Ecommerce conference season is upon us. In the past few weeks, the Littledata team was at Shop.org in Las Vegas, Paris Retail Week, and the Google Expert Summit in Waterloo, Canada — three very different events in three rather different countries.

Then we also hit up Agile Cambridge and Technology for Marketing in the UK, the UPRISE fest in Dublin, TechDay LA in sunny Los Angeles and the BigCommerce partner summit in Austin. And while we unfortunately couldn’t make ReCharge’s Recur event for the subscription industry, or Hawke Media’s Hawkefest, the ultimate anti-conference, many of our partners and merchants were there and had awesome things to say.

But wait a second. Slow down!

With so many exciting events to potentially attend during what is already one of the busiest times of year for those of us in the industry (Black Friday is just around the corner from a marketer’s perspective), how do you choose?

Is that conference you’ve been debating attending really worth it?

If we’ve learned anything…

Over the years I’ve had a mixed experience with conferences. But with Littledata we’ve found a good rhythm.

Of course it helps that we’re on the cutting edge of new technology, actually using AI and machine learning as opposed to just talking about it, and that we already have major customers around the world, even though we’re technically still a ‘startup’. This gives us a wide range of high-quality speaking and learning opportunities. But at the same time our productive conference experiences haven’t happened by accident, whether for ecommerce or general tech events.

We’ve found such a good conference rhythm — a dance that produces a consistently high ROI on in-person events — by looking closely at our own data on a quarterly and yearly basis.

Our strategy is always evolving, but some stats have been consistent. For example, we discovered that at the right events:

• Though we don’t necessarily have a higher win rate for enterprise leads from conferences, the sales cycle is condensed, on average 3x faster from meeting to close. This saves our sales team valuable time chasing down leads, and also helps us improve our product, pitches and processes at a faster rate.
• Agencies we meet in person are 4x more likely to refer us a customer within the next 30 days — even if we never did a formal product demo.

What’s your company’s take on conferences? Here are a few insights that might help you get more out of the conference experience, whether that means big tech industry events or smaller, focused meetups.

There is no such thing as a must-attend conference

The great irony with ecommerce conferences is that they tend to be scheduled at what are already busy times for those of us in the industry.

Whether it’s the shows we attended these past 6 weeks that overlapped with everyone getting back to work after summer holidays, or European standbys like NetComm Suisse’s later fall events and One to One in Monaco every March, right after SXSW in Austin, it’s either an embarrassment of riches or — depending on your perspective — a really confusing hodge podge of hard-to-classify opportunities.

There are simply too many choices, and it’s especially hard to decide whether to attend a tech conference or meetup if your company has never attended that particular show before. One thing I love about our industry is that merchants (stores and ecommerce managers) and vendors (apps, platforms, consultants, designers and agencies) are all in the same boat. In short, we have no time for BS. We want events that focus on real information, emerging technologies and human connection.

So how do you decide?

First things first, make your own list. There are a ton of blog posts out there about ‘must attend’ conferences, those ‘not to miss’. Give me a break! Every business is unique, and you’re only as viable as your buyer personas.

So make a list of conferences, events and meetups that might help connect you with your prime customers and best partners. Brainstorm, look online, ask around. Make your own list and plan to review every quarter.

Then once you’ve made that list, on paper or Trello or however you work best, go through the following checklist with as many members of your team as possible, especially if you can bring in decision makers from both Product and Marketing.

A simple checklist

When deciding if you should attend a conference for the first or second time, it’s useful to have a checklist for quick, consistent analysis.

The checklist I use is deceptively simple. It has only 5 indicators.

1. Would one significant sale pay for itself in terms of customer acquisition cost (CAC)?
2. If the conference did work out, is it something you would attend every year?
3. Would it be the right place for you to speak, either now or in the future?
4. Is this your scene, your community?
5. Are there companies, merchants, agencies, vendors etc. attending whom you wouldn’t see any other time this year? (Even just one counts, if sufficiently high-value.)

In short, if you can tick all five boxes then you should attend the conference.

If you can only tick four, it’s probably worth attending but needs more debate. If this is the case, then considering point number one in detail — looking at your current LTV/CAC ratio and considering how the conference could help improve or at least maintain it — is essential. For ecommerce tech companies like our own, this generally means one big sale or partnership. For ecommerce sites it can also take the form of discovering new tech (like Littledata, Klickly or ReCharge) that will help increase sales and marketing ROI.

If you can tick all five boxes then you should definitely attend the conference

The checklist works even if you’ve already attended the conference in the past. Just consider point two already covered and proven!

If you’re in the ecommerce space, definitely consider platform-specific conferences. Shopify and Magento have regular events and meetups around the world, and word on the street is that BigCommerce will be really ramping up their local partner events in 2019.

Shopify Unite has consistently been that rare conference that ticks all the boxes for us here at Littledata, but that doesn’t mean we’re ignoring others that only tick four. We’ve cast our net wide (using the checklist of course) and are still seeing results.

If you want to get a head start on conference browsing for next year,  Veeqo has created a calendar of best worldwide ecommerce conferences for 2019.

Across the board remember this: success at a conference almost never comes in the form of expected outcomes. Yes, the best outcomes will be aligned with your sales and marketing goals, but sometime the biggest benefits will not be clear for 3, 6 or even 12 months down the line. That’s why we do quarterly and yearly reviews of all in-person activities, from networking events to large conferences. I suggest you do the same.

Most importantly, have fun! Gone are the days of boring trade shows. Show up. Make connections. And if we’re there too, come say hi! Maybe nobody can make analytics sexy, but we at least promise to make them useful.

And usefulness is a good place to start…