Forward-thinking brands have long known that customer consent is a crucial component in effective marketing. This has come into greater focus recently with stricter regulation around the proper use of customer data, and the long expected death of third-party cookies finally coming to pass.
But how do you actually secure that consent, at scale, without becoming intrusive? Zohar Hod, a serial entrepreneur with experience in fintech, has crossed over to the martech world to answer that question.
His latest venture, One Creation, is a low-code customer preference solution. By seamlessly integrating into any part of the digital consumer journey, their solution can confirm or acquire new data, enrich existing customer profiles, and allow for personalisation that doesn’t veer from the attentive into ‘the creepy’ (in Zohar’s words).
In the latest edition of Martalks, I talk to Zohar about the importance of zero-party data, about how One Creation integrates with other solutions in the modern composable marketing stack, and his key learnings from founding five startups over the course of his fascinating career.
You can listen to the podcast in full, or read a transcript of the key moments below.
Consent-based marketing creates value for the customer, and builds trust
DR: I’m in sales. The fatal thing to say to any customer is ‘trust me’. But if you’re actually giving me something in exchange for trusting you, I’m a little more apt to listen.
ZH: You’re right. If you put up, ‘trust me’, it’s not a good marketing strategy. Trust is built. It’s not built in one transaction. It’s built in interactions throughout your customer experience that are based on transparency. What are we doing with your particular preference here, how are we rewarding the customer for being a little bit more transparent.
You have a more equal relationship between the customer and the brand. Today, it can be a bit creepy, where we feel we’re being tracked without us knowing. That creates an untrusting relationship between the brand and the customer, where we’re pulling towards a different type of business model, which will basically create a lot more ability to personalise the customer experience. That will create more value than you can with just tracking them or tricking them, let’s say into, into giving you consent to do something with their data.
Regularly reaffirming customer data leads to better outcomes for brands
DR: One Creation neatly addresses the problem of data degradation, which most marketers are very familiar with. You want your data fresh because then it’s relevant. The older it gets, the more questionable it gets. By having a mechanism to contact a customer and get their consent once again, we know whether these attributes we’ve assigned are still correct.
ZH: Very good observation, Darrell. It’s not just about how fresh the data is. It’s about being able to go back to people rather than having a finite preference selection at one time in the customer experience.
As you’re onboarding the customer, and they’re moving from unknown to known and you’re trying to get into the terms and conditions, some brands bury certain preferences somewhere in that document. Rather than that, they could say ‘Hey, we’re gonna let you create a dynamic preference wallet for yourself, and you don’t have to answer all of these questions now, every time.’
You can go back to them and ask, ‘would you like this flavor of pet food or that flavor of pet food?’ We can repay the customer for the convenience of answering that and also let them know that data will only last until the end of that campaign. That way you can start creating personas that aren’t based on Russian roulette.
Key lessons on raising capital as a martech founder
DR: You’ve had to go out and raise funds as most startups do. What are your thoughts and or lessons that you’ve learned thus far?
ZH: It’s been very challenging in the last four years and I still see it being a challenge in 2024. It will be tough for early-stage companies to gain enough money to last for enough time to exercise what they set out to do. It’s been challenging to get large sums of money, although I’ve seen successful companies do that.
One lesson I’d share is don’t ask for money too early. Lesson number two is do a lot of research on which VCs or angels are actually experts in your field. They show that through their portfolio, and in their activity.
There’s always people willing to talk to you so they can learn something new about the market, but not have any intent to invest in you. Do your research, and have a simple pitch. What problem are you solving, and how do you plan to take it to market?
Empower your people to drive growth
DR: How would you define your culture at One Creation?
ZH: In one word? Empowerment.
When you’re a small team, you need to know that everyone is doing everything they can. That’s not just what they were supposed to do on a daily basis, but everything in order to make sure that the team succeeds and that the product that they deliver is great.
You’re empowered to think differently. Bring something up whenever you want, as fast as you can, not waiting for anything. It doesn’t have to be done in a meeting or anything like that, you can have new ideas all the time, and you’re empowered to execute it in your own way.
This is my second company with my co-founder, Yang Cheung. She can do whatever she wants. She’s the Head of Product. She understands the long-term vision, she knows which priority comes first, and I try not to argue with that.
About The Rosenstein Group
The Martalks Podcast publishes fresh content monthly about martech, commercial strategy, entrepreneurship and startup scaling.
Our earlier piece, on scaling a startup during an investment downturn, gives other examples of startup founders whose leadership approach has been fundamental to the company’s success.
The Martalks Podcast is published by The Rosenstein Group, the leader in martech executive search. For over 20 years, we’ve been recruiting heads of sales, channel sales leaders, and other members of the commercial team, across martech, supply chain, ecommerce, sales enablement and systems integration.
Visit RosensteinGroup.com to find out more.
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