Interview with Steve Sachs, Chief Executive Officer, OneSpot

“CMOs need to look at the channels they are promoting content on holistically – and focus on audience interests – rather than focusing specific strategies for specific channels.”

On Marketing Technology

MTS: Tell us about your role and how you got here? What inspired you to be part of a content marketing personalization firm?
I’ve had a lot of experience throughout my career working at the intersection of digital media, content, and marketing, and joining OneSpot was an opportunity to deliver to people the very best content experience they want – and have come to expect – no matter who or where they are. There’s always been this excitement and passion for me, behind helping innovative companies reach audiences through marketing and content. However, the hardest problem with content is getting the right audiences to see it. OneSpot empowers businesses to create deeper engagement with customers and prospects by personalizing content experiences on an individualized basis, across the digital ecosystem.

MTS: How does OneSpot address the rapidly growing need for customer personalization?
OneSpot is the only platform purpose-built for one-to-one personalized content marketing, empowering brands to deepen relationships across all digital channels at scale while delivering a strong return on that personalization (ROP). OneSpot’s machine learning-powered content personalization platform automates delivery of content based on individuals’ interests, desires, behaviors, and engagement with specific pieces of content across digital channels (web, mobile web, email, paid digital media).  As a result, deeper content-driven relationships are built and drive more visitors to a brand’s content, they consume more content per visit, and the number of times they engage goes up.

MTS: How should CMOs leverage AI-assisted content marketing and technologies like OneSpot to drive meaningful business results?
CMOs need to look at the channels they are promoting content on holistically – and focus on audience interests – rather than focusing specific strategies for specific channels. We are the only cross-channel personalization platform purpose-built for content marketing. And what we do is solve the problem at the one-to-one level, no matter when a person and where a person interacts with a piece of our customer’s content. With the help of artificial intelligence, we are predicting what they’re interested in and what sequence of content they should see and then personalize what they see, in any channel.

Also Read: Interview with Mike Brown, CEO, FISION

MTS: With CMOs increasingly bringing content marketing in-house, how does OneSpot deliver success to its partners?
Even though more and more content marketing operations are in-house now, most CMOs lack a defined strategy for how they will quickly achieve and measure success. Through our holistic technology and consulting approach, OneSpot helps marketers gain visibility into all their digital content assets, optimize their existing content library and tech stack to drive KPIs such as content engagement brand lift, high-value actions, and greater operational efficiency. From technology assessments, training and development, customer journey and content mapping, and deep content analytics, we provide our partners with comprehensive services to further their own content programs.

MTS: What startups in MarTech ecosystem are you watching/keen on right now?
Customers say good things about BounceExchange and NewsCred, and I’m impressed with both of them.

MTS: How does OneSpot fit into companies’ current marketing stacks?
OneSpot is tech stack agnostic and seamlessly integrates with all CMSs, ESPs and MAPs with minimal effort, simplifying the implementation experience.

MTS: Could you tell us about standout results a customer saw once it started working with OneSpot?
Delta Faucet, a 60-year-old plumbing industry innovator, partnered with OneSpot to deliver an individually relevant content marketing experience to its audience across digital channels of more than 500,000 visitors a month, serving them 17.8 million personalized articles on the website.

Once website visitors were exposed to OneSpot OnSite recommendations, Delta Faucet tracked a 49% increase in content pageviews per user. Additionally, users who left the site and were retargeted by OneSpot ReAct consumed 4X more articles than the average site visitor. Beyond content engagement, OneSpot was able to show that users who consumed 3+ pieces of content were 4X more likely to have also clicked a call-to-action like “Where to Buy” on the website when compared with visitors who only consumed one piece of content.

MTS: How do you prepare for an Artificial Intelligence-centric world as a business leader?
I think the most important thing is creating trust of AI systems among our current customers and potential customers, as OneSpot’s easy-to-implement, proprietary Content Sequencing technology uses AI and natural language processing to automatically match specific content with individual interests, desires and behaviors. The key to this is educating companies on AI and the benefits it can provide to them, as well as showing them what it’s done in the past. AI is here to stay – but trust is a must for it to continue to move forward in businesses.

This Is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.
Customer-centric

MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
Waze, Evernote, Citymapper, Runkeeper

MTS: What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?
An A priority is anything that will save you time later.  Always do A priorities first.

MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?
Way too much information on technology, media, and marketing

MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
You are what you measure

MTS: Thank you Steve! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.