CANADIAN EMAIL SUMMIT

Event Agenda

Explore the sessions, speakers, and conversations that bring Canada’s email community together. Select a session to see more details.

Event agenda

Thursday, September 24, 2026

TimeTrack 1Track 2
8:30 AM to 9:00 AM
All Attendees · Other

Registration

9:00 AM to 9:10 AM
All Attendees · Presentation

Welcome & Opening Remarks

Matthew VernhoutEmail Industries
9:10 AM to 10:10 AM
All Attendees · Keynote

The Permission Economy: Why Constraints Are Reshaping Marketing

Geoffrey BlancCyberimpact
Session details

What happens when you can no longer rely on reach? As inboxes tighten and attention fragments, Geoffrey Blanc reframes marketing around a simple idea: the brands that win are no longer those who push the hardest, but those that people choose across every channel.

For years, marketing rewarded scale. More reach, more volume, more automation. And for a while, it worked. Today, that model is breaking down. Across every channel, access is becoming less reliable, more expensive, and harder to control. In the inbox, this shift is already visible. What once drove growth is now creating instability.

This isn’t a temporary shift. It’s a structural reset. Marketing is no longer about how many people you can reach, but how many actually want you there. As constraints increase, from deliverability to attention to trust, the advantage no longer goes to those who push the hardest, but to those who are chosen.

Because the future won’t belong to the brands that reach the most people. It will belong to the ones that are allowed in.

10:10 AM to 10:25 AM
All Attendees · Break

Morning Break – Sponsored by KumoMTA

10:25 AM to 11:10 AM
All Attendees · Panel

Email Deliverability 2027: What’s Coming Next

Moderator: Matthew VernhoutEmail Industries
Session details

Email deliverability continues to evolve, with new filtering technologies, authentication standards, and mailbox provider policies changing how senders reach the inbox.

The panel will explore Google Postmaster Tools, emerging blocklists and filtering technologies, DMARCbis and DKIM2, Gmail’s evolving sender requirements, and changes across the Yahoo and Comcast ecosystem.

The conversation will also tackle the growth of cold email and the challenges it creates for reputation providers, mailbox providers, and sending networks.

The session concludes with an audience Q&A covering these changes, their impact on sender reputation, and what deliverability teams should be watching next.

11:10 AM to 11:55 AM
Track 1 · Presentation

What you’re really selling, what they’re really buying: How to move from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation.

Garin HobbsInboxArmy
Session details

Price, product, promotion. Open almost any email and this is what you’ll find. In our world of increasing competition for customer engagement and conversions, marketers must find more effective and sustainable ways to resonate with their audiences without eroding their margins or devaluing their brand.

In this session we’ll explore effective strategies and tactics that you can use in your own program to uncover what really matters and build more meaningful, lasting connections with your customers to drive higher performance and increase LCV.

Track 2 · Presentation

Why Owning Tuneable Infrastructure Matters

Tom MairsKumo Corp
Session details

Email delivery is too important to outsource blindly. This session makes the case for owning your sending infrastructure, exploring what that looks like in practice and why controlling your own stack is becoming a competitive advantage.

11:55 AM to 1:00 PM
All Attendees · Lunch

Lunch Break – Sponsored by SURBL

1:00 PM to 1:45 PM
Track 1 · Presentation

Predictable Emails Get Ignored: A Case Study in Creating Anticipation in the Inbox

Session details

Personalization gets a lot of attention in email marketing. But even a personalized email can become easy to ignore when the overall program starts to feel predictable.

In this session, Tilak Pujari takes a closer look at one brand that approaches email differently. Using real examples from its email program, we’ll explore how the brand varies its messaging, creates curiosity, uses entertainment alongside promotion, and gives subscribers a reason to pay attention to what arrives next.

Rather than another list of engagement tactics, this session is a practical case study in how email can create anticipation and brand recall, not just another click.

We’ll look at what the brand is doing differently, why it works, and what other email teams can learn from it when trying to keep subscribers interested over time.

Track 2 · Panel

No AI Law? You Still Have Rules

Moderator: Derek LackeyNewport Thomson
Bob SybydloEnverta Digital
Session details

You’re already using AI. Writing subject lines, scoring leads, personalizing at a scale no human could match. And most marketers are doing it with zero rules, betting that because Canada has no AI law, there’s nothing to worry about.

We think that’s a bad bet. Your consent, your unsubscribe, your sender ID, your duty to protect people’s data: none of it disappears because an LLM wrote the copy.

This panel hands you a simple AI Governance approach that does not need a lawyer, and it’s simpler than you’d think. A small Ontario NFP with the assistance of a small privacy consulting firm, built a plain-language AI governance policy on a handful of rules a 14-year-old could
follow, and did it before most Fortune 500 teams. If they can do it, your team can.

Join is for the real stories: the near-misses, the saves, the honest mistakes from marketers who’ve been there. Leave with a five-rule starting draft you can use Monday morning, and the name of the person who’s going to own it. Even if that person is you.

1:45 PM to 2:30 PM
Track 1 · Presentation

Building Business Without Doing Business Development

Andrew Z. BrownBridgemaker Referral Programs
Session details

This session explores how marketers and consultants can build stronger growth strategies and generate new revenue through proven referral-based approaches. Drawing on primary research from more than 600 B2B organizations across North America, along with 30+ years of business growth experience, attendees will learn why managed referral programs are one of the most effective and cost-efficient drivers of business development.

Participants will gain practical, research-backed strategies to systematically generate higher-quality referrals, increase deal size and conversion rates, shorten sales cycles, and reduce client acquisition costs. The session includes actionable takeaways that can be implemented immediately to accelerate revenue growth.

Track 2 · Presentation

Email Myth Busters

LB BlairSendWorks
Session details

Does file size actually hurt inbox placement? What about image-to-text ratio or HTTP links? Drawing on data from 300 million+ emails per month, this session puts popular email myths to the test with real numbers broken down by mailbox provider.

2:30 PM to 2:45 PM
All Attendees · Break

Afternoon Break – Sponsored by Kickbox

2:45 PM to 3:30 PM
Track 1 · Presentation

What Customers Say vs What They Buy: The Truth About Declarative Data

Clinton WilmottNamecheap / Spaceship
Session details

What happens when you simply ask customers what they plan to buy, then track what they actually do? This session breaks down the gap between stated intent and real revenue, and how declared data can become a scalable lifecycle signal.

Track 2 · Presentation

5 Ways to Skyrocket Email Engagement

Session details

Five under-the-radar tactics that are actually moving engagement right now, from email length testing and dark mode fixes, to transactional emails as growth engines, AI-assisted production, and smarter personalization. Real experiments, real results.

3:30 PM to 4:15 PM
Track 1 · Panel

Direct, Connected, Unshaken

Derek LackeyNewport Thomson
Session details

Join Tabish and Derek for a candid fireside chat exploring the evolving world of direct-to-consumer marketing. With Derek guiding the conversation, they’ll draw on practical experience to discuss how brands connect with customers across email and the broader marketing ecosystem.

This free-form discussion may explore customer acquisition and retention, personalization, first-party data, changing consumer expectations, channel integration, and the role email plays within the wider customer journey. Expect an informal, practical conversation shaped by real-world experiences, emerging challenges, and audience questions.

Track 2 · Presentation

Leveraging Internal Data to Understand and Improve Deliverability

Laura AtkinsWord to the Wise
Session details

Traditional monitoring tools aren’t keeping pace with today’s highly personalised inbox filters. The good news: most marketers already collect data that reveals reputation and delivery signals. This session shows you what to look for, what’s easy to collect, and how to act on it.

4:15 PM to 5:00 PM
All Attendees · Fireside Chat

CASL Update: A Conversation with the CRTC

Moderator: Matthew VernhoutEmail Industries
Session details

Join Steven Harroun of the CRTC and Matthew Vernhout for a timely update on Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) and its impact on email marketers.

The session will begin with brief industry and regulatory updates from the CRTC, followed by a fireside chat exploring CASL compliance, enforcement, and the questions facing email senders today. The conversation will conclude with an audience Q&A, providing an opportunity to hear directly from the CRTC on the issues that matter to Canada’s email community.

5:00 PM to 5:05 PM
All Attendees · Other

Closing Remarks

5:30 PM to 8:00 PM
All Attendees · Other

Evening Reception – Sponsored by SURBL

Session details

Location: The Bishop and Belcher – 175 Bloor St E, Toronto, ON M4W 3R8

OUR SPONSORS

Supported by the email community

Presenting Sponsor

Lead Sponsors

Supporting Sponsors

STAY CONNECTED

Join Canada’s email community.

Stay connected with the Canadian Email Summit and the people behind email marketing.

Get speaker announcements and Summit updates delivered to your inbox. We respect your privacy, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Subscribe to Summit emails

Submitting opens Cyberimpact in a new tab. A confirmation email will be sent to the address provided.