Retail marketers now have options for text messaging, thanks to the widespread availability of Rich Communication Services (RCS) on most mobile phones. This app-like service is similar to the transition from text-only to HTML email, which became ubiquitous across email clients over time.
Originally, email messages were text-based, similar to mobile’s Short Message Service (SMS), commonly known as texting. Email messages did not fully support HTML until 1996, with the release of Hotmail.
RCS Availability and Cost
An estimated 96% of U.S. mobile devices include RCS, according to the report from Bandwidth Inc. However, the cost structure of RCS is still evolving, with some carriers charging per message and others per session, and pricing varying significantly by region and provider.
In many cases, RCS messages cost more than SMS but deliver more value. In fact, sending an RCS typically costs at least twice as much as an SMS, if not more.
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RCS can turn a text message into a product display, a guided shopping experience, or a service conversation, similar to HTML’s impact on email presentation. As a result, 59% of surveyed businesses were planning an RCS deployment, according to the report.
Comparing RCS and SMS
Not every texting campaign needs the latest and most expensive technology. For ecommerce merchants, the decision to use RCS should begin with the shopper’s needs and end with a comparison of RCS and SMS performance, costs, and conversions.
The jobs-to-be-done framework, developed by the late Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen and consultant Anthony Ulwick, focuses on a product’s ability to solve consumers’ immediate tasks rather than its features. This framework is helpful for the RCS-to-SMS comparison.
A marketer can describe the job in a simple sentence: When they receive this message, shoppers need to see the items in a cart to complete a purchase.
RCS is useful when its images, choices, buttons, or conversational features make that job easier than an SMS. The strongest ecommerce use cases for RCS tend to align with the jobs shoppers need to complete, such as recovering a purchase, evaluating an item, or choosing an option.
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Measuring RCS Campaigns
For an RCS campaign, a marketer can identify one primary job and one completion event. An abandoned-cart message, for example, should be judged by purchases, not carousel views.
A delivery message should be measured by successful scheduling, not button clicks.
SMS works well when the shopper’s job is simple, urgent, and easy to complete, such as confirming an order or retrieving a one-time passcode. In these cases, SMS is a better channel because it does not require rich media or interaction to progress.
Testing is the best approach when in doubt. Select a common job of shoppers when making a purchase and set up RCS and SMS automations, aiming them at similar customers, offers, products, and timing. RCS is worth the cost when it helps shoppers complete a job more profitably than SMS; otherwise, the simpler message remains the better choice.
