Gluten-free grains and fuss-free messaging at GF Oats

Don’t let anyone tell you that all oats are gluten free. If you’re someone with Coeliac disease – a serious gluten allergy – even oats grown next to a wheat field could be dangerous. It’s all part of why Kylie Martin founded GF Oats in 2009.  

For the first decade, the business imported oats from the US, building a loyal customer base under the ‘Gloriously Free’ banner. In 2020, it started growing its own Australian oats, following a specialist ‘purity protocol’ to avoid cross-contamination during production. This makes GF Oats the largest supplier of pure Australian-grown oats in the Southern Hemisphere. And with allergies on the rise and awareness about food and nutrition increasing, it’s only just the beginning. 

“We’ve got a whole new lot of people coming in every year that really are looking for our particular product,” Kylie explains. “People are even more engaged with the food that they eat and how they feed their families.” 

As the business scaled, GF Oats needed to talk to its expanding customer base, without losing that personal connection.  

“We have a very engaged audience, but we really think hard about the content that we share with them,” says Kylie. 

GF Oats wasn’t struggling with communication before it approached Sinch – in fact, it had an effective email-based strategy. The missing piece was SMS. The team wanted an SMS tool that could integrate with its sales platforms and enhance its existing strategy. 

“We had the emails right, we had our other marketing channels right, but we didn’t have a solution for SMS,” explains Kylie.  

GF Oats went through several SMS providers before landing on Sinch. US-based providers were prohibitively expensive and offered almost no local support. Kylie and her team found that the platforms were also difficult to use. Sinch’s easy UX and great support came as a massive relief for the team.  

“They gave us backup service, whereas with other programs we found it very hard to get help.” 

GF Oats now uses automated SMS flows to trigger messages at key points in the customer journey, like delivery updates and subscription reminders.  

The platform’s usability also came in handy when Kylie realised she was pinging customers in the middle of the night. 

“They were getting a little bit annoyed about that!,” she says. “We could dig into Sinch ourselves to solve it, so that’s a win. I don’t know if other platforms can do that.”  

Kylie also uses the platform to build campaigns and reach different groups of customers with specific messaging – nurturing VIP customers and getting people to sign up to the subscription program.   

“We’re a small business. We don’t try to be corporate. With SMS, you can do that little reminder: quick, sharp, short, and it really gets people to respond.” 

Kylie says SMS has delivered an ROI of 300-400%, far exceeding the return she was getting from other platforms. 

“[Sinch] is incredible for the amount that we spend. It brings me in money every month.”

One benefit she didn’t expect: Two-way communication. Because Sinch SMS lets customers and retailers chat over text, it’s easy for Kylie to send quick, personal responses to customer queries.  

“To save space, I’d been writing ‘T U’ for thank you,” and somebody responded with, ‘You’ve got a spelling mistake in your text’,” she laughs. “I was able to thank them and explain.” 

GF Oats is still growing, still signing up new customers, and still planning new campaigns. With Australia now one of the world’s most allergy-prone regions, there are likely to be more and more customers looking for gluten-free products. The team is looking at specialist sales events like ‘organic month’, and continuously tweaking the sales strategies and customer communications.  

Whatever the future holds for GF Oats, Kylie says Sinch will be there too. 

“You’re happy to pay for the investment, you get a return from it, and customers are happy. It’s a win-win.”