February 8, 2019 Posted by Pocketstop in Other Social Share
In a time when new technologies and solutions are emerging on a daily basis, businesses need to achieve the perfect balance between updating their strategies accordingly, and making sure that they always offer top-quality products and services. Marketing has and always will be an excellent measurer of how companies keep up with new trends and how their customers react to them. By being at the intersection between business growth and customer satisfaction, marketing and the methods it uses to connect with the target audience provide us with an insightful report on how technologies influence industries. Among current digital marketing methods, rich communications services (RCS) is rapidly getting the attention of customers, companies, and marketers, as it seems to offer the best of all worlds.
Currently, the GSM Association is working with operators around the world towards expanding the functionality and experience of advanced communications. More than 73 operators in 55 countries have already introduced rich communication services, and the success of combining traditional voice services with the benefits of enhanced messaging is already starting to gather more and more attention from the marketing industry. Shifting the focus towards messaging as a platform is something that customers have been requested for years. Although SMS remains one of the most popular means of communication, there is an imminent need for offering more options when it comes to the actual message.
Essential Aspects of Rich Communication Services
Seen as the future of text message marketing, RCS changes the way we think about communicating with individuals, institutions, and brands by providing us with a much more interactive way of staying in touch. Multimedia capabilities are something that we’ve learned to expect over the years, but things are changing with the help of RCS. With this new technology, text messaging can look more like an online messaging apps, in terms of personalization, attachment, size of messages, and many others.
Even though great strides have been made in advancing the cause and visibility of RCS, it is still in its infancy and expected to begin entering main stream consciousness in 2020. What that means for brands everywhere is they must get themselves prepared today in order to not be left behind when RCS is embraced everywhere.
When it comes to its impact on the marketing industry, things are rather straightforward, as both customers and companies have demanded a richer means of communication that could retain the effectiveness and intimacy of SMS marketing. Yet, as is the case with all marketing methods, knowing how to implement it in accordance with your goals and the needs of your customers is the deciding factor when it comes to obtaining successful outcomes from RCS.
How to Implement Rich Communication Services
Regardless of your industry, you will want to make use of rich communication services, as they significantly improve communicating with customers in all industries, from retail or entertainment, to restaurants or real estate. Embracing RCS marketing as a successor to SMS marketing can be done through a fairly seamless process, as long a you make sure you are drafting your strategies based on meticulously gathered and analyzed data. Further, we are going to discuss use cases for rich communication services (RCS) businesses can implement and how this emerging technology can give you an edge over your competitors.
Using RCS for Customer Service
Based on the number of mobile phone messaging app users, we already know that customers prefer SMS when it comes to connecting with brands on matters of customer services. To that extent, text-to-chat solutions such as nGage have significantly reduced not only the duration of support interactions, but also the problems that occurred when using voice calls. RCS can take things further by allowing you to implement features such as: media attachments, brand identifiers, product carousels, or quick-action buttons customers can use to interact with you and better convey their issues.
Improve Branding Through RCS Marketing
Implementing RCS marketing strategies will allow you to communicate with your customers in the same way you did through text message marketing, but with the added benefits we’ve talked about. This is an excellent opportunity for you to develop a branding strategy which to pair with an RCS marketing campaign. If your brand or product identifiers are not creating a united vision in the mind of your customers, or if the elements that you use are not clearly associate with your company, you can design your RCS communications in order to embody them.
Using RCS for Promoting New Products, Sales, or Events
Promoting things such as the launch of new products, loyalty programs, special offers, or events through the help of SMS marketing and proximity marketing is a simple, cost-effective and highly successful marketing method. RCS technologies will enhance the results of those campaigns as it will allow you to add features that your customers have been requesting for a long time.
Using a messaging solution that will provide you with the possibility to add images of your products, interactive buttons for your customers, emojis, and many others. If you are having a sale, you can help your customers better visualize the offers by providing them with images from inside your stores. If you are promoting an event, you can use RCS to interactively communicate with your customers in relation to attendance. If your company operates in the hospitality industry, you can use RCS to send deals that offers not only brand imagery but also media including maps and directions to your location. RCS technologies are also perfect for managing subscriptions or loyalty programs, as they can provide both you and the customers with a richer interface from which they can choose to personalize the services any way they want.
Using RCS for Streamlining Home Delivery Processes
RCS will be highly impactful for the restaurant business. If you ask people what has excited them the most about the development of advanced communications, they will tell it is in how it they have improved the way they conduct day-to-day activities such as calling a cab or ordering food. With the help of RCS, your business can significantly streamline your home delivery processes making it easier for your customers to choose from a wide array of options. If in the past, when ordering food via a voice call people had to either know what they wanted or spend time listening to someone listing the options, with RCS, you can simply choose from a beautifully designed carousel of products. You will potentially also use quick-action buttons to guide the customer toward various menus or suggestions.
Whether you are a retailer or a restaurant owner, implementing RCS technologies will help you further develop the relationship you have with current and future customers, and increase marketing ROI. Just like any new marketing technology, make sure you conduct a thorough research and taylor all strategies in accordance to your needs and those of your customers. To learn more, the GSM Association has a page dedicated to RCS case studies from which you can find out more information about other businesses that have decided to take this path.
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