The Mobile World Congress Americas (MWCA) event was another great success this year, with over 22,000 attendees coming out to see the newest cutting-edge technology. For us, perhaps the most exciting new technology is RCS (Rich Communication Services). The world’s first hologram conducted by Verizon was pretty cool too, but comes second to RCS for us because it didn’t quite meet our Star Wars expectations.
For those new to RCS, let’s back up. RCS is a term for rich business-to-consumer messages which, unlike SMS, are not limited to just plain text. RCS allows brands to send interactive and engaging messages to their customers, bringing a variety of experiences directly into the users’ messaging application. It hosts conversational features that were historically confined to apps, like rich media, custom branding, and allowing users to find the nearest store location or even place an order without ever leaving the messaging app.
At MWCA, our partner Subway was one of the 20 brands that demonstrated how they are successfully interacting with their customers via RCS. Carissa Ganelli, Chief Digital Officer for Subway took the stage to give the audience her perspective on the evolution of messaging, and the success Subway has seen while using RCS. Already an advocate for using SMS to increase customer loyalty, Carissa is excited about the evolution of SMS with RCS. RCS will finally give Subway the tools to practice fundamental marketing strategies with rich content in the form of images and vides of delicious subs, and simple user flows which make it easy to order and reorder food. To help this evolution to come to fruition quickly, Carissa spoke directly to the carriers like Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T, asking them to begin the process of onboarding RCS with their subscribers.
To further demonstrate the impact RCS is having on her business, Carissa shared the key highlights of the latest Subway RCS campaign on Sprint. Subway RCS subscribers had a 60% higher click rate, and 146% higher intent to purchase than SMS subscribers. Overall, the test group performed three times higher than the results she presented at the MMA CEO & CMO Summit, from the campaign Subway did with Mobivity in February of 2018.
As for us, we’re busy supporting the growing RCS ecosystem by helping to deploy the messaging service globally. Mobivity is working with Google who has now officially partnered with Samsung for additional device and carrier reach. You may remember our prediction that messaging will eventually topple apps as one of the main ways brands will communicate with their customers – and we think that time is drawing nearer!