The Quiet Rise of Europe’s Marketing Ops Community

I didn’t wake up one morning and say, “Let’s build a Marketing Ops summit in Europe.”

It was a slow build, the kind of knowing that settles in after enough moments where you realize: We need more rooms like the ones we already love. We just need one closer to home.

Because here’s the truth I want to say clearly:

MOpza US is awesome.
It works because it’s practitioner-led, community-built, and designed for people who actually do the work — not sell to the room.

And that philosophy is exactly why I want more of it for Europe.

The spark didn’t come from what was missing. It came from what was already working.

Every time I’ve attended MOps-Apalooza in the US, I’ve left inspired, energized, and deeply connected to practitioners who make this craft what it is. The core values — community first, practitioners first, real-talk over buzzwords — are universal.

But what became clear over time is this:

European practitioners face the same types of problems, but inside a slightly different operating system.

Not better. Not worse. Just different and shaped by:

• GDPR and country-specific regulation
• Multiple languages and markets
• Cultural nuances
• Different speed & maturity of MarTech adoption
• Different org structures & job titles
• And yes… the time-zone tax of joining the conversation after it started

The reason for the event is the same. The context is what changes.

Europe needs the same practitioner-led spirit — just with a localized smart list, a few new tokens, and a different cadence. 😉

The moment the spark turned into direction

After MOps-Apalooza 2024, I told Mike Rizzo: “We need something like this in Europe.”

He looked at me and said: “If you bring the people, I’ll bring the event.”

That single sentence reframed everything.
It wasn’t just permission. It was a challenge. (I am a very competitive person, so it worked.)

From that moment, I’ve been on a quest:

• Find the European voices.
• Find the practitioners.
• Find the people who don’t just want to attend — they want to build.

And they’re showing up.
Not politely. Not passively. But boldly — in comments, messages, Google Meets, and interest forms saying:

“We’ve been waiting.”

What we’re building — together

As a MOpster, the last thing I ever want to do is reinvent the wheel. And MOpza Europe is not a reinvention.

It’s a proven program template — the MOpza US template — cloned, copied, and then adapted with the right local tokens, new constraints, and region-specific logic.

You know how we take a rock-solid Marketo program template, clone it, adjust the smart list filters, tweak the email subject token, update the CTA link, swap out the landing page, and boom — it’s ready for a new region, new audience, new market?

That’s exactly what we’re doing here.

The structure stays. The strategy stays. The heart stays.

We’re simply swapping in the European segmentation.

MOpza Europe is an adaptation of principles that already resonate deeply across the industry:

• Practitioners teaching practitioners
• Vendor-light, community-heavy
• Real frameworks, real workflows, real problem-solving
• Hands-on sessions where people do the work, not just hear about it
• A safe place to say, “Here’s where our system broke — and here’s how we fixed it”

Two workshops:

• One on AI and automation (practical, messy, tactical).
• One on soft skills (communication, leadership, influence without authority).

A format familiar to the MOpza US community, but tailored for European realities, regulations, and rhythms.

Same heartbeat.
Different timezone.
Same purpose.

Just a localized program template built from a model that already works.

Why Europe needs this

Marketing operations in Europe is still years behind the US in maturity — in organizational understanding, in talent recognition, in career pathways, and often in adoption of best practices. (But more on that in a later blog article.)
Not because the talent isn’t here. It absolutely is.

But because:

• Many companies still don’t know they need marketing ops.
• Titles like CRM Manager or Digital Product Owner hide the real work being done.
• The ecosystems are fragmented by language, region, and regulation.
• And access to community is harder when the flagship events are over 10 hours away.

For years, European practitioners have been learning from US content, US case studies, US panels, and US systems maturity.

We’ve been reverse-engineering the American blueprint from afar.

MOpza Europe gives us a shortcut.
A place where we can learn from each other, compare realities, accelerate maturity, and close the gap — without needing to fly across the world.

Not to “catch up.” But to build our own excellence, informed by a model that already works.

Just like a great Marketo template accelerates execution, MOpza Europe accelerates our collective growth.

MOpza Europe isn’t just a conference

It’s a place to come together as a community and learn.
To find your people. To nerd out together. This time, in Barcelona.

If you’re a Marketo admin in Milan, a CRM manager in Berlin, a lifecycle marketer in Copenhagen, a RevOps lead in Paris:

You no longer have to be the only one in the room. The room is getting bigger.
And it’s being built for you — by people like you.

This isn’t about prestige.
It’s about belonging.
It’s about continuity.
It’s about carrying forward a model that works into a region hungry for it.

If you feel even a spark reading this, ✨ that spark is the reason MOpza Europe exists.

Add your name to the MOpza Europe 2027 interest list.
Or reach out: .

No commitments.
No spam.
Just an invitation to help shape the next evolution of a community-led movement — one that started long before us and is now expanding across the Atlantic.

The room is opening.
We’d love to have you in it.