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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 all three co-founders.
Postscript’s advertising platform is SMS-only and Shopify-only. To Beller, that interprets to “greatest at 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 beneath. 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 a variety of what ecommerce manufacturers have felt this yr. We’ve seen progress 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 actually, 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 every other platforms. We don’t do electronic mail. We’re greatest at school for SMS on Shopify
Our platform is constructed for manufacturers to attach SMS to order and conversion knowledge. That will get fed into Postscript from Shopify, and it’s anonymized. Roughly 12,000 manufacturers of various sizes use Postscript. That’s not practically all Shopify’s buyer base, however it’s a wonderful snapshot.
This yr, we’ve seen inconsistencies. On the one hand, headwinds definitely appeared current. We’ve seen extra manufacturers exit of enterprise than in prior years. We additionally noticed aggregate growth decelerate. The previous few years we’ve had excessive annual progress charges. This yr’s progress is smaller. Many retailers have 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 pay attention to?
Beller: There are various compliance guidelines within the SMS trade. One is governmental regulation that creates authorized threat for manufacturers. On the U.S. federal stage, it’s by means of the Phone Shopper Safety Act or TCPA.
The opposite is service regulation — T-Cellular and Verizon — to impression deliverability. Carriers may shut a cellphone quantity off if a model breaks their guidelines. These corporations 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 corporations by no means texted anybody who didn’t explicitly choose in or had opted out. State rules have popped up over the previous few years, including new dangers. Florida is without doubt one of the leaders on this, together with Oklahoma.
A lot of the danger 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 rules have triggered a groundswell of lawsuits. We tackle 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 particular marketing campaign or product. These state-level rules in Florida don’t exist on the federal stage. 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 previous numbers to obtain texts they didn’t join or are within the quiet hours. These plaintiffs associate with regulation companies to certify it as a category motion. If profitable, they will run down everybody who acquired that textual content, enormously rising the penalty, which, once more, relies on each message and recipient.
Manufacturers have a number of prevention choices. Postscript received’t deploy messages through 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 propose to diversify?
Beller: It’s the early days for SMS, and we’re engaged on driving efficiency throughout the complete buyer journey. We deal with subscriber lifetime worth and record progress. There’s a lot alternative for my co-founders and me if we will differentiate our product from opponents. We might be devoted gamers.
Bandholz: The place can folks discover you?
Beller: Our website is Postscript.io. I’m on LinkedIn and @ringmybeller on X.
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