SMS Proves it Was Born to be Fabulous!
A BulkSMS.com Case Study

Born Fabulous is one of the most exclusive baby products providers that supply South Africans with quality baby products suited for the fashionable shopper. The small team of dedicated staff are responsible for marketing and distributing the top five worldwide baby brands including STOKKE and Bugaboo. While their retailer network is the primary point of sales and distribution, Born Fabulous also market and sell their products directly to the public at the Mama Magic Baby Expo. This national exhibition takes place 3 times a year in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg respectively and exhibiting has proven to be a great channel to increase sales. Selling at the show, however, posed some post event communication challenges that the company needed to overcome.

Brent Grung, Marketing Manager at Born Fabulous, tells us that while these expos provide a great opportunity for the Born Fabulous team to sell their products, it created a logistical nightmare for the staff; who, after each expo, were bombarded with queries regarding order delivery. “Our internal administration team was taking huge strain dealing with the phone calls and emails after each expo. They were spending all their time responding to queries rather than fulfilling the orders. This was a very time consuming practice that needed to be improved, which is why I turned to SMS,” says Grung.

Grung first started sending SMS messages to Born Fabulous customers in 2014 and has found it to be an effective way of communicating order and delivery information. “SMS has helped streamline the post exhibition order process and free-up time for the administration team”.

“We capture the customer’s details, including their contact details and delivery address, at the shows using Quickbooks. At the end of each day, I export the customers’ details and waybill numbers onto an Excel spreadsheet and upload it straight onto the BulkSMS Web to SMS platform. From there, I type the message, adding the personalised fields, and each customer receives an SMS detailing their tracking number,” says Grung.

SMS allows Grung to notify the customers of their tracking numbers in order to prevent any time-consuming queries after the expo. “Our customers can now track their deliveries directly through Fastway without having to contact us first. We no longer have to respond to over 500 queries a week - SMS has turned our logistical nightmare into a very pleasant experience,” reports Grung.

“Grung’s use of SMS is a great example of how SMS can be used not only to solve logistical problems, but also to improve a customer’s experience with a brand. In the end, SMS has improved the company’s communication process, it has enhanced the customer experience and it has improved the overall efficiency of the team,” says Dr Pieter Streicher, managing director of BulkSMS.com.