Wonder Cave rides the rails of the text messaging ecosystem with Bandwidth

“Our clients see us as more than just a platform,” says Webb Bostic, President of Wonder Cave. Founded in 2020, Wonder Cave is a game-changing platform for marketers looking to harness the power of text messaging as they expand their brands. Their product, Iris, helps their clients create a custom message deployment plan to reach the right audience at the right time. Bostic explains, “Wonder Cave’s mission is to build a bridge between brands and their audiences. That means we work with digital marketing agencies to be a SMS messaging conduit to add value to their brands and engage their customers.”

“Everyone knows about SMS messaging, but a lot of folks don’t know exactly how to unlock the value of it. That’s where we come in.”

And Bandwidth provides the Messaging API that helps Wonder Cave be a sturdy foundation for their clients.

The experts on unlocking the power of text messages

Over the years, Wonder Cave has played in many industries and spaces, but they typically serve the political nonprofit advocacy research arena. “Surveys and polling,” Bostic says. “And retail is a growing segment that we are excited about.”

“Our customers choose Wonder Cave because of a combination of a few things,” explains Bostic. “Our support team is very available, very hands on, and very knowledgeable. We know how to solve our customer’s problems and make it really streamlined.”

The team at Wonder Cave understands that customers are relying on them to be the experts. “We want to show them how the SMS messaging space works,” says Bostic. “We show them this is how to make sure you are compliant, how you are following best practices, how to take the quickest path to your clients.”

The other reason, according to Bostic, is Wonder Cave’s deployment speed and delivery. He says, “Over the course of our history, we have averaged 99.5% delivery across all SMS messages. That is over 3 billion SMS messages that have gone across our platform.” Given that 100% delivery is nearly impossible, these numbers are incredibly impressive. “As close to 100% delivery is like from day one, that is top of the list. So that’s always been our approach,” says Bostic.

Announcing successes and addressing pain points

Wonder Cave is proud of their successes and focused on their customers’ pain points. Bostic explains, “Our customer’s biggest challenge, far and away, is the registration process – meaning when they have clients who want to set up SMS messages, there is a difficult process to get them registered within the ecosystem so they can send in a way they know is going to be successfully delivered on every wireless carrier network.”

Wonder Cave has a 100% registration policy. Every client they have has to go through the registration process – no way around it. “There are two reasons for that,” explains Bostic. “One is that from a delivery perspective, you are asking for a poor experience if you don’t comply with registration practices.”

“And two,” he goes on. “You are going to pay a lot more if you don’t register.” So registration is first and foremost at Wonder Cave, but it is also their biggest pain point. Wonder Cave met that challenge head on with the help of Bandwidth. “We get clients registered quicker than anyone in our space, in large part because of our partnership with Bandwidth,” says Bostic. “They have an amazing team that makes it easy for us to ride the rails within the SMS ecosystem.”

Wonder Cave gives their customers the tools they need to feel confident in sending a full campaign. “We also have campaign delivery assurance. So once that campaign is in flight, if there is any sort of degradation in terms of delivery, we will automatically pause the campaign.”

Keeping customers in the loop

Bandwidth also helps Wonder Cave keep their clients in the loop with full transparency. The team at Wonder Cave does not hide analytics from their clients. They let them know how a campaign did, and if, for any reason, it ran into issues in deployment. If there were issues, Wonder Cave gives them detailed reports on why there were issues.

“That is something we take back and consult with Bandwidth about,” explains Bostic. “We get very detailed information from Bandwidth that we can swivel and give to our clients.”

The information Wonder Cave receives from Bandwidth helps them set the right expectations with their clients from day one. “We pride ourselves on a very self-serviced platform when running SMS message campaigns, but during the onboarding we offer a white glove experience where we take the time to truly understand what the customer needs and what we need from them in order to start the process,” says Bostic. “When working with Bandwidth, we also come to an understanding of expectations and what may be coming in the future, so we all stay ahead of the curve.”

Wonder Cave in the wild

One of Wonder Cave’s clients is a nonprofit that travels to natural disaster areas to cook meals and provide packaged food for those affected. “Last year, Maui experienced raging wildfires that devastated that area,” explains Bostic. “Our client was tasked with raising money to help that community.” Wonder Cave worked with them, the nonprofit provided feedback on how the fundraising effort was going, and ultimately, the nonprofit raised $1,000,000 through their text message fundraising campaign that rode on Wonder Cave’s platform.

“That was incredible to see the impact that had in that community. It just shows the power of SMS messaging to ignite an audience to rally around a situation that needs support, “says Bostic.

While this effort rode on the Wonder Cave platform, they were supported by the Bandwidth Messaging API. “Bandwidth has played a major role in Wonder Cave’s success,” says Bostic. “They have provided a stronghold for us to know we can navigate this ever-changing industry confidently and, in many cases, expeditiously.”

“Bandwidth is willing to get in the trenches with us when there are difficult situations. They’re willing to lock arms with us and be a solid partner for us while we focus on our product and the needs of our clients.”