Text message marketing startup Postscript raises $35m to fuel the future of customer communication via SMS

Postscript, the text message marketing platform for Shopify stores, announced a new round of Series B funding of $35 million led by Greylock, with participation from YC Continuity Fund, OpenView, and others. In addition, Postscript welcomes Sarah Guo and Mike Duboe, Partners at Greylock, to the Board.

Mike Duboe, General Partner, Greylock: "The intense community love we've observed toward Postscript over the years is incredibly rare to see. Across merchants, integration partners, agencies, and key players in the commerce ecosystem, Postscript has quickly become a household name. This community fervor is a testament to Postscript's unparalleled ROI, deep empathy for merchants, and most importantly, strong foundation to solidify SMS as the most valuable channel in commerce. This team is beloved and for good reason, they're great humans with a big vision, strong product intuition, and unwavering customer obsession."

Postscript is trusted by over 3,500 ecommerce brands, from small boutique businesses to digitally-native brands like Olipop, Hydrant, and Dr. Squatch, to staple retailers like Brooklinen, Fanjoy, and Native. Brands on Postscript sent hundreds of millions of text messages in 2020, generating approximately $500 million in attributed revenue. The company has achieved a 5-star rating from over 1,100 reviews in the Shopify App Store, was featured as a 2021 Winter Leader on G2, and is a member of the exclusive Shopify Plus Certified App Program.

Adam Turner, CEO, Postscript: "A fundamental belief at Postscript is that ecommerce engagement and interaction is going to happen more and more in mobile native channels like SMS. We've seen this shift already take place in notable markets like WeChat in China and WhatsApp in India. Consumers crave seamless digital experiences and in the future will prefer messaging channels over mobile web. SMS is emerging as a new category of customer communication with unprecedented engagement, ROI, and growth in brand trust."

Postscript's vision is to eliminate one-size-fits-all, spammy SMS strategies and instead help brands treat SMS as a personalized, respectful way to communicate and engage with customers. Postscript firmly believes that consumers want to receive more than marketing via SMS, and is focused on building a Conversational Commerce platform that delivers many different ecommerce interactions seamlessly over SMS.

Ecommerce has rapidly grown over the past year, and it's clear that consumers prefer to communicate with brands over SMS: SMS boasts a 98% open rate and customers are quickly embracing this new form of retail communication. Postscript will use this new round of funding to further develop products to aid in that vision. Specifically, the two areas that the company will focus on are:

• Rapid product growth: immediate investment into new first-to-market features and improvements that continue maximizing SMS as a customer lifecycle channel and delivering seamless ecommerce experiences over SMS.
• Team growth to support additional talent in customer success, engineering, and go-to-market.

Drew Cowan, Senior Manager, Lifecycle Marketing, Dr. Squatch: "We rely on Postscript for all parts of the shopper's journey, from cart abandonment to customer education, to cross-sell and upsell opportunities..I have no doubt our profits through text message marketing will grow over the next year and beyond, especially given Postscript's impressive product roadmap."

Since launching in early 2019, Postscript has seen steady growth in customer count (400% YoY) and text message volume. The Postscript team size grew 230% in 2020 to support this rapid pace. Postscript was originally backed by Y Combinator and announced a Seed Round in December of 2019.

www.postscript.io