6 RCS campaigns to boost customer engagement.

SMS is one of the most popular messaging channels worldwide, but it can be hard to stand out with just plain text and emojis. RCS takes SMS to the next level for android users—and now Apple users too, enabling marketers to create rich and dynamic campaigns that engage customers and get great results.

But how can you use RCS to its full advantage, and create marketing communications that truly stand out in an increasingly competitive market?

In this article we explore the ways you can use RCS to support your RCS marketing strategy and discuss six real-world examples of inspiring RCS campaign ideas you can learn from.

What is RCS Business messaging?

Rich Communication Services (RCS) takes the accessibility and simplicity of SMS and enhances it with high-resolution rich media and interactive components, such as suggested replies, contextual action buttons, web links, and maps.

These features capture customers’ attention, keep them interested, and create memorable experiences. And that means businesses using RCS often see an increase in engagement in comparison to traditional SMS and MMS channels. This in turn leads to higher conversion rates and increased sales.

RCS campaign engagement—so why is it so good?

As reported by both Webex and Mobilesquared, in-market campaigns of RCS are showing read rates anywhere from 73% to 92%. This isn’t surprising considering the channel has such a high reach like SMS.

And it gets even better once users open their RCS messages. Email typically achieves a click through rate (CTR) between 2-4%, and SMS around 3%. But RCS can achieve a CTR of up to 7% and, importantly, a 20% increase in conversion compared to traditional channels.

So how does RCS achieve these results? It comes down to its dynamic features that give customers more choice in how they engage with brands:

Intuitive experience with its app-like interface and interactive components that support more seamless interactions.

Rich media, offering several content formats ranging from free-form content, such as text and media, to templated content, such as rich cards and carousels.

Verified business profile so customers always know it’s really you on the other end.

How RCS messaging can support your marketing strategy

The capabilities of RCS open up a vast number of opportunities to enrich your campaigns, boost engagement, and, ultimately, drive sales. It takes all the advantages of SMS and extends them further to enable truly engaging communications.

RCS offers creative ways to achieve a variety of campaign objectives:

Build loyalty with sender verification marks, ensuring your customers can be confident you are who you say you are.

Encourage customer interaction with single tap replies and seamless conversations in a single interface

Engage and excite prospects with images, GIFs, videos, carousels, and more.

Help customers to better self-serve by anticipating customer needs and offer proactive, supportive information to empower self-service.

Whatever your campaign goal, RCS can take your marketing communications to the next level. With RCS achieving a 500% uplift in campaign engagement, it’s little wonder businesses are using it for a huge array of targeted messages and campaigns.

Six RCS campaign examples to inspire stand-out marketing

There are plenty of RCS messaging examples and industry use cases you can adopt in your own marketing strategy, but here are six key campaign examples to enrich your own RCS approach:

#1 Schedule communications for bank holidays

As customers switch off from working at the start of the bank holiday, a well-timed, visual, and dynamic message can inspire them to take action and treat themselves.

To take advantage of the spring bank holiday, Vodafone timed a relevant and thoughtful RCS campaign around the holiday. They sent customers an opportunity to receive a bank holiday offer, and customers that responded ‘yes’ received a three-card customized carousel containing seasonal offers from the network’s commercial partners. Customers who responded ‘no’ received a link to personalized rewards and the opportunity to opt-out of future messaging.

Vodafone also ran the same campaign across SMS and MMS channels to gather comparative performance data. SMS and MMS scored a dramatically lower response rate of around 1%.

Knowing when your target customers are busy or not can be the difference between them swiping away a notification or opening it. So time your messages for moments your customers will be most likely to engage. This could be national holidays or, if you hold data on key dates for your customers such as their birthday, you can offer promotions or freebies to inspire loyalty then too.

CPaaS solutions are an excellent way to offer your customers a range of communications channels and styles, achieve actionable, granular insight, and use RCS seamlessly for holistic and dynamic customer journeys.

Create stand-out customer journeys with Webex

Webex Connect, our messaging platform enables you to build compelling marketing experiences by integrating RCS into your omnichannel strategy.

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#2 Create personalized offers that catch your customer’s eye

Based on your customer demographic buying habits, you can create RCS campaigns to specifically showcase similar products that they may want to add to their basket.

For example, a beauty retailer can highlight specific items from their new summer holiday range, leveraging their student audience buying behaviours.

With rich carousels enabling recipients to easily scroll through product pictures and descriptions and quick links to purchase, you’ll make the buying process intuitive and easy. And by removing any barriers that may hold a customer up before they can check out, you can increase the chances your customers will buy now rather than just filling their basket and then forgetting about it.

#3 Offer extra support when customers start to leave

RCS campaigns are great for targeting new customers, or customers who are already loyal. And they’re also an excellent way to re-engage customers who might be about to switch to another brand—giving additional support, incentives to stay, and access to more resources.

#4 Use countdowns and teasers for your biggest campaigns

With rich media features, you can tease upcoming announcements, create countdowns, or share sneak previews of any soon-to-be-released products, services, or deals. Then, when you’re ready to fully launch, you can create an engaging announcement that your customers are already excited about.

Perhaps your furniture store is approaching its 10th anniversary, and you’re marking the occasion with a new collection. Rather than keeping everything for one specific day, you can use your entire birthday month to tease new pieces, run giveaway competitions, or even treat one lucky subscriber to a whole new suite.

While marketing is a year-round endeavor, some campaigns deserve an extra push. Whether it’s a new product launch or your biggest sale of the year, RCS can drum up the extra excitement a campaign deserves.

#5 Combine surveys with chances to win rewards

If you want to gather feedback from customers or encourage them to take part in a survey, you could bundle it in with a chance to win one of your products or a voucher to spend as a thank you for their time.

RCS’s capabilities provide a great opportunity to bundle multiple aspects of a campaign into one seamless customer journey—and give customers a chance to win rewards along the way.

 #6 Make communications intuitive and boost loyalty

One key way to increase customer loyalty, is to make their lives as easy as possible. And RCS’s intuitive communications and simple-to-use action buttons are a great way to do just that.

Pharmacy2U, the UK’s largest dedicated online pharmacy, uses RCS to offer innovative and effective communications with patients for everything from ordering prescriptions to reminding patients to get tests before a repeat.

RCS messages to previous patients resulted in 36% more patients returning to Pharmacy2U versus email and SMS and, consequently, nine out of ten users said they’d recommend the service to a friend.

RCS can enhance order tracking, subscription renewals, abandoned basket item reminders, and more. The addition of rich media and simple click-through options have proven to be more effective than traditional communications in engaging customers.

Get the most from your RCS messaging campaign

With so many capabilities embedded in RCS, it’s important to make sure you’re using them all appropriately and effectively.

• Personalize interactions so every customer feels special

• Time communications to perfection

• Send messages your customers remember

• Keep experimenting and optimizing

• Get customer permission right

Our CPaaS solution is an excellent way to offer your customers a range of communications channels and styles, achieve actionable, granular insight, and use RCS seamlessly for holistic and dynamic customer journeys.