Postscript has raised a magnificent $4.5 Million to push SMS connectivity between Shopify shops and consumers in a funding round led by Accomplice Tech Crunch reports. Postscript a feature that hopes to become the Mailchimp for SMS has been built to help ecommerce businesses connect with its consumers but is currently limited to Shopify. Shop owners that use the app can converse with buyers, choose to run marketing campaigns, divide their audiences up based on previous buying specifics and keep track of useful analytics. It’s all done rather transparently due to GDPR and tight regulations surrounding SMS ensuring customers are given the option to opt-in. Unlike email, where customers usually need to ‘unsubscribe’ to avoid receiving mounds of Spam the opt-in approach avoids this entirely.
“User behavior is all SMS now and e-commerce traffic and web traffic, in general, are so heavily mobile.”
– Alex Beller, President, Postscript, via Tech Crunch
Shopify is a major contributor to ecommerce globally. This Black Friday there has been over $900+ million made in total sales and a 48% growth of UK consumers buying from Shopify stores. 69% of the overall sales were made on mobile devices, showing just how impactful SMS connectivity could be for the future of consumerism. Considering the desirability of easy communication I’m sure it won’t be long before more get involved. DPD is one of the few already using SMS to send updates on delivery time slots and I love it when I receive a quick text notification or update and often find it much easier than sifting through my emails. Could SMS communication be something that online marketplaces consider using in the future to make communication with customers easier for merchants?
The price to use Postscript is dependant on the number of messages a user requires but can range from anywhere between $50 for up to 1,500 messages and $2000 for up to 83,000 messages with an Enterprise Custom Solutions service if needed.
