Omaha Steaks recognized that optimizing existing channels wouldn’t be enough. To break through during their most critical times, they adopted RCS, paired with Cordial’s AI-driven personalization and measurement capabilities.
Omaha Steaks is a premium meat and gourmet food company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. Founded in 1917 and now in its fifth generation of Simon family ownership, the company hand-cuts and ships steaks, seafood, and prepared foods to customers nationwide through its ecommerce site, direct mail catalog, retail stores, and subscriptions.
2025 was a defining moment for brands – and one of the most challenging. As inboxes grow more crowded, promotions deepen, and MMS/SMS fatigue sets in, marketers are under pressure to drive incremental revenue without sacrificing trust, brand presence, or customer experience.
In 2025, Omaha Steaks recognized that optimizing existing channels wouldn’t be enough. To break through during their most critical times, they adopted RCS, paired with Cordial’s AI-driven personalization and measurement capabilities. The result was not just higher engagement, but a fundamentally more effective way to reach customers when it mattered most – setting the foundation for accelerated growth in 2026 and beyond.
Traditional text messages have long forced brands to choose between reach and experience. Limited visual presentation, reliance on shortened links, and declining differentiation make it harder to stand out, especially during peak promotional periods.
RCS changes that dynamic. With verified brand identities, native interactivity, rich product carousels, and true button-based CTAs, RCS delivers a more trusted, immersive experience that feels aligned with how consumers already interact with modern apps.
As one of Cordial’s early RCS beta partners, Omaha Steaks moved quickly to test whether richer, more brand-forward messaging could drive meaningful performance gains – not just aesthetic improvements.
The results made one thing clear: RCS wasn’t simply a creative upgrade. It became a high-impact, conversion-driving update capable of outperforming legacy formats at scale.
Launching RCS at scale requires more than experimentation – it demands confidence in measurement and incrementality. Omaha Steaks partnered with Cordial to ensure RCS performance could be evaluated rigorously and expanded responsibly.
Omaha Steaks first attempted to send an RCS message to their full opted-in subscriber base. This approach allowed them to identify which subscribers were capable of receiving RCS based on carrier and device compatibility – a critical step as RCS adoption continues to accelerate across the ecosystem.
Once eligibility was established, contacts were segmented into six test groups:
This structure enabled Omaha Steaks to not only measure channel performance lift, but overall company impact across both highly engaged and less engaged audiences – validating that the RCS impact wasn’t only limited to channel performance.
Results were consistent across segments and statistically significant, reinforcing that RCS performance gains were durable and repeatable – not seasonal anomalies. With Cordial’s unified data and testing framework, Omaha Steaks gained the confidence to scale RCS as a core channel moving forward.
While RCS created a more compelling customer experience, Omaha Steaks knew channel innovation alone wouldn’t be enough. They paired RCS with Cordial’s AI-powered capabilities to deliver personalization optimized for conversion – not just engagement.
When every message competes for attention, timing can be the difference between a conversion and a missed opportunity. Omaha Steaks activated Cordial’s Send Time Optimization, designed to deliver messages at the moment each customer is most likely to convert.
Lapsed and Prospect Customer Impact:
By optimizing for revenue outcomes rather than open rates alone, Omaha Steaks ensured every send worked harder to drive increased engagement and revenue.
Omaha Steaks moved beyond static, rules-based product recommendations in favor of behavior-driven AI Product Recommendations deployed across batch, lifecycle, and transactional messaging.
In preliminary testing, the most impactful use case emerged within SMS automations, where AI-powered recommendations drove a lift compared to business-as-usual messages – demonstrating how unified data and real-time decisioning unlock personalization that scales.
Omaha Steaks’ success underscores a broader shift in modern marketing. As consumer expectations rise and traditional channels reach saturation, brands need more than incremental optimizations – they need new ways to create trust, relevance, and measurable impact.
By combining RCS with Cordial’s AI-driven personalization, testing rigor, and unified data foundation, Omaha Steaks didn’t just win 2025 – they built a future-ready messaging strategy designed for what comes next.
RCS is moving quickly from early adoption to competitive advantage. And with Cordial, brands can activate it – and every channel – with confidence.