short list of practical experiments to try at work.

I co-hosted with Mihai Bejgu and Odd Morten Sørensen, with contributions from Aurélie, Maria, Arjen, John, and a cameo from Mike Rizzo via “virtual note-taker.” Below is a recap you can skim, share with your team, and turn into action next week.

The vibe: “coming home”

If you’ve been to broad marketing events and felt out of place, you’ll understand why this came up again and again.

• “It felt like coming home.” (Odd Morten)

• “Group therapy for MOPs.” (Maria)

• Approachable speakers you can actually walk up to and chat with—not the norm at giant vendor shows.

For many of us, the win wasn’t only new tactics—it was being surrounded by people who “speak the same language” (even when we literally don’t!).

Sessions that stuck with us

Frans Riemersma — Closing Keynote (“Three Learnings”)
The line that’s going on my office wall: “You will never be able to solve a strategy problem with technology.” In a world of 15,000+ tools and relentless “What are we doing with AI?” questions, this is your north star. Start with the customer, then strategy, then tools.

Darrell Alfonso — The big arc of tech shifts
Darrell’s timeline (internet → smartphone → social → AI) reframed how quickly dependencies are disappearing. You still need understanding, but AI lowers the “ask a developer” barrier and accelerates what MOPs can deliver.

Agents & MCPs (several sessions)

• Lucas’s talk on agent patterns and MCP as the “interconnector” between task and executor sparked a lot of “I need a weekend to tinker” energy.

• Sushrut Sadana (Inflection) — “How I built a free, open-source AI bot for Marketo.” The compelling bit: query the activity log and mark timelines programmatically so humans don’t drown in 100 pages of logs.

Rubrik — Practical AI enablement in the wild
Zach Hoogeland walked through a Slack MOPs bot that routes FAQs to docs and reduces ticket volume. The more important story was org change: a year-long shift from ticket-takers to strategic operators. Maria plans to follow up with him about getting started and roadblocks along the way.

Courtney McAra — Marketability Segmentation (Marketo)
Loved this because you can build it tomorrow. A single cascade that classifies who you can email and why (invalids, opt-outs, suspended, double opt-in countries, etc.), ending in “marketable.” It turns the “Why did my 50k list only send to 30k?” conversation into a crisp, visual report for stakeholders. I’ve already built a V1 for a client.

Todd Sprinkel — Grab-bag of nerdy goodness
Lightning tips across Marketo, HubSpot, Salesforce, and even Excel. If you like pragmatic hacks, this deck is your candy drawer.

What Europe needs more of (after Anaheim)

• Clarity on what Marketing Ops is (and isn’t). Job titles vary wildly here: “CRM & Lifecycle Owner,” “Digital Product Owner,” “Marketing Automation,” “RevOps,” etc. Many of these are MOPs roles in disguise.

• Depth + doing. We loved the suggestion to explicitly pair talks with hands-on follow-up workshops (“You heard the concept—now build it this afternoon”).

• Community moments. We’re all tired of 25-minute back-to-back Zooms. The hallway track—the coffee machine chats—matter.

Quick wins you can try this month

1. Build a marketability segment in Marketo and ship a one-page dashboard to Marketing: “sendable vs. not sendable, and why.”

2. Pilot a lightweight Slack Q&A bot that returns internal MOPs documentation for FAQs (start with 10 questions; measure ticket deflection).

3. Pick one agentic task (e.g., summarize activity logs for a person/program) and prototype it with MCP—or your preferred framework. Timebox it. Treat it as an experiment.

4. Re-frame AI asks from “What are we doing with AI?” to: hypothesis → small scope → success metric → budget cap → post-mortem.

5. Book your “strategy first” chat with your CMO/Sales counterpart. Use Frans’ line to anchor the conversation.

Access to recordings (and a little perk)

If you held a MOPsapalooza 2025 ticket, you can watch session recordings through end of January. Pro+ members keep lifetime access in the Member Vault. Curious to upgrade? There’s a small 10% code: VEUCH_10 we mentioned live.

The very human highlights

• Meeting people we’d known for years only online (in one case, finally meeting a former manager we’d never met IRL!).

• First-time speakers getting the stage—huge kudos to folks like Kelsey Morrison and Chelsea Corbett.

• That feeling when someone you admire already knows your name (hi, Sara McNamara—and thank you for being as warm in person as your content has always been online).

What’s next for Europe

• Holiday Social (EU-friendly time): MOPs Jeopardy + Pictionary (yes, with marketing ops terms). Consider this your official nudge to bring a ridiculous virtual background—or a data-nerd holiday sweater.

• January Kickoff: “New year, new goals” share-out—accountability buddies, process experiments, the one tool you plan to implement, and why.

Gratitude

Thank you to Mihai, Odd Morten, Aurélie, Maria, Arjen, John, and to Mike Rizzo for building the global community that makes this all feel like home. And thank you to everyone who showed up live, jet lag and all.

If you’re in Europe and this sounds like your people, join us at the next meet-up. Bring your questions, your wins, your “moopsies,” and your curiosity. We’ll bring the room where it’s safe to be a nerd.

— Chloe
Founder, pocket nibbles consulting | Co-lead, European Marketing Ops Community