Rich Communication Service (RCS) Channel

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Introduction
  • Features of RCS
  • Benefits of RCS
• Onboarding a brand
• Create an RCS message template
• Configure an RCS campaign
• View RCS reports

Introduction

Capillary provides various communication channels (SMS, Email, WhatsApp) to engage with brands' customers. With the advancing trends, it becomes very important to reach out to customers efficiently,  capture their attention, and keep them engaged. 

RCS is a next-generation SMS protocol that upgrades text messages with Rich features like branding, media, and analytics. It is aimed to replace SMS with a richer text system. This combines the messaging features of popular messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger delivered through the default SMS messaging app.

Features of RCS

• Allows brands to send media messages such as images, videos, and carousel media messages, add CTA buttons in messages. It also has better UX.
• Enables brands to have their verified profile, business profile picture, and bio which increases the brand’s verifiability.
• RCS offers detailed analytics of executed campaigns. This includes messages delivered, opened and link click rates. 
• Capillary allows brands to configure fallback SMS within an RCS Campaign so that users who are not reachable on RCS can be automatically reached out through SMS.

Fallback SMS mechanism:  When a certain audience is not reachable through RCS, then the system will send the configured fallback SMS to the user. Brands can easily reach out to all customers through one campaign and do not need to run separate campaigns for RCS and SMS. A possible small set of users who might not receive will directly get an SMS, so communication to each user is done through one campaign.

• Other capabilities:

Benefits of RCS

• Reduces the chances of customers blocking the brand: RCS messages are delivered in the SMS messaging box, where consumers are used to receiving promotional messages.
• Better customer engagement: Through RCS  brands can engage their customers better by sharing high-resolution photos and videos, making it easier to add appointments to the calendar, mapping directions to physical outlets, sharing a carousel of products, and more.
• Enables running campaigns smoothly: RCS does not have template whitelisting, therefore a smoother process for brands to run campaigns.
• No mandatory opt-out tag: RCS does not have a mandatory opt-out tag process. Hence, brands can leverage it to reach out to customers who are not reachable on another channel.
• Benefits using Capillary RCS
  • You can attach incentives and engage on the RCS channel.
  • You can segment target customers and runs RCS campaigns. This yields to a better ROI.
  • You can track detailed analytics of campaign performance, user-level insights, purchase pattern, and ROI from both the online and offline world to help brands take data-backed decisions.
  • You can configure fallback SMS. This is extremely efficient. If any customer is not reachable over RCS can get a preconfigured SMS.

Onboarding a brand

To enable RCS for a brand, you would need to fill in the onboarding form and send it to the RCS team with the subject {Capillary Technology | RCS Account | brand name}.

We would then share the details with the Karix team for next steps and update you once the account is created. For more details, see here.

Create an RCS message template

Once RCS is configured for your brand, you can start with creating RCS message as mentioned in the following.

1. On Engage+, navigate to the Creatives tab.
2. Click Create new.
   

3. In Creative name, enter a name for the template.
4. In Media, choose the desired media type.
   • None: To create a plain text message.
   • Image: To create an image message and upload the image from your local system or Gallery.
     
5. In Title, enter the title of the message if needed (supports up to 200 characters). You will see the title preview on the right side as you type.
6. In Text message, enter the message content. Insert dynamic text in the message wherever required using +Add labels. It supports up to 2000 characters. You can preview the message on the right-side as you type.
7. Check Buttons to add CTA option in the message. Set the Button text and Button link of the CTA accordingly. Currently, you can have only one CTA.
8. In SMS message, you can set the fallback message for customers who could not receive RCS message. Fallback message allows sending an SMS to customers who could not receive RCS. It could be because Google Communication App is not installed in their device, or using Non-Android phones like iPhone.
   • Use dynamic text in the message wherever required using +Add Labels.
   • For DLT enabled brands, you will see an option to Add SMS creative. Just choose an approved template. However, for this you need to log on to the Karix portal and upload the DLT template for your brand as currently Google does not support DLT Compliance configurations.
   • Click Preview to see how the SMS looks like and make necessary changes if required.
     
9. Click Done to save.

Configure an RCS campaign

The steps involved in creating an RCS campaign is very similar to other types of campaigns except in Content and Delivery settings.

1. Create a campaign as mentioned Create a Campaign.
2. In Content, select an RCS template that you wish to add.

3. In Delivery settings, you can change the sender ID for Fallback SMS. RCS sender ID is selected by default. By default, it will have the default SMS sender ID configured for the brand.

View RCS reports

You can view the performance of an RCS message or campaign. In Engage+, you can see the summary report. For detailed report, you need to login to Databricks report where you can generate both Campaign level report and RCS message level report.

To view the summary report of an RCS message:

• Open the campaign and navigate to the RCS message for which you want to see the performance report.