WOMMA stands for the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, if you’re not already aware. In Chicago on July 13th, it will be holding the first-ever conference, called Measuring Word of Mouth, on measurement, metrics, and standards in word-of-mouth marketing. I must admit that I wasn’t that familiar with the organisation unil I had an email from one of their people – Ben – asking if I could mention the event.

According to their website, WOMMA:

is the official trade association for the word of mouth marketing industry. WOMMA’s mission is to promote and improve word of mouth marketing by:

 

• Protecting consumers and the industry with strong ethical guidelines
  
• Promoting WOM as an effective marketing tool
  
• Setting standards to encourage its use

Judging by their line-up of speakers and subjects it does sound like it could be quite an interesting event to attend. There are speakers from the Harvard Business School, Future Now, Brand Dimensions and Nielsen/NetRatings. WOMMA claims that attendees will learn 5 things from the event:

1. Measure and Track Word of Mouth
2. Prove the ROI of WOM
3. Create a WOM Media Plan
4. Discover Why Messages Go Viral
5. Understand Why Customers Talk

Some of the talks and presentations that caught my eye were:

 

Optimizing WOM: Which Words Work?

Why People Talk: Consumer Behavior and Word of Mouth

“A Case For Using The Internet To Track Offline, Organic Word Of Mouth”

“The Blog Universe: Influencers, Early Adopters and Online Tenure Rolled into One”

“Customer Evangelists are Not Loyal Customers”

If you’re interested in going to the event, please send me an email and I can send you a $50 discount code.