Postscript, an SMS advertising and marketing firm, raised $65 million in Sequence C funding and can usher in additional methods for manufacturers to personally interact with their prospects.
We beforehand checked in on the corporate final yr when it took in $35 million in Sequence B funding to proceed serving to Shopify shops keep in contact with prospects through SMS. We additionally profiled Postscript when it raised $4.5 million in 2019.
In 2021, the corporate had 61 staff with over 3,500 prospects. Right now, that has grown to 230 staff and its model base on Shopify has greater than doubled to over 8,500 manufacturers, firm CEO Adam Turner informed me. It now contains manufacturers like Brooklinen, Homesick, Native, Spikeball and Kopari. As well as, the corporate greater than doubled its income.
On common, prospects see a 25-time return on their funding utilizing Postscript, Turner mentioned. One of many greatest days the corporate appears at for traction is Black Friday, however this yr, Memorial Day turned the corporate’s largest SMS sending day. He says between 30 and 40 million texts have been despatched in comparison with a median of between 5 and 10 million.
He went on to elucidate that whereas retailers are anxious a couple of recession, Postscript’s return, basically $25 for each $1 they put in, permits them to lean into the SMS technique. For instance, retailers who’ve been utilizing this method for the previous 1 or 2 years are driving 40% of the gross merchandise quantity for his or her shops, he added.
“Retailers are having success, whilst Fb promoting prices enhance, and are seeing buyer lifetime values keep excessive,” he added. “They’re additionally extra refined and are utilizing SMS as a two-way platform to answer to prospects to create a purchase order. That creates extra worth to the top consumer as a result of it’s not only a billboard, however an interplay channel the place you’ll be able to reply and get help on your buy.”
The corporate went after new funding after seeing that e-commerce gross sales through SMS in america account for 16% in comparison with gross sales through communication methods, like WeChat, the place it’s 26%, Turner mentioned. “We wish to carry the U.S. into the fashionable instances of e-commerce and retail by serving to retailers develop relationships and different channels exterior their web sites,” he added.
Postscript will proceed working with Shopify retailers, however the brand new funding additionally offers it a chance to work with a few of its finest prospects on different platforms. Turner additionally intends to deploy the funding throughout gross sales and advertising and marketing, go-to-market and product engineering.
There’s nonetheless a problem to supply personalised experiences to prospects, however Turner believes that Postscript is creating the absolute best method for utilizing SMS advertising and marketing and can proceed to construct extra options with these prospects in thoughts.
Dick Costolo’s enterprise agency 01 Advisors led the brand new funding that included participation from Twilio Ventures, Increasing Capital and m]x[v Capital and existing investors at Greylock, Accomplice, Elephant and OpenView. In total, Postscript raised over $100 million in venture-backed funding since the company was founded in 2019.
“In the same way texting changed the way people communicate with each other, Postscript transformed how brands communicate with their customers,” said Costolo in a written statement. “We invest in companies with strong product market fit that are focused on further innovation and scale to bring them into their next phase of growth, and Postscript is the epitome of this profile. They are the future of commerce.”
