Building Real Customer Relationships
Join Jess and Mike as they engage in a dynamic conversation about creative marketing in both B2B and eCommerce, the significance of understanding consumer behavior, and the indispensable value of customer feedback. Get inspired by Mike's strategies for overcoming marketing challenges and the importance of adopting a stoic mindset for success.
(upbeat music)
- My name is Jess Servion,
and I'm super excited to bring you my new podcast,
The Juice With Jess.
This podcast is gonna be about everything
in your customer's journey.
We're talking acquisition, awareness,
making that purchase, retaining that customer,
bringing them back around, and everything in between.
This is gonna be all about delivering dope brand experiences
and talking to some really amazing people
who are in the customer experience space,
marketing space, and everything in between.
(upbeat music)
Welcome back to another episode of The Juice With Me, Jess.
This week, I am in Scottsdale, Arizona,
with my homey, Mike Mannheimer.
- That's right.
- CMO of Postscript.
I'm super excited about this episode
because we are gonna nerd out,
not only about SMS marketing,
but about marketing and everything else that comes up.
- Who knows what we're gonna talk about.
- We might talk about fly by Jing a lot,
'cause he's wearing a fly by Jing shirt.
- Yes.
- Mike, tell the homies who you are, man.
- Yeah, my name's Mike.
I'm the CMO of Postscript.
Been at Postscript for three years,
spent my entire career in B2B software.
- Yeah.
- So that's the only thing I know how to do
outside of that, totally useless.
So I hope that B2B software continues on.
Been in a bunch of different settings,
done healthcare, software, done enterprise software,
done prosumer, sort of like email productivity stuff.
And now I'm in e-commerce and I can say,
e-commerce is the most fun by far.
- Yeah, I absolutely agree with you.
I mean, I think it's an interesting pathway,
'cause we actually have a really similar pathway.
Like I come from B2B.
- Yeah, you came from B2B's ass too.
- Exactly, I came from B2B healthcare,
cyber security, don't ask.
That was a really short stint in my life.
It was really weird.
- I can travel.
It was really fucking weird, you guys.
And travel, but I agree with you,
e-commerce is really fun.
How did you find your way into e-commerce?
Like how did, 'cause yeah, tell me about the transition
into e-commerce. - Yeah, this is a funny one.
- I love funny.
- When I worked at a B2B software company,
I worked in the same building as Colin,
who's one of the co-founders of PostScript.
We both were in B2B software businesses.
And we met each other, writing the elevators in the building.
It was kind of like, we just were like,
you seem cool, we should hang out sort of thing.
Literally made friends that way.
And we would get coffee and just chat it up.
And then eventually lost touch and see Colin around.
And he shot me a LinkedIn note and was like,
"Hey, we're starting a company.
"Where I'm at YC, I'm starting a software company
"with my brother and a friend.
"Like, we should talk about it."
And if Colin was telling the story,
he'll be like, "Make sure to include
"that I just totally blew him off
"and didn't respond to his message,
"which I'm ashamed of now."
- Now luck. - But eventually he was like,
"Hey, do you wanna get coffee or something?
"Learn about PostScript."
And I did, I did not know anything about e-commerce whatsoever.
I just knew that a guy that I was friends with
started a new company in the text message space
and started pursuing an opportunity with them
and learning it all from scratch.
So it was totally relationship-based.
It wasn't like I had in my head,
I eventually wanna be in ECOM specifically.
I wasn't closed off to it,
but it was mostly because I knew Colin
and he was doing his own thing.
And so eventually joined PostScript
after kind of like building the relationship
over the course of like a year or two.
And the rest is history.
I jumped in and absorbed as much of the space
as I possibly could, just like listened to all the podcasts,
read all the blogs, just listened to a bunch of customer calls,
jumped on a bunch of customer calls.
And that's kind of how I got my foundation.
But I'm a marketer, so marketing is such a big part of ECOM.
We love marketing.
There's patterns there, right?
So it wasn't totally foreign to me
when I was starting to work with e-commerce merchants.
Yeah, I absolutely agree with you.
I think that in marketing, whether it's B2B, D2C,
you're literally marketing to a customer journey.
And it doesn't matter, I mean, whatever.
People are gonna shoot me for the same.
But it honestly doesn't really matter
because your consumer behavior,
it's not necessarily all the same,
but you're touching every touch point
of that consumer's behavior, right?
And it's just different.
It's just different ways of marketing to it.
And again, this is why customer experience,
brand experience isn't just about supporting your customer.
It's actually your touch points of your customer
and understanding behavior.
So from B2B perspective, you're like,
okay, well, I wanna sell you the software.
I have to build this relationship with you.
I have to show you the use case.
I have to sling it to you in like a fun way.
And the same thing applies to e-commerce, right?
You wanna buy the sauce, we're stuck on sauce.
He's wearing a fly-by-jing shirt.
So we're really stuck on the sauce right now.
But like fly-by-jing as an example,
as an e-commerce company, I'm buying my hot sauce, right?
My chili oil sauce, but I'm buying that sauce
because it's being slanged to me
in a really dope brand experience, right?
Yeah, ultimately, I think like,
if you really boil it down, like we're all in the business
of getting people to want to have a relationship
with our brands that we represent.
Everything we do is either convincing them that they should
or reconfirming their decision on why they have
a relationship at the same time.
Like it's like you're just using different tactics
and whatnot, but ultimately you're just trying to like
drive engagement with what you're doing
and building and reaffirming the relationship along the way.
It's not rocket science, right?
Like I think people are always like,
oh, like how'd you make the transition
from selling enterprise software or healthcare software
or whatever, it's like, look, this is all people
who have problems.
I think the product that I sell helps them
solve their problem.
Yeah.
And so I'm excited to talk to them about that.
That's like the basis for all of us.
Yeah.
Anything that you do.
It's sales, marketing, even fucking supply chain, man.
Like you are building a product to sell to the person
and it's like which touch pointer you want for that.
100%.
I think people get, you know, I'm not one of those people
who wants to make everything super complicated.
I think like ultimately it's people selling to other people
building good relationships.
That's what is the foundation of everything,
whether you're trying to build a relationship
with the consumer or I'm trying to build a relationship
with a merchant.
It's all the foundations are the same.
Yeah.
Well, man, there's three different questions
that are three different directions.
So I want to start in this one though.
I actually think PostScript does a really good job
at like relationship building with the merchant.
I mean, granted like we're here in this room today
because we've become homies because I've become homies
of PostScript through my work at festivals
and then all my work in clients, right?
But I really think that like PostScript has a really
like great relationship building tactic
from like whether that's marketing, customer success,
sales, like every touch point that you guys have
within the company is all about making it easy
for the merchant to slang SMS marketing,
making it like more digestible.
Yeah.
Like I think people are really afraid of SMS marketing, right?
Well, we can backtrack to other episodes.
We're like people will like come for my throat
if I say SMS is my favorite.
Hey, it works.
Hey, people, it works.
Yeah, it works, right?
But we'll go back there.
But I think, but I just, that's one comment that I want to say
is like, you know, you guys have a really,
you do do a really good job with building relationships
with merchants.
Yeah.
Setting out on building PostScript was that in the intention.
Yeah.
PostScript came from Y Combinator.
Paul Graham was the founder of Y Combinator
and he has this saying that's baked into the advice
he gives to companies, which is in the early days,
he says do things that don't scale,
like scale the unscalable thing.
And because of that, like the first thousand accounts
on PostScript got sold by Alex Beller personally.
Shout out to Beller, man.
The first 10,000 tickets that came in through, you know,
our intercom chat widget would go to the co-founder's cell phones
24 hours a day.
And most people probably don't know this,
but if you were like an early PostScript customer
and you were getting help from our chat support,
that was like Adam, our CEO, who was like,
let me go check, like literally in the code base.
And I think a lot of people are like,
oh, but that's not a scalable process.
Right.
And for us, I think we think like,
that's kind of the point.
We're willing to do things that other people won't do
because it doesn't like match the SOP or,
well, that's going to be really difficult
to like maintain the quality over a long period of time.
So we shouldn't even do that stuff.
We think differently.
We try to say, how can we add value to merchants
at every possible turn and do the right thing for them,
regardless of if it's hard?
And I think that's baked into the culture of the company.
Yeah.
How many employees are you now?
A little over 250, maybe like 275 now.
Whoa, that's crazy.
Yeah, so it's been--
Dang, you're like big dog now.
Yeah, fat.
Big, big team.
It's been fun.
It's been fun.
I think people, I think this reflects poorly on me actually,
which is people think post scripts a lot smaller
than we really are.
Yeah.
But yeah, the company is--
I've watched it scale, so I don't think so.
We're over 250 people.
We have 13,000 customers on Shopify now.
Wow.
We work with people who are just getting started,
doing their first sales, all the way
to nine figure brands on Shopify, like Dr. Squatch.
Scott was on the last episode or on the podcast before.
Ruggable, Ridge, True Classic, et cetera.
So we really serve the entire scope of the Shopify community.
And yeah, it's been a really, really fun ride.
Our main objective, like the reason we wake up every day
and go to work is because we're trying to help merchants
make as much money as they can with SMS.
Like that's all we think about.
And I think also that focus helps us build really strong
relationships with our customers, too.
It's like we're not trying to upsell them all of our other widgets
or like bolting on different products
or trying to serve ourselves.
Really what we're trying to do is to figure out
how to make their results with SMS go up into the right constantly.
I think merchants can feel that when they're in a relationship
with PostScript.
I mean, absolutely.
I mean, granted, this is like the Gassie up PostScript episode
and rock it a lie, right?
But like--
So everyone loves that.
I know.
But like, I mean, truly, I've been a client of PostScript.
Like I said, we have a friendship.
I'm friends with all of y'all because of the relationships
we've built.
My old CSM, shout out to Joe Vella.
Yes.
Sweet guy.
No longer a PostScript, but he's doing some baddie things.
And then also Paul Shelfton.
Yes.
Paul Rocks.
Yeah.
Paul's awesome.
He's my new Joe, right?
But my point is of bringing this up, right?
Is that, again, I think PostScript does a really good job
of building relationships.
But also, I think what I--
and why I wanted you on the podcast
is because from an experience point of view,
from a B2B point of view, is I see this constantly
in B2B companies, right?
No matter what we're talking about, SMS marketing.
I don't care if it's an email tool, whatever it is, right?
What I see across the line is people
will bring people into the funnel.
They'll become a customer.
You'll get a CSM.
But then what happens is that CSM
is more about the relationship building
and giving you the quarterly reviews, right?
But not actually being side by side with you
on a strategic level.
And I think that that's really what PostScript does
very well in the relationship building,
especially in that customer success side of experience,
is becoming very strategic thinkers with the merchants as well,
right?
So honestly, I learned a lot about SMS marketing
from implementing the SMS marketing program with PostScript
because of the tactics that you guys
use with your CSMs, right?
Like Joe taught me about segmenting
or like what to do in campaigns, right?
Like they're working alongside you.
So like that's my point.
I know this is like a little of gassing up,
but the point, the landing the plane,
is that the customer success side of a B2B company
or even a D2C is all about relationship building,
but it's also about how do you build that loyalty?
Yeah, we don't ever lose sight of the fact
that like it's not about us,
it's about what our customers want to achieve.
And SMS is just one of a number of tools they have
in their toolkit to be able to achieve the outcomes
that they're searching for.
And we make a point of trying not to lose sight of that ever
because like you said, if we're just doing like our QBRs
and we're like, here's your usage,
we were like, what am I looking at?
Why is this pattern to me?
We want to have a discussion that's like,
oh, you have these drops coming up
like you're doing these new releases,
this new products coming out,
you're trying to drive subscription from X to Y.
We want to know that.
So then we could say, how can SMS help you do that thing?
Right.
That reframing changes the nature of the discussion.
Yeah.
Because people don't feel like we're just trying
to get them to do what we want.
We get to talk to them about how we can be additive
to their strategy and help them achieve the thing
that they've signed up to do.
Like ultimately, like the best sign of success for us is like,
if someone buys PostScript, implements it,
and then it goes so good that they like get promoted.
Like that's like the stuff we are like,
we want to deliver a level of service and strategy
that has those types of results.
Yeah.
And I think, again, that shows up in the way
that people perceive their relationship with us.
You know, everyone throws around like,
I don't want just a vendor, I want a partner, right?
Everyone says that.
Yeah, everybody.
Everyone says that.
But I think we do our best to try to deliver that
as much as we possibly can.
Yeah.
I think you do do a good job at it.
Switching gears completely from like talking about PostScript.
I actually want to like talk to you about marketing specifically.
Yeah.
I actually want to get your hot take on what do you think
about content marketing in B2B?
The way I think about content marketing in B2B is--
well, one, I think it's-- go ahead.
The reason I'm asking you this is because I actually
think companies like PostScript do do a really good job
at putting out webinars, content, and really quality,
not just being like, here's my email sequence.
Yeah.
I think so the nature of content marketing in B2B
go back way back to the first ever HubSpot model,
which is like, make yourself useful.
I think that principle still applies.
I think that where brands get messed up with content marketing
is they're like trying to be like,
how many leads came from this blog--
Absolutely.
Yeah.
That is the wrong way to think about it.
That's not going to result in you creating the best content
you could create that actually helps the customer.
The way I talk to the team about it is--
I'm probably stealing this from someone,
but I've always heard this metaphor of there's fuel functions,
there's engine functions, engines like the distribution,
paid ads, channels, and then the fuel is like,
what goes into the channels?
And you have to-- it's like a symbiotic relationship, right?
You're not going to have high performing ads.
You're not going to scale paid social.
If the thing that you're putting in there
isn't useful and entertaining--
Yeah.
And vice versa, if you make really great content
but you don't distribute it, nothing's going to happen.
Right.
And so I think figuring out how those things play together
is really important.
A lot of people kill their content
because they're just focused on the distribution part
and they can't figure out why it works,
then they blame the content and they tear down their teams.
Yeah.
I think it's really, really important
that you listen to customers, figure out
what their problem set is, use your content
to solve those problems and then put that into the distribution
channels kind of separately.
Yeah.
Again, everyone's trying to figure out
how to put a dollar amount on every single thing that they did.
All the time.
And that just kills the creativity.
It kills the nature of good content,
which is going back to the relationship thing.
We're trying to solve people's problems here.
The thing that we write about or do a webinar about or whatever
should actually be a customer problem that we hear.
Yeah.
And that's where I think content teams get kind of messed up.
We always say the answer to the marketing problems
are like in the field, meaning like they're
in the customers' minds, they're in the things
that customers say.
Yeah.
So when people are like, what should
be the topic of the webinar?
What should be the blog post that we're going to write next?
What should go into this landing page
that we're going to pump out on social?
The answers to what should be in those things,
what should be created is like in gong,
in your customer support responses.
Feedback loop, dog.
Yeah.
It's on the sales calls.
You hear what people are having trouble with,
what they want to learn about.
And then if you just use that as your compass
to go create that stuff, then content will work phenomenally
well.
If you're just trying to optimize the words on a blog post
for an SEO ranking or gating every little bit of it
to try to get as many emails as you can,
it's the only thing that you judge the success of the content
on, it's not going to work.
Yeah.
Because everyone's going to be like,
this is totally watered down corporate bullshit.
So I think that the more measurement that you apply
to B2B content, the worse the B2B content is.
Absolutely.
What I think is really interesting,
coming from that merchant perspective,
working in the creator economy, right?
It's very focused on social, but really good content,
really good content creation, not just in videos and TikToks
and all this other stuff, right?
But also in emails and SMS, right?
And then when I flip that and look at it on the B2B side,
I think it's really fucking boring.
I think a lot of the things that I'm seeing in the space,
I will say that there are exceptions to that rule.
Obviously, I brought it up because I think you guys do
do content very well.
You actually invest in content.
But I've also seen some other B2B companies doing well
as well.
But I think that don't think it's just basing
and off of the metrics that you're getting.
I think you need to look at content marketing
as a brand awareness play.
Yeah, I think one of the major differences between Ecom
and B2B is B2B doesn't traditionally
have a very strong creative focus.
Right.
So like so much of the conversation in direct to consumers
about performance creative and like the stuff that drives
direct sales and its relationship to the creative itself
is like inextricable.
Like it's all about like what's the hooks?
What are we testing?
It's all creative concepts in B2B.
That's just like not the heritage of it.
Like traditionally, you didn't have to have strong creative
to break through the noise in B2B.
You know, like if you think back like the first B2B,
really successful B2B software companies were like Microsoft.
Right.
You know, it's like Microsoft up until very recently
didn't have any real focus on creative as an example.
So like it's just not the main, it hasn't been a necessity
for a lot of B2B companies.
Now I think that's changing.
Yeah.
Right.
Like TikTok and all of the different channels
that are commanding people's attention
or changing people's preferences.
Everything's getting noisier.
And I think that brands have an opportunity to stand out
on creative angles, entertainment.
But it's a really high bar for people to jump over because,
you know, like at PostScript, we do our best.
We have a studios team, which is our creative team.
Shout out PostScript studios, they rock.
But that team is three people.
Yeah.
They have to do like all the creative for the entire company.
Yeah.
And that would be considered for our size,
like a big investment.
Right.
Whereas like, you know, a director
at the consumer company has like people in house,
probably multiple agencies, like the team of people
who are working on creative stuff is huge.
Yeah.
But you know, PostScript is a 275 person company.
Our content team is two folks.
And then our studios and design team is three.
Yeah.
And that's it.
And it's like they, it's just not been an area
of major investment, I don't think.
Yeah.
For B2B companies.
But, you know, we hope that we can use it as a advantage
to stand out.
I think it's a leverage.
I think it's a leverage.
Yeah.
Or like, not just PostScript, like any B2B company
to flip the script and not be so boring.
Right.
I think you're absolutely right.
Like the demands of a consumer have changed so much
in like recent years, especially with like TikTok coming on
and Instagram reels and YouTube and all these places.
Right.
Like, and I know, I know we look at these, you traditionally
look at those channels as like, OK, that's very e-commerce heavy.
Or that's very, you know, I'm selling a product.
But I think that it's also changing the psychology
of a consumer though.
Right.
Yeah.
So, and I think you can still apply those principles
into a B2B company because you're looking
at a consumer's behavior.
And by doing something that's maybe like aesthetically pleasing
or like a fun like email sequence that isn't just like white
screen, some words, right?
Maybe adding a gift to it.
I don't know what it is, right?
Or investing in like, you host an event
and you're making a short out of it.
Like that is like, it's a different lever
to pull to make you stand out and to create brand awareness
from a B2B perspective.
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Happy SMS marketing.
- Even in B2B, something as simple as just speaking plainly
is differentiating.
So you know, everyone goes to the B2B websites
and they're like, what does this brand do?
And it's like, we optimized the lifecycle,
generative AI journeys for, you know, it's like,
what do you really do?
- Yeah, really, and nobody knows.
- Yeah, like it stood out for us.
So when we rebranded a couple of years ago,
the headline on our website just said, make more sales.
And we were like, people were like, wow, that's bold.
And I'm like, why is that outside of the norm?
Like literally what we do is we help people
make more sales with TechSnoisseur.
That's it.
Why is it novel for a B2B company to like say that
in their H1?
But like, that's how far behind B2B companies are
in the way that they communicate with their customers
and with the market.
And it's, it doesn't really make any sense.
It's just like people are stuck in their ways.
And you know, we try to do the best job we can.
We're not perfect at it.
- So stuck in this.
- But like, so I wish that if people took the time
to sit down and like, if you write a landing page,
a B2B landing page, sit down, read it out loud.
Would you ever say that?
Would you ever talk like that?
When you're at a conference, we're a shop talk, right?
People are asking me about PostScript all the time.
I don't say B2B mumbo jumbo to them.
I'm like, tell them the plainly, the truth.
- Yeah.
- And people just for whatever reason in B2B,
like they have to try to make it like so formal
and academic and it's like,
that doesn't drive engagement with people
because that's just not how we talk.
- There's so many competitors just in the SMS space, right?
But think about it.
Like don't even think about the SMS space.
Think about subscription space.
- Oh yeah.
- Oh yeah.
- Scrapion space is fine.
- Super competitive.
- Holy moly, right?
- Very crowded.
- So it's like, and I'm not saying
in like just marketing per se, you have to like,
you have to do things differently.
But I do actually, I do think you like,
in order to gain brand awareness
and to like have a better competitive advantage,
like you should probably not say the same mumbo jumbo
that like your competitor is saying.
What's your differentiator?
- 100%.
And like this goes for any marketing, right?
Like I always tell my team this like,
I would rather be different than just like in the field, right?
- Right.
- And I think this goes for almost all marketing.
Like it's better to have, if you push marketing out
and somebody thinks it's a 10 out of 10
and another person thinks it's a zero out of 10,
I'd rather have that as opposed to two people saying
it's a five.
- Yeah.
- Like we're trying to find people who vibe with us
who wanna do business with us.
We're trying to explain why we're a good choice.
That doesn't mean we're gonna be right for everyone.
- Yeah.
- So the marketing's like a filter.
You wanna say like authentically, this is who we are.
- Right.
- And if you vibe with what you're seeing,
then like this is probably a really good partnership.
- Yeah.
- But I think because B2B companies are trying to act
like they're the right solution for everyone,
they don't want to show their true colors
'cause they don't wanna make somebody feel like,
maybe this isn't the right choice.
That results in very watered down marketing
because there's no opinion there.
And I think that that's exactly the wrong way
to approach it.
You should take a very strong opinion,
state very clearly to the market who you are.
And you have to be okay with some people
are gonna be like, that's not for me.
- Right.
- And then people who vibe with it are gonna say,
I wanna do business with this company.
And that's, I think again,
going back to the relationships thing,
that's the way to build real alignment
in your relationships with your customers
as opposed to just doing the generic thing
that's not gonna make anybody mad,
but no one's gonna love it.
- Yeah, but again, it goes,
so not even just going back to relationship building,
but it also goes back to understanding your audience,
understanding who that customer is, right?
But also even a little bit of listening to feedback too.
- Totally.
- And utilizing that to market your competitive advantage too.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- Listening your fucking customers.
- Yeah, like B2B companies,
I noticed a trend of people going in like their Facebook
comments in a direct-to-consumer
and using that for ad concepts.
It's really smart, right?
Like why people love it, why people don't love it?
And B2B companies should take a page out of that.
You know, like you get reviews online,
you get all the tickets in and your ticketing software,
you get love and hate from your customers.
- So much, yeah.
- You can learn everything you need to know about,
like who's a good fit for you,
how you should be changing the market,
how your customers want you to engage with them
by looking at that stuff.
- Yeah.
- But it just goes overlooked.
- Yeah, absolutely.
And you know what I think is really interesting,
this just pops into my head,
is that every company creates its own consumer behavior.
If you're a boring company, I got,
like that sounds so harsh, I'm not trying to be harsh,
but like--
- No, there's a lot of boring companies up.
- If you're like the Microsoft, right?
- Sure. - I'm corporate, right?
You are going to get very, I'm corporate people, right?
Where if you're like, you know, the postscript,
that's like, I'm authentically us, right?
You're gonna get very authentic partnerships out of it, right?
- Yeah, totally.
- I just think it's really interesting,
it's like, well, it's not like rocket science,
it's just you're attracting the type of customers you want.
So if you want, in the going back to marketing,
if you want somebody who's different, right,
you wanna like gain the doctor's swatch,
or the true classic, right?
You have to walk a different line
in your marketing campaigns.
- Totally. - You know?
- Yeah, and like, and also to create some excitement.
- Please bring the excitement.
- Yeah, it's like-- - So boring.
- It's all so boring, it's all watered down,
it's like you really want someone to get like excited
about taking like a demo with you,
like you're boring up here, like software company,
like no, you want people to be like,
I need to know what's going on with PostScript
and their clients, and they have to get excited about that.
And that's like telling more customer stories
and being entertaining and engaging with what we're doing.
So I just think like, take some risks,
people are way too safe. - I know.
- They're afraid, and I always tell my team this too,
when you're taking a risk, people are always like,
well, what's gonna happen?
We're gonna, we're gonna piss somebody off
or like someone's not gonna like this.
Actually, what mostly happens is that no one sees it.
So while marketers are all like wrapped around the axle,
like what's the downside impact of us
doing this particular thing, I'm like,
no one's engaging with the stuff anyway.
Like you send an email that you're like taking a big risk on,
it's more likely that people aren't even gonna read it
than that they're gonna read it and then react to it
and have some crazy emotional reaction.
It's like you just gotta put stuff out there.
- Just put it out there.
- People are always, it's way less serious
than people want make it out to be.
- But I think that's because we always,
as marketers, we're always in our fucking heads.
- I know, yeah.
- Like, I mean, dude, listen,
let's even just take it one step further.
Like I went to art school, right?
- Yeah.
- I did not want to continue being an artist
because I thought everything I did sucks, right?
- Sure.
- So apply that to the same thing of like,
I'm writing like an email campaign.
Like I, it literally took me two hours
to write an email campaign today
about reminding somebody about an event
that I'm hosting next week.
'Cause I just didn't love the copy.
So it's like, as marketers being artists, right?
We're our own worst enemy,
but sometimes you just gotta throw some things out there,
see what comes back and pivot your plans.
- Yeah, there is something unique about like,
marketing's about ideas.
- Right.
- So when someone attacks your marketing,
it feels like they're attacking your personal ideas.
- Yeah.
- And that can be really, really tough, you know?
And I think it's about reps,
like talking about shipping stuff
and just putting stuff out there and experimenting
and treating everything that way helps,
at least for me, it helps my mind like be like,
"I'm in the arena trying things.
"I'm not, it says it like about me,
"that I'm not, it's not personal."
- Yeah.
- I'm trying a bunch of different stuff
and seeing what works.
And that helps me kind of like get out of my head.
But yeah, it's hard.
Like when people are criticizing the stuff
that you're putting out,
it's hard not to feel like they're saying,
I don't like this marketing and you're bad.
It's like, you know, like it's easy to get that going
in your head and feeling like you're getting it
scrutinized and all of that.
But I feel like you just gotta get the reps
in just clicking send, putting stuff out.
- Segment.
- Yeah.
- Do the things.
- Yeah, try stuff.
And that'll take like the sting out of it a little bit.
I also think like for anyone who's listening to this,
like nobody cares really.
You know, like it's like,
it's not that consequential.
- Yeah.
- And this is something I take from,
I listen to a lot of like the stoic stuff,
Ryan Holiday and the Daily Stoic and all of that
is just like in my podcast rotation.
But he always reminds people that no one's thinking about you.
They're too busy thinking about themselves.
- Absolutely.
- And dude, absolutely.
- Yeah.
- They're all selfish.
- Yeah.
When you really think about like,
oh my God, what are people gonna say about this?
Like they don't care about you.
- Yeah.
- They're like, they're too busy thinking about their own stuff
and like what's going on in their personal life
and what business priorities they have.
And so when you take the pressure down a little bit
by realizing that, then you can get a lot more comfortable
just being like, I'm doing my thing.
People are gonna vibe with it or not.
- Yeah, absolutely.
I think the same thing applies to like copywriting too.
- Yeah.
- You know, sometimes you gotta get a little weird.
- Yeah.
- Wait, okay, completely switching gears
because like we are coming up on time,
but I want to, great.
I want to hear in your words,
what are your hot takes?
Obviously you are the CMO of an SMS marketing company.
- Yeah.
- But I'm wanna hear in your words,
like why you love SMS marketing?
What problem are you trying to solve?
- Yeah, so first off, SMS works.
- Yeah.
- The data supports it.
- Weird.
- It's irrefutable.
- Yeah.
- It's expensive though.
- It does cost money.
- Yeah.
- So you have to be.
- It does cost money.
- Yeah.
You have to be a little bit more thoughtful
about just sending that additional text
where with email you can kind of just like
cue it up and send out whatever you want.
- Yeah.
- So it works.
Drives 25 to 50X ROI for brands
at all sorts of scales.
So that's one reason I'm very passionate about it.
'Cause we're trying to help merchants
make a bunch of money and scale their businesses.
So if we could play a part in that, that's great.
I also think it's irrefutable
that everyone's face is buried in their phone, right?
Like everyone's on their phone
and that is where future engagement
with consumers is going to happen.
I'm not saying there's no room for email.
Email is important, but like, I think at best
email is gonna stay at the engagement level
that it's currently at worst, it'll go down.
- Yeah.
- And when marketers are constantly losing owned channels,
they're the connection, the digital connection,
the reachability of the people you're trying to market to
is under attack.
Some of it warranted because of privacy restrictions,
but in general we're losing the ability
to market directly to the people that we want to.
SMS is a newer, direct channel
that you get to own as a marketer.
And so I think in the future,
and we're starting to see this a little bit,
the opt-in SMS list that brands have
is like an asset to their business.
It's like gold.
It's like the highest engagement channel
that you can go market to your most engaged fans
at any time you want.
And yes, it costs money, but you don't have to go
re-acquire them with meta ads.
You don't have to go on a marketplace
and pay money and hope that they come through a sale
on one way or the other.
It's like, I can go queue up,
I want to send a text to Jess and I can send it.
And I know you're gonna get it.
And I know if you like my brand,
it's very likely that you're gonna engage with it.
It's very unique in that way, the directness,
the intimacy of the channel,
I think creates tons of opportunity
for really interesting marketing things to happen over text.
So like, the other thing we talk about is like,
it's not like email.
Like everyone tries to like make them the same.
They're like, okay, I built my email and my ESP.
And now I'm just gonna like port that over to text
and send a version of that.
That's the wrong way to approach the channel.
Like SMS is two way by nature.
That's what makes it special.
And like leaning into interesting use cases
keeps people engaged over the long term.
So I think some people don't invest in that type of use case
because they're taking, I think, too short term of a view.
But when you think about keeping someone engaged
in a text conversation with your brand
over a very, very long period of time,
you have to do some interesting stuff there.
Lean into the things about SMS that are interesting.
It's two way, it's immediate.
And it's in the pocket of the person
that you're trying to reach.
If you really like start to think from first principles
about what can be done with a customer,
with a channel that has those capabilities,
SMS is completely unique.
And I think some people are leaning into it that way
and are having great success.
Luckily for everyone else who's not doing that,
SMS works anyway, like welcome series, automation, campaigns,
that all still works.
But the people who are doing great at it
are leaning into conversational in a way
that is, in my opinion, super exciting.
And I think is the next generation
of great customer engagement.
So we're just getting started on SMS.
- I agree with you.
I think it is just getting started.
And I think it's gonna be an interesting shift
that you'll see in the next five to 10 years.
I mean, every year it gets different.
But going back to the content play too,
it's like you can do something,
I've seen some brands do some really fun stuff
with their content, right?
Like Poplight is one,
I don't know if they're on Postscript,
but Tase salute is another one
where it's like very content heavy types of brands.
And like adding like a fun moving gift into it, right?
And I think that's,
I think it could be like a small content play,
but going back to the conversational piece too,
I think it's a really,
like we're not really strangers.
I'm always a huge fan of we're not really strangers,
but I think they do something,
like they've always done something really fun.
They've done, they were the original ones that did this
with creating the two way conversations
of like sending like these emotional texts,
like don't text your ex-boy from back, right?
That's gonna like spark something in a customer, right?
And I'm more likely to look at that,
like in the palm of my hand that I am in like an email chain.
- I would, this, for anyone who's thinking
about doing SMS campaigns,
I'll try to like reframe it for you
and you should do this as an experiment.
The next time you're gonna do an SMS,
try to optimize for replies instead of clicks.
See what happens.
One, it'll completely change your approach
to what you're doing.
And you'll see tons and tons of engagement come back.
We've run the numbers on this and it makes sense
when you think about it, right?
But people who respond to a text from a brand,
spend more than two ex over their lifetime
with the brand than people who don't.
- So interesting.
- And so, and it makes sense though.
It's like the relationship is deeper.
They're more, it's a high bar to get someone to respond,
like if I'm texting back with fly by Jing,
I'm texting.
- Tell me about my socks.
- Yeah, yeah.
I'm texting back with the sauce company.
Like to do that just is a whole different relationship
with the brand.
And if you try to create campaigns that are optimized
for replies and you start to get the signal
from your audience when they start actually doing it,
one, you'll learn a lot too.
Those people have a much deeper relationship
with the channel and with your brand from there on.
- Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, sorry audience.
I continuously talk about feast rules,
but it's just a very big portion of my life.
- Yeah, great brand, great post-group customer.
- Yeah, it's a text us, we text back six and four, 20.
- That's right.
- Like we built that, right?
Like we built that and we built a lot of like,
there's so many different ways and like,
I won't go into all of them,
but there's so many different ways
to create those two way conversations.
Like, and it doesn't,
you don't even have to just equip your,
like equip a team to do it, right?
You can create flows with it, right?
- Yeah, totally.
- Whether it's post-script or not,
like you can do this in like many different tools, right?
- Yeah, you can collect zero-party data
with the conversations.
So you start to build profiles
that you can use for segmentation in the future.
Like, this stuff isn't just vanity.
Like, I wanna have a conversation with my customers.
- Right.
- This one, it drives business outcomes.
Two, it can help you enrich the data you have
on your customers.
The more you know about your customer,
the more likely you are to be able to build marketing
that resonates with them and drives more sales.
So like, getting back to like post-scripts mission
is like, we don't do this just for the fun of it.
We do this stuff because it makes people more money.
- Yeah.
- So like, surprise, doing the harder, more complicated,
more advanced marketing techniques
actually drive more revenue, right?
Like, that turns out that that's true.
And we're trying to help more people do that over SMS
with our software.
And so there is a real financial incentive
to lean into what makes SMS special.
- Yeah.
I mean, I'll leave everybody on this note about it.
- I'm a huge fan of SMS marketing,
not just from a marketing perspective of like,
I'm slinging you some underwear or a candle
or whatever it is or your chocolate bar.
- Yeah.
- I'm a huge fan of SMS marketing
because of the two way conversations
and the brand loyalty build of it.
It is a dope customer experience.
Like, seriously, it is a very,
like we're all out here on these e-commerce brands
trying to like really get you to loyal to the brand,
but it is a way to like build those two way conversations
really can build a really sick brand experience.
- Yep.
- And like, whichever way you do it.
Like in my case, a few festivals,
I put bots into it, right?
Or you do flows or you put humans behind it,
whatever it is, two way conversations
and like incentivizing for that reply
and creating that conversation is gonna be like
a dope experience and just be like,
here's your bo-go deal today.
- Yeah. And I mean, people are afraid of text
they'll be like, oh, I don't like getting texts from brands
and it's like, no shit.
You're probably just getting a one line coupon code
every single day, just like blasted at you all day long.
Like that's not interesting.
- No.
- Why would somebody want to get that?
- Right.
- Like that's just not,
that's not leveraging the channel,
the immediacy of it, the conversational nature of it
in a way that's creating surprise and delight
with the people on the other end.
- Surprise and delight.
- Yeah. I mean, like these are opportunities, right?
- Yeah.
- So people are like, I don't know why this isn't working better.
I'm just like blasting out a coupon code every day.
I'm like, well, that's why.
Like would, again, getting back to marketers,
making everything all convoluted,
just like take a step back,
would you want to get this text?
- No.
- No.
- Yeah.
- So like try writing a text that is expressive
of your brand voice, that promotes a product that you have,
that you would actually like to receive
as a consumer and start from that.
But everyone that makes everything more complicated
than it needs to be.
- So I'm getting married this year.
And one of the things that I'm going to do
is actually SMS campaigns to tell my guests
where we're going, what we're doing.
- So smart.
- As a marketer, I have to market to them in SMS.
It's so on brand for me.
- Yeah. You're going to have people like text in the photos.
- Yeah, dog.
Did you just post-grip want to build this for me?
- Yeah. Let's do it on post-grip.
Let's do it on post-grip.
- I'm down. I'm so down.
Anyway, on that note, Mike, tell everybody
where they can find you.
- Yeah. Postscript.io is where you can find
all the Postscript products.
I'm on Twitter @MikeMantheimer.
I'm DM's are open.
I'd love to talk anything marketing,
anything SMS anytime.
So, and I'm out here in Phoenix, Arizona.
So if you ever want to link up, chat marketing stuff,
hit me up.
- Also plug your podcast.
- Oh, yeah. I have a podcast now,
which is uncomfortable for me.
But yes, I do.
It's called Back Channel.
You can find it everywhere you listen to podcasts.
- Sick. Well, thanks for coming on, man.
And I really appreciate you.
And thank you for all for tuning in
to another week of The Juice with me.
And I'll see you next Thursday.
- Hey, wow. You made it to the end of the episode.
That means that you like me and I like you,
which also means you should subscribe to this show.
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