Imagine this: You get a plain text only message from a clothing store reminding you about their upcoming sales. It is a RCS Messaging with no images, color, or branding but includes a shortened URL. Even if it seems legitimate, you might think twice before clicking or responding. Now imagine this:
“Summer sale is on” message comes with video of the product, images, and other details, and you can see the sender logo and brand name clearly. Which message will you interact with more?
The one that comes will all the trimmings, right? This is the power of RCS messaging. This transformative messaging platform offers a richer and more engaging experience than the traditional SMS, MMS, and OTT messaging options.
RCS engagement integrates multimedia, interactives, and real time updates seamlessly and all within the mobile device’s default messaging app. An RCS chat is an idea marketing platform for all types of businesses. It can send notifications, integrate bot automation, and perform other proactive customer interactions without constant need of human interventions.
Read Also: The Dawn of RCS Business Messaging: Transforming customer engagement.
In this blog, we will talk about why RCS is the messaging is the future, its key features, and why you need to integrate it in your marketing strategies today to drive sales and improve consumer engagement. Let’s dive right in!
RCS stands for rich communication services, and is the modern and upgraded version of the traditional SMSs and offers great capabilities for both P2P and A2P messaging. When using peer-to-peer messaging, you can use features like voice messages, file sharing, group chat capabilities, high resolution images and videos, audios, etc., to engage the customers. When using the A2P side, RCS can be used to send interactive buttons and richer messaging experiences.
RCS has been available on Android users for some time now, but the major roadblock in its spread was that Apple devices did not support the format. However, with the new release of iOS 18, Apple devices are also now RCS enabled.
What makes RCS Messaging stand out from SMS, MMS, OTTs, and other third-party apps?
RCS empowers the brands to deliver customized, tailored, and branded messages in real time and build genuine connections with the buyers or prospective buyers. Here are some standout features of RCS that make it the future of messaging in marketing:
- Rich media content: RCS supports high resolution images, GIFs, videos, audio, and carousels to make the messages visually appealing, capture attention, and convey the point across effectively. This boosts the visual storytelling experience and thus keeps the brand in the user’s mind. For example, your business can easily build a step-by-step tutorial with images, audios, videos, and interactive buttons to help the customer onboard smoothly.
- Simple action buttons: With RCS messaging, you can enable the customer to interact directly with your business through action buttons like making a call, completing a purchase, or visiting the website. Buttons such as “Get More Info,” “Schedule a Call,” or “Shop Now” are highly effective in turning the interest into conversions.
- Suggested replies: RCS understands that you cannot always reply in real time and be quick with responses, hence the intuitive feature of suggested replies, which lets you and the customer quickly tap on responses and keep the conversation going and interest alive. Simplified interactions like this will make the customer engage more with your brand.
- There is no character limit on RCS, which means you can design your content in a flexible manner and don’t have to worry about limiting your message and shrinking the links.
Make video calls from RCS messaging :
This futuristic function of RCS means that you can easily get in touch with the customer to provide support through video calls directly through the RCS chat windows. Video calls can be used to solve a product working issue, resolve service conflicts, and even show product demos in live streaming.
- Sharing based on localization: A trailblazing feature of RCS engagement is that the brand can tailor content specific to the region or community they belong to. RCS features include delivering location-specific offers and language-based messaging that help the culturally relevant media reach the user’s devices through the native messaging app.
- Furthermore, the interactive buttons can be customized for the consumer to access nearby stores, events, services, etc., which makes the shopping experience highly actionable. This feature helps build connections with local buyers and provide an environment that makes the consumer feels valued and drives in higher engagement rates and loyalty.
- Global reach: Another cutting-edge feature of RCS engagement is that it can work across almost the entire globe and is compatible with carriers and regions. The native mobile app is compliant with global industry standards, ensuring that the all messages get the same level of security. This is a boon for businesses looking to expand their base to new global markets. Secure messaging is vital in handing customer data and especially in sectors like finance, healthcare, and retail.
- Wins over customer trust with verified messaging: The ground-breaking ability to include verified branding makes RCS engagement one of the most trusted forms of communications that the consumers prefer. RCS messaging includes verified branding so that the consumers know that they are interacting with a legitimate business. The business can have their logo, name, and verification badges appear with every message and reduce the risk of phishing.
- Next generation, future ready communication: 5G networks are expanding, and with it, RCS is becoming more efficient at delivering rich media and real-time updates. It is helpful for many IoT applications, and RCS is soon slated to become the global standard for messaging, giving brands a scalable communication tool that is universally adopted.
There are more than 1.5 billion RCS messaging users around the world. For businesses, it is highly cost effective and boosts the ROI, and also
- Has one of the highest engagement rates, with 90% of rich media messages opened within 15 minutes of receipt.
- Customers engage with RCS content for up to 45 seconds, which is higher than any other app.
- People are 35 times more likely to reach an RCS message than an email.
- RCS messages have a click-through rates of 20%–30%, which is 10-fold higher than normal SMS messages.
- Businesses which use RCS messaging can improve their conversion rates by 40%.
- Over 70% of brands that use RCS chats and messaging have reported improved engagement and conversion without added cost burden to the business.
As the user base expands, RCS engagement is set to rise in the future. It bridges the gap between the traditional SMSs and the app-based experiences seamlessly. In future, RCS will play an indispensable role in enhancing customer communications and driving in higher engagement.
Read Also: Which Messaging Platform is Best for Your Business, SMS, or RCS?
Written By – Amit Bhateja
Amit Bhateja is the co-founder of enrcloud and helping brands and Unicorns from the last 15+ years and overachieve their Engagement and Retention goals. He is passionate about solving customer problems with modern technology, new age solutions, and consultancy approach. Besides Building ENR, He enjoys reading books, spending time with his family and Teammates, traveling, meeting new people, learning new things, and love to close the business deals.
