Postscript is an SMS advertising supplier for Shopify manufacturers. The corporate launched in 2018 and has since raised a whopping $106.2 million throughout 4 funding rounds, per Crunchbase. Alex Beller is Postscript’s president and one in every of three co-founders.
Postscript’s advertising platform is SMS-only and Shopify-only. To Beller, that interprets to “finest in school” efficiency.
In our current dialog, he and I mentioned the corporate’s focus, regulatory compliance, and extra. Your complete audio of our dialogue is embedded under. The transcript is edited for size and readability.
Eric Bandholz: How was 2023 for Postscript?
Alex Beller: Postscript’s enterprise is a mirrored image of the Shopify ecosystem. We solely work with manufacturers constructed on Shopify, so we’ve felt loads of what ecommerce manufacturers have felt this yr. We’ve seen development by way of manufacturers adopting Postscript. It looks like 2023 is the yr we carved out our area of interest available in the market. It’s been difficult, however truthfully, as I mirror with my co-founders, yearly has been difficult. That half doesn’t change.
We’re an SMS supplier for manufacturers constructed on Shopify. We don’t work with another platforms. We don’t do e mail. We’re finest in school for SMS on Shopify
Our platform is constructed for manufacturers to attach SMS to order and conversion information. That will get fed into Postscript from Shopify, and it’s anonymized. Roughly 12,000 manufacturers of various sizes use Postscript. That’s not almost all Shopify’s buyer base, however it’s a superb snapshot.
This yr, we’ve seen inconsistencies. On the one hand, headwinds actually appeared current. We’ve seen extra manufacturers exit of enterprise than in prior years. We additionally noticed mixture development decelerate. The previous few years we’ve had excessive annual development charges. This yr’s development is smaller. Many retailers had been nearer to flat. Nonetheless, ecommerce didn’t fall off a cliff. It was a little bit of a retrenching.
Bandholz: In 2021, Florida handed a sweeping SMS compliance invoice. What are the legalities retailers ought to concentrate on?
Beller: There are various compliance guidelines within the SMS business. One is governmental regulation that creates authorized threat for manufacturers. On the U.S. federal degree, it’s via the Phone Client Safety Act or TCPA.
The opposite is service regulation — T-Cellular and Verizon — to impression deliverability. Carriers would possibly shut a telephone quantity off if a model breaks their guidelines. These firms are protecting over their airwaves and rigid when coping with an attraction from a small to medium-sized enterprise.
Then there’s the authorized regulation. Traditionally, TCPA ensured firms by no means texted anybody who didn’t explicitly decide in or had opted out. State laws have popped up over the previous few years, including new dangers. Florida is likely one of the leaders on this, together with Oklahoma.
A lot of the chance includes sending the messages and a better threshold for opt-ins. Our method is to improve our backend compliance so manufacturers don’t have to fret as a lot.
Sadly, the state laws have triggered a groundswell of lawsuits. We handle this in our product and have an in-house authorized effort to assist manufacturers in the event that they want it.
Bandholz: Discuss extra concerning the dangers to retailers.
Beller: Florida has longer quiet hours for subscribers within the state — from 8:00 p.m. to eight a.m. There’s additionally a restrict of three messages inside 24 hours for a selected marketing campaign or product. These state-level laws in Florida don’t exist on the federal degree. They apply to any model with operations in Florida. The penalties are significant — $500 to $1,500 per message per subscriber.
Sadly, there are plaintiffs who purchase deactivated and outdated numbers to obtain texts they didn’t join or are within the quiet hours. These plaintiffs companion with regulation companies to certify it as a category motion. If profitable, they will run down everybody who acquired that textual content, tremendously growing the penalty, which, once more, relies on each message and recipient.
Manufacturers have a number of prevention choices. Postscript gained’t deploy messages throughout the quiet interval in Florida or elsewhere. We additionally advocate that manufacturers undertake phrases of service that embrace a category motion waiver, whereby subscribers agree to not take part. That will restrict legal responsibility to a single subscriber, the plaintiff, at $500 to $1,500.
Bandholz: Postscript is SMS solely. Do you intend to diversify?
Beller: It’s the early days for SMS, and we’re engaged on driving efficiency throughout all the buyer journey. We deal with subscriber lifetime worth and record development. There’s a lot alternative for my co-founders and me if we are able to differentiate our product from opponents. We may be devoted gamers.
Bandholz: The place can individuals discover you?
Beller: Our website is Postscript.io. I’m on LinkedIn and @ringmybeller on X.
