Hey Cowboys,
Happy Wednesday! We’re live from Common Thread Collective HQ today: Postscript just shipped email, Amazon just handed sellers agentic workflows, and Meta Connect kicks off. Perfect day to sit with the operators who live in that stack.
Today’s Cowboy Drop-In: Retention, Seller Agents & Meta Connect
Live from Common Thread Collective HQ with:
Alex Beller, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Postscript
Taylor Holiday, Common Thread Collective
Luke Austin, President, Common Thread Collective
Grant Zanini, Common Thread Collective
Three stories on the board: Postscript launches email, Amazon’s AI agents for sellers, and Meta Connect 2026.
———————————————————————————————————————
Postscript Launches Email
After eight years of saying no, Postscript shipped email today, not as a bolted-on ESP, but on a new Agentic Context Platform that shares one customer profile across SMS, RCS, and email. Identity resolution, migration tools for flows/segments/templates, and AI that decides what each subscriber gets at send time using conversation history, not just a segment of twelve thousand lookalikes.
Alex’s line lands hard: customers asked for email for years; they refused until it could be genuinely better, not another tool that works like the rest. Existing SMS customers can add email without rebuilding the program. First-come, first-served for current customers, with a live walkthrough today.
The operator question for the room: if you’re dual-stack Klaviyo + Postscript, when does “good enough email on the SMS platform you’re already paying for” beat two retention bills?
———————————————————————————————————————
Amazon’s AI Agents for Sellers
That same morning, Amazon upgraded Seller Assistant from a chatbot to something closer to an operating layer. New workflows can monitor inventory, pricing, account health, and competition around the clock, recommend or execute inside seller-set guardrails, and leave an audit trail. A Selling Partner plugin brings that intelligence into Amazon Quick and, in beta, Anthropic’s Claude, so sellers can run Amazon from the AI tools they already live in (Amazon says ~90% already do).
This is the other half of the agentic week: Meta’s Muse gets locked out of Amazon’s storefront for shoppers, while Amazon hands sellers agents that act inside Seller Central. Walled garden for buyers. Open (ish) plugin layer for sellers. Different rules depending on which side of the marketplace you’re on.
———————————————————————————————————————
Meta Connect 2026
Connect opens today (Sep 23–24) in Menlo Park — Zuck keynote, then developers tomorrow. For Cowboy operators, the useful frame isn’t the glasses demo itself; it’s what Connect signals for the discovery → purchase path Meta has been shipping all year: AI-assembled Sales ads off product data + creative, Live Video Ads (IG GA Sep 29), virtual-card checkout, creator affiliate tagging, Muse/Shop Pay on Shopify while Amazon blocks Muse on Amazon.
Taylor, Luke, and Grant are the right CTC crew to pressure-test what actually matters for Q4 media plans vs what’s Connect theatre. Product data quality, creative volume, and live-commerce readiness still beat waiting for the next headset drop.
What ties today’s show together: retention is consolidating into agentic context, Amazon is turning Seller Central into an agent runtime, and Meta is still fighting to own the moment someone decides to buy. The brands that win this fall won’t pick a buzzword; they’ll decide which agents they trust with inventory, messages, and media dollars, and which ones they keep on a short leash.
Catch the full conversation live from CTC HQ on the Ecomm Cowboy channel.
Hire New Team Members Faster with Proppel
FEATURED SPONSOR: PROPPEL
People are the most important part of your business, and finding real A players is hard and incredibly time-consuming.
And that's exactly where Proppel comes in.
Proppel is THE BEST recruitment agency out there for ecom brands and agencies. They're marketing and operations specialists who source talent from the US, LATAM, and beyond for some of the best companies in the space.
From video editors, graphic designers, media buyers, and more in LATAM, to managers, directors, heads of department, and VPs in the US, they can help you build the team you actually need to scale faster.
The best part? They work on performance. You only pay a one-off fee once you hire someone, so there are no retainers and no ongoing costs. And every hire comes backed by a three-month guarantee.
So if you're an ecom brand or agency looking to build a great team, I highly recommend them.
→ Go to https://www.weareproppel.com/ecomm-cowboy-proppel and if you mention Ecomm Cowboy, you'll get 10% off your first hire with Proppel.
Ecomm Cowboy is the go-to live show for ecommerce operators, breaking down the latest DTC, retail, and AI news while interviewing the founders and executives building today's fastest-growing brands.
We’re live Monday to Friday at 12 PM CT.
Have questions or want to come on the show? Simply reply to this email, we’re happy to chat.
Made Possible By:
AppLovin - Find your next million customers.
Seguno - the Shopify-native marketing suite for brands that run it themselves.
Postscript - Make more money from every SMS message.
Outersignal- Know Your Customers. Grow Your Business.
Northbeam - Measure the “unmeasurable,” make your marketing profitable.
Rokt Aftersell - More profit from the orders you’re already getting.
Universal Ads - TV ads that deliver for performance marketers.
Richpanel - The AI helpdesk that saves you headaches (and money).
SATHI - Affiliate attribution beyond last-click commissions.
Slash - A better business banking platform.
Trendtrack - Track competitors' winning marketing strategies daily.
Tie - The internet’s #1 shopper ID platform.
Proppel - The best recruitment agency for ecom brands and agencies.
See you on the stream,
Ecomm Cowboy Team