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Every brand needs to have an RCS strategy, even in the US, where interoperability issues and sub-25% device penetration have CMOs questioning whether the investments are worth it.
Interoperability Is a Blocker
First, let’s acknowledge that interoperability is a significant issue. If ubiquity prevents SMS from dying, the lack of interoperability prevents RCS from thriving. There are three layers to this problem. The first is person-to-person interoperability: the ability for one consumer to send an RCS message to another, akin to an iMessage with standard “delivered” confirmation. The second layer concerns the capacity to send a P2P RCS message between consumers on different networks. The final layer involves the ability for an individual to send an RCS message to any device on any network and any operating system.
Thanks to Android Messages and efforts to standardize the Android user experience, device-to-device messaging within a network is functional. However, it doesn’t work across networks, and certainly not across operating systems. While it’s convenient to make Apple the scapegoat, the industry’s inability to facilitate cross-carrier connectivity has been an embarrassment. We excel at producing RCS demos, but not so much at making things operational. But does this truly matter?
In time, these issues will be resolved. The industry might not progress as quickly as some would like, but if SMS, voice, and data interoperability serve as an example, these problems will also be addressed eventually. Brands Unilever, Netflix, Burger King, and Budweiser have already started using RCS. Like them, all brands should prepare.
Reason 1: RCS Is Conversational. Really.
Conversational messaging is trending. Everyone asserts they’re doing it, and it’s where brands invest most of their time. However, unless you’re communicating with WhatsApp, iMessage, Viber, etc., SMS is a one-way conversation forced into a conversational paradigm. In RCS, every message initiates a conversation. Even a notification can include buttons that say “OK.” Sending a message, then, is like pushing a webpage to a mobile device. Ask yourself, what other actions could the user take? What actions must they take? What options do you want to offer them?
For a brand accustomed to one-way messaging, or request/respond email, this is a new muscle. Better start training your marketing and product organizations now so they can take advantage of its capabilities. Of course, in light of RCS’s reach problem, this may look like a luxury, an academic exercise at best. But thanks to Apple, RCS has become a high-impact channel for performative use cases.
Reason 2: Even 10% Reach Is Better Than Nothing
Apple killed mobile tracking as we know it. Unless you have a unique agreement with Google, Yahoo, or Bing (Microsoft), achieving last-click or last-tap attribution (the marketing holy grail) is nearly impossible. The marketing joke is that you waste 50% of your spend, but you’re just not sure which half. Well, thanks to Apple, no one is even certain it’s 50% anymore. Given this, even if you can reach 10% of your user base via RCS and you can verify when the message was delivered and when they interacted with the message, it justifies the additional cost of implementing RCS. According to the GSMA, that 10% just became 3-10x more significant.
Reason 3: Start Now; Your Competition Already Did
The technology will be here before you know it. And if you start your product conversation when “everyone is doing it,” you’re already late. Technology is notoriously ruthless to those who are late to adopt it. The prize always goes to the risk-taker, the early entrant, the one who has already tested out the kinks before going all in. Start now so you can learn and iterate, and when it becomes mainstream, you’re already surfing the wave instead of trying to paddle out to one.
This is Personal
I helped bring one of the first non-marketing RCS use cases to the world. In a world where two-factor authentication quickly becomes two-password authentication, the native security in RCS allows for a frictionless authentication experience. The implementation was even awarded a patent. And yet, the ones that get mass adoption will be the ones that make commerce, travel, and shopping easier. Performative scenarios that narrate and converse, sense and respond, will be the ones that show RCS’s true power. Marketing is the ideal topsoil for such use cases.
Finally
RCS will kill SMS quietly—confine it like the lone fax machine in the office in the middle of nowhere. All brands must prepare for that future by building for RCS today.