Last year we started the 7 SaaS Conferences You Must Attend list and it was one of our most trafficked blog posts, so we are continuing the tradition this year.
We focused on larger conferences this time around, as they have proven to pack more value, and are more likely to be around the following year. It’s through repeat exposure that one becomes familiar, and that’s why going to the same events year in and year out proves valuable. Nothing beats face time. Also, not every conference chosen is for Marketing and Sales – because there are other teams that make our companies run, we recommended one of the largest dev conferences for SaaS companies as well – the AWS conference.
1. SaaStr
February 7-9thm 2017 | San Francisco, CA
SaaStr is the largest independent (meaning not hosted by an enterprise) SaaS conference in the US. I went last year and the networking was amazing. I’ll be going this year as well. High level participants from all size SaaS companies – this is the conference for networking. The sessions are strong as well. This year’s sessions include: “How to Manage Up and Have a Happy Board. Even When You Miss a Quarter” and “Building Sales Operations from $1M to $50M: Who to Hire, When and Why”
2. Customer Success Summit
February 27-28th | San Francisco, CA
Customer success has become one of the leading retainment methods for SaaS companies, which makes sense – churn is bad in SaaS. Helping your customers succeed gives you a higher CLV. It also gives you much happier customers. The Customer Success Summit helps with the details of turning your organization into a top-down customer centric organization. I went to this last year, and plan to go this year. The networking is good – the learning is great. I left this conference with a million ideas for our clients.
3. The Revenue Summit
March 7-8th | San Francisco, CA
The Revenue Summit is as the name implies – all about sales. Expect a lot of learning – you’ll walk out with actionable sales and marketing tactics and strategies that will help you drive results from demand gen, to pipeline, to close. Hunter & Bard readers get a 20% discount – use the code HB20.
4. SaaStock
September 18th – 20th, 2017 |Dublin, Ireland
Feel like going across the pond? Or are you in Europe and can’t make it all the way to SaaStr? SaaStock is the leading independent SaaS event in Europe. I’ve interviewed the founder, Alex Theuma (airing next week – I’ll add it to this post when it’s Live) on SaaS Insider and he’s taken a lot of time focusing on getting the right mix for his conference and delivering value. One of the conferences I’m considering in Europe this year.
5. Inbound
September 25-28th, 2017 | Boston, MA
Yes, we’re a HubSpot Certified Agency. No, I’ve never been to Inbound. I go to conferences for lead gen or networking – and while Inbound is supposed to be amazing for learning and a fantastic party, going to a conference filled with other agencies doesn’t make sense to me. Why am I recommending it then? Because if you are looking to build your inbound marketing, this really is the conference to go to.
6. Dreamforce
November 6–9, 2017 | San Francisco, CA
It’s a chaotic show. If you don’t know exactly who you want to meet you’ll be wandering around the conference for days. Dreamforce is too big of a conference to rely on serendipity. It’s a get organized and have meetings sort of show. It also has stage shows and a lot of other things, but from a business perspective, you need to have your timeline in order or else you’ll be lost and find no value from it. The good news is – this is the SXSW of sales shows. It goes on for days and everyone goes every year, so once you have those connections this is the chance to get face time with them.
7. AWS
November 27th – December 1st, 2017 | Las Vegas, NV
The only technical show on the list. What SaaS company doesn’t start out using AWS (or Rackspace?) Meet other devs in the SaaS industry, learn from experts and spend time in Vegas.