6: Powering commerce from text to checkout: Insights from Mike Manheimer, CCO at Postscript
Description
Mike Manheimer is the chief customer officer (CCO) at Postscript—and a soon-to-be first-time father. Postscript is a short message system (SMS) marketing platform powered by AI, designed to help e-commerce brands within the Shopify ecosystem build personalized connections with their customers to drive revenue. Mike entered the SaaS world straight out of college at a startup called WebPT, where he worked his way up to marketing director. After leaving WebPT, Mike held various leadership roles at Gainsight before serving as head of growth marketing at Front. He joined Postscript in 2021 as chief marketing officer and transitioned to his current role as chief customer officer in late 2024, leading both the marketing and customer teams.
In today’s episode, Alan and Mike discuss conversational commerce, exploring how SMS text messaging, chatbots, and voice assistants are transforming the shopping experience. They examine the potential rise of SMS texts in marketing and why conversational commerce hasn’t fully taken off yet. Their conversation also highlights Postscript's decision to specialize rather than consolidate, and the AI innovations they are using to boost revenue. Mike also shares common misconceptions about SMS marketing, notes a consumer shift toward analog experiences, and encourages marketers to adopt an AI-first mindset.
Key quotes:
“When I joined Postscript, part of my thesis was that two megatrends were intersecting, and they weren’t going to stop: We’re seeing more transactions done online over time. The second is, we see messaging as a major component of the way people spend their time online, especially on their mobile devices. We see messaging in a bunch of forms but especially text messaging dominates the time people are using their phones. And so, Postscript exists at the intersection of both those trends.” – Mike Manheimer, CCO at Postscript
“SMS is the only channel that exists for marketers that is fundamentally ‘two-way’ from the get-go.” – Mike Manheimer, CCO at Postscript
“When you nail that—you know, the voice, the
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