5 Key Tips for Marketers to Master RCS Mobile Messaging

As a mobile marketer who has run multichannel campaigns for more than 7 years, I have seen firsthand how quickly mobile texting has changed. Over the years, SMS and MMS worked well for us. But as chat apps became more popular and more advanced message formats were needed, it was clear that a hole had to be filled. Read below about “5 Key Tips for Marketers to Master RCS Mobile Messaging”.

This is where RCS (Rich Communication Services) text texting has really made a difference. Because it works on all Android devices and has features like high-resolution photos and videos, sharing your location, seeing who has read your messages, and more, it has quickly become a channel that marketers can’t avoid.

5 Key Tips for Marketers to Master RCS Mobile Messaging

As with all new technologies, there will be a way to get used to it. After years of testing and improving RCS campaigns, I’ve come up with 5 key tips that have helped our marketing team accept and master this channel:

1. Set Up Dedicated Workstreams for RCS Campaigns

It is important to set up separate workstreams for RCS messaging from your other SMS and MMS campaigns because it has its own set of features and limitations. To handle all of our RCS projects at our firm, we’ve put together a separate group of people with skills in creative messaging, media planning, and mobility solutions.

Having campaign managers who can handle the whole process, from coming up with ideas to putting them into action and analyzing the results, helps keep things running smoothly and gets things done faster. The focused method also helps them keep up with how the RCS ecosystem is changing so they can make changes to their strategies as needed.

2. Design Interactive, Personalized Creative Messaging

One of the best things about RCS over SMS is that it lets you add rich video and interactivity to your messages. Based on our tests, personalized carousels, product catalogs with call-to-actions, polls, quizzes, and other types of content have gotten up to three times as much interest as plain text messages.

For example, last year we made an engaging RCS ad for a major FMCG brand’s new line of drinks that helped get 23% of the discount codes redeemed. This was the highest rate of redemption for the client through mobile ads up until that point.

You can also use the extra length (up to 4096 characters) to tell a more engaging and emotional brand story that keeps people’s attention. This makes it easy to connect with customers in a useful way.

3. Follow Best Practices for Business Messaging

It is important to make sure that users still have control over the RCS conversations, even though the features have been increased. Our UX teams follow clear standards to send messages that aren’t annoying, are based on consent, and clearly add value for subscribers.

Based on what we know, here are some best practices I would suggest:

• Sending ads should not happen more than twice a week.
• Add simple ways to unsubscribe to each letter.
• Get permission from users again before adding them to any new RCS ads.
• Make sure that each message has personalized worth and relevance.

These steps help keep unsubscribes under control and keep subscribers from getting tired. Limiting RCS messages to two per week (down from five before) helped one auto client’s open rates go up by a huge 5%.

4. Integrate with Marketing Automation Platforms

Adding RCS messaging to your marketing automation stack is a must if you want to send personalized and driven messages on a large scale. We made our own APIs and connectors so that systems like Adobe Campaign, Oracle Responsys, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud can run real-time, event-driven RCS campaigns.

This lets us give users personalized product suggestions, notes when they leave items in their shopping cart, order updates, and more based on what they do and what they like. Our research shows that automated triggers lead to over 20% more re-engagement and sales for RCS compared to traditional channels.

The integration also gives a full picture of how users move through different channels, like the web, email, apps, and more. This can help make cross-channel orchestration better.

5. Analyze Performance Metrics Deeply

Like any other digital channel, RCS messaging works best when you keep an eye on user- and message-level data to improve your strategy. While opens and clicks can point you in the right way, I think you should pay more attention to metrics like:

• Message use time and scroll depth
• How many times people click on carousels, buttons, etc.
• Using special coupon codes to get things
• RCS ads lead to sales

These help you figure out how successful your message really is and how much money you’re making—that is, if your message can change people’s actions.

For example, we found that with two FMCG customers, open rates were about the same for Carousel ads and Text-only ads. However, Carousels led to over two times as many product page visits and catalog downloads. These useful ideas are essential for improving the success of campaigns.

Comparing data across groups of users also gives a more detailed picture of how engaged current customers are compared to new users, power users compared to inactive subscribers, and so on. This helps us come up with focused communication plans for different groups.

In Conclusion

As RCS messaging spreads around the world, these tips have helped our business stay ahead of the curve and get great results in retail, financial services, the auto industry, and other areas. RCS is going to be the most important part of marketing plans in a world where mobile is the main way people interact with brands after the pandemic.

If you’re a marketer starting out with RCS texting, I hope this guide based on our real-life experiences helps you do your best! Please share your ideas or questions in the box below. I hope you like reading “5 Key Tips for Marketers to Master RCS Mobile Messaging”.