Engagement also compounds over time: as RCS-capable reach grows and AI personalization improves, the same channel keeps getting more effective. For loyalty, re-engagement, and lifecycle messaging, RCS turns the inbox into an always-on, measurable engagement surface.
The measurability matters as much as the richness, delivery, reads, clicks, and replies all flow back, so engagement can be optimized rather than guessed at.
Treat cross-channel benchmark comparisons carefully, because the denominators differ. An email open depends on a tracking pixel that many clients now block or prefetch, so email open rates are simultaneously understated and inflated depending on the client mix. An SMS has no read signal at all, so SMS engagement is inferred from link clicks. RCS reports an actual read event from the device. A like-for-like comparison is therefore only honest at the click and conversion layer, and a headline that compares an RCS read rate to an email open rate is comparing two different measurements. The defensible claim is narrower and still strong: for the same audience and the same offer, RCS converts better than the SMS it replaced, and you can prove it on your own data with a holdout.
The metrics worth standing up before launch are delivered-as-RCS share, read rate, tap rate per suggestion, reply rate, and conversion attributed to the thread. The first one is the sleeper: it sets the ceiling on everything else, and it moves when you change message format rather than audience. If tap rate falls between two campaigns, check whether the fallback share rose first, because a message that arrived as SMS never had buttons to tap.
Engagement also decays with frequency in a way that is sharper than on email, because the message lands in a personal inbox next to family and friends. The channel's advantage is that people read it, and that advantage is spent every time you send something that did not deserve the interruption. Programmes that hold up over a year tend to start from transactional messages people actively want, order status, appointments, alerts, and add promotional sends slowly against a measured unsubscribe rate rather than a send calendar.
A holdout group is the one piece of measurement discipline worth insisting on. Keep a randomly selected slice of the audience on the old channel, compare conversion rather than engagement, and you get a number that survives scrutiny from finance. Engagement rates alone will always flatter a new channel, because the people who engage first are the people who were most engaged already.
How RCS improves customer experience covers the customer side of the same shift, RCS marketing the campaign side, and the analytics page shows how reads and taps are measured on SimplyRCS.
- No-app reach lets RCS engage the majority who never install a brand’s app.
- Full engagement signals (delivery, read, click, reply) make it measurable and optimizable.
- Compare channels at the click and conversion layer; read and open rates are not equivalent measurements.
- Delivered-as-RCS share sets the ceiling on every other metric, and it moves with message format.
- Use a holdout and measure conversion, since raw engagement rates flatter any new channel.