Email and SMS are saturating and aren’t the most engaging anymore. It’s a challenge to engage customers and get results using only one or two channels. What if there’s another channel to strengthen your marketing mix? Today, we’re excited and proud to present an industry-first, exclusive offering from Netcore Cloud—RCS in Journeys.
Outperform existing flows with Rich Communication Services messages in your journeys for better engagement and revenue.
What is RCS?
Remember MMS? It had its limitations—wasn’t easy to use, was slow and expensive. Technology has come a long way since then. RCS is SMS on steroids, a better version of MMS. RCS makes it possible for you to engage customers with product images, videos, and document files.
Here’s what an RCS message looks like:
It’s delivered in the same inbox as SMS, but also has brand identity elements like the logo and description to inspire confidence:
The power of RCS in Journeys
Get noticed by your customers. RCS gets metrics like 30-35% reads and an average 16% click rates. That’s around 20X higher read rates than plain text SMS.
To maximize effectiveness, we took this high-engagement channel and added it to our journeys.
This is what RCS in journeys looks like:
This unlocks higher reach, engagement, and a multitude of use cases. There’s also reporting to understand how both RCS and RCS in Journeys are performing.
Taking omnichannel a step further
Adding RCS in journeys makes both RCS and the journey more effective. The result is a stronger marketing mix for better outcomes. By using RCS with email, SMS, and WhatsApp, optimize your mix to suit your marketing objectives; like:
- Expanding reach
- Maximizing engagement
- Minimizing cost
From data enrichment to onboarding to personalized product recommendations and taking explicit feedback, there’s a long list of use cases to explore with RCS.
Unlock powerful use cases
Unlock more use cases than ever for any business and almost any engagement problem with RCS in Journeys.
Struggling to capture customer attention when they’re off your website? A crowded app or no app at all doesn’t have to limit your reach. Adding RCS to your marketing mix alongside other channels solves hard-to-tackle problems like these.
To understand this better, let’s say you’re running an eCommerce store. Some users purchase products and others add to cart but don’t engage. Most emails and SMSes are ignored and many of them may not be on WhatsApp.
To capture user attention, display the items in cart or show personalized recommendations via RCS in journeys, like below:
To maximize engagement, use an effective channel mix like:
RCS → (unreachable users) → WhatsApp → email/SMS
Let’s look at another example, say you’re a FinTech app with many features and offerings. Users sign up and start using your app for payments. But you have much more to offer. You set up RCS in journeys to upsell these new features and product offerings with maximum reach:
WhatsApp → RCS → email/SMS
If these features have revenue potential, using a mix like the one above where WhatsApp is first will maximize reach at a slightly higher cost.
Or if you want to minimize costs and get good reach, use a journey like this:
Email → SMS/RCS → WhatsApp
Use RCS in Journeys to build journeys for many use cases like data enrichment, carousel product recommendations, and much more. Engage users outside your app and website with rich messages.
Activity triggers + RCS = even more use cases
We have even more exclusive offerings.
Use RCS read/delivered/failed as a starting trigger and build your journeys. Further, account for user behavior and wait for any activity or check if the user has performed an activity using our behavioral nodes.
Craft journeys where you send an RCS and:
- If users read it → wait to see if they added products to cart
- If they don’t read → retarget with other channels and check if they proceed through funnel conversion activities
- If they read and don’t checkout → retarget with other channels to guide them toward conversions
Case studies: Unleashing the power of RCS
MyTeam11 wanted to reach the maximum number of users during IPL for better conversions. They also wanted to use an alternative channel to WhatsApp for various reasons. RCS was used as the preferred channel for communication as responsiveness was likely to be higher compared to SMS or email. A clear CTA was shared with customers, to make teams.
The rich media message helped achieve impressive results:
1. MyTeam11 saw 8X conversions over SMS campaigns
2. 16.6% conversions from total RCS sent, and
3. 40-48% read rates
To know more about using RCS in journeys, get in touch with your customer success representative or talk to us.
