Exploring RCS: The Newest Frontier in Mobile Messaging

In the dynamic world of digital marketing, staying ahead means embracing innovative communication technologies. Rich Communication Services (RCS) represents a significant leap forward, transforming traditional SMS into a powerful tool for interactive customer engagements. Discover how RCS is setting new standards for business messaging and how Cordial is on the forefront of its adoption.

What is RCS?
Rich Communication Services (RCS) is the modern enhancement of traditional SMS messaging, enabling an app-like interaction directly through a contact’s native messaging platform. Unlike standard text messages, which are limited to 160 characters and basic images, RCS can deliver immersive and advanced multimedia content, including high-resolution images, video, and audio.

What’s Unique about RCS?
RCS revolutionizes mobile messaging by incorporating features that today’s consumers expect from SMS/MMS messaging experiences – all without the need of a third-party app. Key differentiators of RCS include:

• Rich Media Support: Send and display high-quality images, videos, files, GIFs, and read receipts directly in a message to increase customer engagement and conversion.
• Interaction Capabilities: Increase purchase intent with a single click through embedded action buttons to schedule appointments, browse product catalogs, or place orders.
• Branded Experience: Personalize RCS messages through your brand’s logo, tagline, colorways, and a verified mark to increase trust, credibility and open rates, creating a seamless branded experience.
• Deeper Analytics: RCS offers real-time reporting analytics such as read receipt metrics, clicks, delivery reports and failures.

The Impact of RCS:
The rich messaging capabilities of RCS offer brands the potential to create higher converting messaging experiences with their customers. Studies show RCS marketing campaigns see between three and seven times higher click-through rates than SMS, and consumers are 35 times more likely to read an RCS message compared to a marketing email. With Apple’s recent iOS 18 launch and support of RCS, RCS messaging adoption is expected to grow significantly, potentially reaching around 3.8 billion users by 2026.

Concerned about delivery? RCS messages seamlessly fall back to SMS if the technology isn’t supported by the recipient’s device.

New Mobile Experiences:
RCS opens new possibilities for businesses seeking to deepen their engagement with customers through rich and interactive mobile messaging experiences. By leveraging the full spectrum of multimedia capabilities and real-time interaction features, RCS allows marketers to transform standard customer communications into new compelling, memorable use-cases.

For example, a retail brand could create a promotional RCS abandon cart campaign for a recently browsed product featuring a rich image of the item, with embedded “add to cart” button functionality, and AI-driven product recommendations to consider.

This creates a new experience allowing shoppers to browse deals, make purchases, or get more info without leaving the messaging interface.

Looking Ahead:
Globally, RCS is picking up momentum and gaining full support in North America with carriers.

Here at Cordial, we are preparing to release an RCS solution that leverages intent-based personalization models to deliver impactful messages that take advantage of this emerging standard.

If you’re excited about joining this initiative and shaping the future of mobile marketing, we invite you to reach out to your customer success manager and become a part of this exciting new messaging standard.