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Welcome to making Sense of MarTech, where the rabbit hole goes deeper than the headlines. This is a show that puts ideas to the test, not just on display on the hot seat. Today we have Stephanie Griffith. She built her reputation, calling out sass, Schilling, Ducey, Bros. Respect. And now she is at Clavijo, selling brands on a channel where the approval queue can take months.

Google says a billion RCS messages are already moving every day in the US. So today we find out whether RCS is the future of business messaging or just the future of waiting. Stephanie, aka Queen DTC, is a senior digital strategist at Clio and founder of DTC consulting and Email Preview IO. 14 years of retention and lifecycle marketing.

Every seat at the table. Brand roles at Bath and Body Works. Abercrombie and Fitch platform rolls at bloom reach drip. Clio agency time at annuity and her own LLC. She describes herself as someone who dabbles in the dark arts of email and SMS. Obsessed with that description. And that's either the most honest job description in martech or a red flag that she put it on her own LinkedIn on purpose, which I also would respect.

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Welcome, Stephanie. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to dive. And we're going to start off with some quick questions. Rapid answers. What was your first martech tool? Cheetah mail. I really had to dig deep for this one. So technically Cheetah Mail, but it was primarily supporting a migration to Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which I believe at the time was still exact target.

So really dating myself at this point. Well, you know, you went from the same behemoth to a different behemoth with a different font.

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Okay. Email or SMS if you had to kill one channel for DTC brands forever. Which one goes? This is probably the spiciest question anyone has ever asked me, and so I have to caveat this one for legal reasons. This is sort of a joke and does not represent your employer. Yes, none of my statements represent my employer for legal reasons.

This is a joke, but I'm going with email. Hear me out. I feel at this point it's pretty old tech. It really hasn't changed in 20 plus years. Unfortunately, it's architected on a lot of bad behavior and truly poor consent practices, and many brands are bad at the foundations of email sending that would actually make them better senders.

So I think my hope that that's going to change in the short term has has waned. So I feel like emails really become an actual hellscape in a lot of ways. Look at your inbox. Look at my inbox. Poor consumers who are signing up for those emails. And it's really only getting harder for marketers to cut through that noise, so I would kill it in its current form, preferably so we can make room for something new and something better.

I like that thought. Email is still king in my eyes. However, to your point, we could have a reimagining where we actually have better practices that everyone gets to follow legally. Okay, you've been brand side, agency side, platform side, and now open up my now and consulting side. Which seat has the most BS built into it?

Brand side. They all have a little bit. It's all a little bit different. But I would say brand side because even being not brand side, I still see where some of the BS make recommendations. They can't or don't want to follow them. So I'm sticking with brand side tracks.

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Okay, a spicier one. You used to call out Sass Schilling, DTC Bros publicly name the behavior you don't need to name a person. Look, I've got nothing but love for all the bros out in the DTC space. Actually building things and making our e-commerce industry better.

But what I don't love and where that, you know, that copy came from, you can find it on my on my website. For folks wondering what she's referencing is the phenomenon that I don't love is dudes evangelizing whatever platform was cutting them a check that week with zero evidence that they've ever actually touched the the tool or used it to, you know, be a better marketer or a better strategist.

It's just it's not marketing insight. Effectively. It's an ad read. I think it's bad for brands. And it just, you know, makes our industry's credibility worse. DTC Twitter was once a fun space, and then it got a little bit of a bad rap. And so yeah, that's the behavior. Nothing but love to the folks that are, you know, making our industry go round and making the industry better, but showing platforms you've never used.

Just to make a buck is something that I don't stand for or behind. Yeah, it's like the whole point is to be trustworthy. Why would anyone trust you if you know nothing about the tool and the inner workings? Oh, I digress. All right. The last of the rapid fire. What is your hottest take? Because I know you have a lot.

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I do, and I'm going to give you three that I really tried to think about and distill down. So here's my first one just for in marketing in general, I think everyone wants the comfort of a best practice for everything, but the only truth in marketing that I'm happy to stand behind is that it depends. My next one is going to be that email isn't dead, but brands are actually pretty bad at it.

Harkening back to why I would kill it between email and SMS and the probably the biggest one because it applies regardless of channel, is that brands should really focus on sending better messages, not more of them. Yes. One.

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Quality over quantity. Every step of the way. Okay, well, I want to set the stage. And one of the reasons that you and I know each other is specifically about RCS. And the channel of RCS has a really compelling ROI story.

Click through rates of 15 to 30%, with standout campaigns topping 50. And all this is against an 8 to 16 week carryall approval queue. Most brands cannot see inside of. You have sat in the exact center of this contradiction, telling brands to trust a channel while working for the platform, managing the waitlist.

That's where we're starting. So your entire consulting thesis was to be to value get brands results fast. No bloated agency timelines 8 to 16 weeks for a carrier approval is the opposite of that. How do you sell the patience to a DTC brand that needs Q4 revenue right now? Yeah, that's a fair question. And I think what I want to lead with is like patience and preparation is definitely what's required to make RCS happen.

But thankfully that doesn't mean that their marketing ceases to function in the meantime. This is the opportunity. Or I'd say while they're waiting for RCS to mature, and if they're waiting for a formal registration and approval for actually leveraging the channel, they really should be optimizing their existing channels, namely SMS, right?

Because RCS is the evolution. It's the the sexy big brother, big sister of SMS as we know it today. And they should be preparing to evolve to the new standard that RCS is setting. So they're really ready to capitalize on that shift as the channel matures. and that approval queue. I just I think I want to set the stage that like I don't want brands to be afraid of it.

It doesn't always take that long. It tends to take that long if folks don't follow the approval process, if they aren't prepared and if they're ultimately trying to wing it, or if they're trying to be lazy or bad actors in the space. So I think that they follow the guidelines that they need to follow. And if they're doing things right and trying to mature their existing SM's communications, then they should be set up for success to make that next leap and evolution.

Here's a counter position worth putting on the table if the process is this opaque and slow. Isn't the rationale move for now, at least for most mid-market brands, to just optimize SMBs and wait for RCS to mature rather than divert the resources toward a channel that may not be live before the holiday window closes.

I think the best way I can summarize that is to say optimize. Absolutely. But should they wait? No. I think what we saw when SMS really took off over the last, what we'll call it six years. I guess. I can't believe that that's how long it's been since I first started yapping about this channel. We saw early adopters really benefit.

Yes. We're looking at, you know, some channels saturation and obviously channel maturity. It's just that mobile communications are evolving a lot faster, obviously, in comparison to what we see for things like email. So waiting is not going to necessarily benefit folks here. They want to be prepared to make the move.

They don't have to fully wait for the the channel itself to mature. I think they just need to be prepared to actually make these strategic moves and kind of move in parallel with the evolution of the channel. So there's no reason that they can't, you know, optimize and make those adjustments at the same time.

And truly, a strong SMS practice and a strong channel foundation is only going to benefit the brands that are making that next step into sending through RCS for sure. if you've already built kind of a tool with all of the rules and the things you want to accomplish, you already have essentially like the spec, the brief of how you want to implement it elsewhere.

So you kind of did the work, but you get to transfer it. Exactly. Yep. Crawl, walk, run I think is a great approach here. SMS walked through RCS at one point. At some point can run. So yeah, that's how I should be thinking about it. Short codes. Anyone that's gone through that kind of process is really not. Yes, it's not for the faint of heart, but for anyone that's kind of already made it from regular SMS to short code approval, who who have gone through vetting and verification and are ideally, you know, adopting and modeling good sender practices should not have that hard of a time minus some of the things that are out of their control for the approval timelines, but they shouldn't have that hard of a time making the next kind of leap and it will be worth it.

Like go through the pain now to set yourself up for being able to benefit in the future, rather than waiting and then trying to compete against more and more and more brands trying to get access to that channel. Yeah. Much smarter to be prepared and ahead of the game than when the game is available. Hit the ground running 100%.

So architecturally, do you consider it a best practice to rely on RCS first and SMS second, or is that just a future forward way of thinking about it? Yeah. Again, with my hot take stance on best practices, I'm going to say it depends. But essentially the I think how I want brands to think about this. And I believe there's really strong platform alignment here in the ecosystem, regardless of who you're sending through, is really that once a brand is approved and is able to adopt RCS, they really should be going all in on that channel to ensure that the consumer experience is cohesive.

If you're switching back and forth on purpose, you're running the risk of going from one branded and verified sender experience to something that all of a sudden doesn't have that verification mark anymore. So like that will naturally be confusing and also just a downgrade in experience for consumers.

SMS fallbacks exist, and they really are that going to be that catchall for situations where devices don't support the modern evolution, you know, of RCS from a channel standpoint, but that's at this point we're looking at over 85% of devices in the US market. You know, keep it scoped there for now, are able to support RCS, and that gap is only going to get smaller.

So you really want to be optimizing for the majority. The risk there is pretty low. We still know that that SMS works. It's there as a fallback where you need it. But truly, brand verification and trust is what the best practice is. And that is ultimately what RCS is building towards and provides for sure.

And there's a lot of similarities with email where you have a robust program, you have fallback IP's and domains, just in case, in a very similar setting. That said, I will say I don't think SMS is going anywhere, especially for really transactional really even like governmental alerts, because it's a completely different infrastructure and architecture of how that technology is deployed.

So there will be uses for both. But from the marketing, particularly B2C perspective, I can't see much use cases for SMS at this point. Yeah, RCS is the future. I think the word that comes up, and I think when you hear anyone in this space talk about it, it's going to be the word ubiquitous, like it is going to be the new standard.

Is that going to be today, slash tomorrow we're getting closer. You know, a year ago I was hyping this up saying 2026 is the year for RCS. Same

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lots of us have been, you know, watching and waiting. The truth is it's it's here. Obviously, there's things changing all the time. There's kinks to work out. It is a new protocol. It's a new channel, but also architected. It is a channel that everyone's excited about and I don't see it moving backwards.

So yes, SMS is not going anywhere overnight, but RCS is going to become the new standard. And much like we've already kind of talked about, better to start building towards that new standard versus being in the position of having to race to catch up, without a doubt. Okay, I want to get a little bit more technical.

And so RCS gets mentioned. I feel like in every slide deck on every landing page, but it's never actually explained. And I want us to fix that. And I want other folks to really understand what this tool can actually be and what this channel is. So walk me through what actually happens in the approval process, from submission to aggregator review to carry or sign off.

What does the platform actually control versus what Google's in the carriers? You name it. I just want the like most simple layman's terms of this is what to expect. Absolutely. And I'm going to go ahead and give a shout out to a previous guest that you had Eric Miao at attentive. If folks want kind of the pre read to this, I would say make sure you go back and listen to that episode.

But yes, what we should dig into is what that actual approval process looks like, because that's the current pain point, right? That's where folks are getting really excited. I think they think that it's a flip of a switch, and I just want to set realistic expectations for everyone.

And this is the part that brands, I think, haven't fully wrapped their heads around yet if they're not already part of the experience, if they're going through it, then they at this point are probably fairly well aware. It's not just a flip of the switch, and platforms truly can only do so much to make the process go faster.

So I want to make sure, folks, you've kind of named it. But just for everyone listening, especially on the brand side, you have your platform partner. So that's the views of the world, the attentive, the post scripts, etc. wherever you plan on doing the actual message sending, that's who your your messaging platform is.

Then there's also carriers and aggregators behind the scenes, right? So your carriers are obviously the T-Mobile's, the Verizon's, the AT&T of the world who have a responsibility to make sure that the traffic that's going out on their networks is good. I'm not going to get into the super technical nitty gritty of that, but just know that their priorities are a little bit different, than maybe your platform's priorities or the brand's priorities.

Okay, so we've named three out of the four players essentially. So we've got brands, we've got platforms, we have the carriers and then we have Google. So Google's who actually owns the RCS protocol. Like we call it a channel, but it's really a new messaging protocol. It's a new standard kind of mode of operating, if you will.

That is truly an evolutionary experience when you compare it next to SMS and MMS. And so those are the four players. And so when we think about the process and how it exists, it primarily falls under four parts. So we have sender info that we're trying to vet and verify brand contact info, company info.

And then ultimately the sign up form review which includes things like terms of service and privacy policies. And that's each of those things has multiple requirements within it. So I'll do my best to summarize. And then I will call out the specific piece that really seems to be tripping brands up. And unfortunately, I think what I want everyone to understand is like if you fly through step one and you make it all the way, you know, to step four and then you're rejected.

You do essentially get kicked back to the beginning of the process. And that's where we understand some of the disappointment is and some of the frustrations are for brands because they feel each time kind of like they're starting over. And in some ways they are. So my best advice before we walk through some of these is just use your platforms and any guidance they have for you as your partner in this, like they are doing the hard work.

They're really trying to set you up for success. They're not trying to be fun killers. This is not the time to get super cheeky and creative with some of the copy that you submit. Like follow the books, follow the recommendations, get the approval, and then you can make, you know, adjustments when you have that, you know, verified branded sender that you worked so hard to acquire.

So yeah, do your homework in advance and it'll really set you up for success. So I'm going to go back and kind of explain what each of those four parts is essentially looking for, and we'll spend time talking about the one that that trips folks up. So at the beginning, what you're really looking to do is define your sender info.

And so this is what subscribers actually see when they receive messages from a branded sender. For folks that haven't gone through this yet, you can consider this like a contact card on steroids. You have to provide certain information. So you need to be clear about what your sender name is actually going to be.

You can make minor adjustments here, but you do want it to ultimately reflect who you are as a company, what your brand name is and what you're going to be communicating with your consumers about. And again, don't be playful here. You want to be really clear. It's for marketing and transactional use cases.

Your platforms will provide those guidelines for you. So yeah, contact card on steroids because this is the thing that is going to automatically come over when someone has been awarded a verified branded sender ID.

And I guess what I should clarify here is for RCS, you're not sending necessarily from a phone number. We're not dealing with toll free numbers. We're not dealing with short codes or ten digit long codes anymore. You are getting verified similar to how you would as an email center. Honestly, as your brand.

Like it's not about the phone number type, it's about are you a verified sender at all? And that's the actual protocol. So I want folks to kind of wrap themselves around that or wrap their their minds around that as a concept, because it is a pretty significant change in the technology itself. So then you're also going to move on to submitting brand and contact info.

And I think this is where folks are probably a little more loose on the SMS side. You can put some of this info in your contact card. It is now a requirement. You have to provide a way for customers to ultimately reach out for help and support. So this will be your actual website information. Thank God. Honestly.

Honestly, You really do need to give customers a way to actually reach out and get the help that they're looking for.

This is a best practice. This is not a bad thing. I want everyone to understand. Yes, there are multiple parts of this process. It is again, not a flip of a switch. They're asking quite a lot from brands, but it's all in service of our consumers. It is I as a consumer, you as a consumer, like I want this experience to be better.

And so I do think brands who go through this will of course reap the rewards because it's just it's in service of our consumers. So even if it sounds like a lot, it is ultimately it's a good thing for everyone. So cool. And then company info. And so this is where most approvals stall or start to fall off the rails.

I probably should put this honestly at number one, but the challenge here is that it doesn't come up until later in the process. And this is where folks get hung up. So this is the part where companies have to legally prove they are who they claim to be. And this ultimately requires legal and tax documents primarily.

I want to say it's an SS four form as well as your your business Ein. Like you actually have to prove that you are the company that you say you are, which is different in essence, right? For SMBs, it's actually more aligned with what we see in email world in terms of authentication and verification. Like go figure.

A company that also has Gmail, right, which is, as we know, one of the strictest inbox providers and really values authentication and verification is the same company that is behind some of the requirements here to prove that you are the sender that you say you are. And this is again good. It's weeding out bad actors.

It's making sure that your brand cannot be misrepresented. You can't be spoofed or snitched, as we call it in the SMS. I have never heard of smashed. Tell is it just a play on SMS or phishing SMS? Correct. It is a play on phishing. As we know in the email world. But for SMS we call it smashing. I

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love learning new terms, especially fun ones like that don't get smashed. Consumers don't want to be smashed. Brands don't want to get smashed. It's not good, right? Like this is how we get, you know, we receive political spam. We receive folks can scrape our phone numbers. That is a separate rant that we won't go on today, but they Google is aware of this.

Consumers are aware of this. The carriers are aware of this. So they are trying to hedge against that exact thing, to make the channel as trustworthy as it can be. And unfortunately, the burden to bear on that does fall on brands. And so I'm going to harp on this one, because where it gets tricky is especially if a brand say you're a brand that is a family of brands, you do have to prove that you are part of that family of brands and make sure that you're actually referencing and providing documentation that proves that you are affiliated with another entity.

And so if you know, if you are brand, a part of Acme Corp, whatever, we're going to make them up. You do have to be defining both of those things and actually submitting the evidence that shows there's a connection there. You cannot just get away with saying, oh yeah, we are brand and you have to take our word for it.

So make sure you are reaching out to your legal team. You are talking to your finance team well in advance, ideally of starting this process. Get whatever documents are necessary for you. Again typically that says for and an Ein, get those from your team or get that process started. So it is not a surprise to you when you hit that part of the process, because that is where we are.

I think the most often seeing folks get stuck or seeing those rejections because they just. If you can't prove who you are, then you're not going to get that stamp of approval and you do not get to move forward in the process. You don't get to pass go. You don't collect $200. You have to go back to the beginning.

And that would really suck. Yeah. And unfortunately, that is the part that sucks because we've seen it happen multiple times. And that's what again kicks folks back to the beginning. Then you sort of start the process all over.

So the best thing you can do for yourself and for your brand, of course, is to do the heavy lifting. Do the homework first. Make sure those requirements are laid out for you by your provider or your sending platform, and meet as many of them up front before you start this, because it should go so much smoother.

And then lastly, and finally, it's actually reviewing the signup form. This one also for a long time was actually where brands were also getting tripped up or rejected. They were, funny enough, not actually compliant with some of the things they were including on the SME's side. So if you're collecting email and SMS on the same step, no dice.

That's not good. They really should be separate. Separate consent captures if you're missing that legal disclosure language on your signup form. No dice. You will not pass. You absolutely have to have that. It's also an SMS requirement. There are certain things that you do have to add into legal opt in language on the signup form.

To be RCS compliant, you need to speak to having both marketing and transactional use cases. You can say marketing and transactional or marketing and informational, and you have to provide an example of each. So marketing cart reminders is a great one. So shopping cart reminders should definitely be called out.

And then transactional of course would be order updates shipping updates things like that. You will again you can see the guidelines many platforms have provided them very clearly. Don't get cheeky here. Do what is required of you. And I know I can speak confidently. On the Clavius side we have productize that part of the experience where you can grab screenshots of your form, where you're building that form so there's no confusion about the parts that are being submitted, what needs to be included in that.

And then you're not sending these, like, tiny little screen grabs. We would see submissions that would be like a whole, you know, you're grabbing a screenshot of the entire page, and then when you submit your application, they're trying to zoom in to a blurry image, no screenshot in as high res and zoomed in as you can, a high efficacy screenshot and submission of how you are capturing that consent.

It sounds like such a silly like common sense thing, but it really isn't. And that unfortunately happens very late in the process. And if you don't pass once again, what have we learned? You go back to the start. Oh, it's so hard. You can't even save your work. You can just begin again. It does get easier. Like, it's not like all of it gets, you know, thrown out.

But it's you do have to submit everything for resubmission essentially. And of course, like, I'm not going to lie that that is undeniably frustrating for anyone that goes through it. Undeniably frustrating for brands that there should be an appeal process.

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I cannot say I can't guarantee that anyone is going to fly through this, but we do have that. We do have circumstances where folks get it right and they are not waiting weeks or months.

They are moving through the process as we would expect. And the final thing I'll say, because this is the least sexy one, but it is very important. It's your terms of service and your privacy policy. It is not enough to simply have them and link to them.

You do have to actually denote that people are a agreeing to them, and there is language that you have to add to them to satisfy the requirements of RCS. And when you go through that submission process, you have to link to them. You don't just get to say, look, it's we have it referenced in our signup form, but then not on the link out.

I've seen plenty of examples of that, like no one's actually linking to them. Again, I can only speak for Flavio here, but we have also productized that where we have, we make it very clear to understand what you need to include from a language standpoint for your terms of service and your privacy policy.

We have a tool that allows you to check and verify those prior to completing that part of the submission. So in theory, if you pass those checks, you should be, you know, should be off to the races there. Yeah. Just make sure you're kind of doing all of those components. And then ultimately Google really is the final gatekeeper.

So I think final boss, the final boss, that is exactly that. Note like yes, Google is the final RCS boss. They own the protocol. Like they are ultimately. Who you're trying to appeal to. And they are trying to make this a an equitable process. Right? Like, the requirements are so strict because they need everyone to meet them.

They're not trying to give special treatment to big brands. Yeah. Which is we don't deserve it. Yeah. There is something a little bit different that is different, right? For what we've seen on the SM side. For folks that don't know, there's a list called the Russell 3000 top 3000. You know, fortune 500 brands in this space.

And there are situations in which those brands, if you were on the Russell 3000, you were basically just approved for certain things. That's not true for RCS. We love democratization. Exactly. That's the word. Yes it is. RCS is the great equalizer for mobile for mobile fingers. Questions. And yeah, Google is the final boss of who is allowed to send on that channel.

but if they've gone through the shortcode approval process and they understand the requirements for brand vetting and verification, they will be better set up to navigate the RCS process. That doesn't mean you have to wait to have shortcode.

At this point, I would say I would prioritize getting ready to make that jump to RCS. Just know that those are the requirements that you have to meet. They it is expected of everyone. You do not get special treatment just for being a big, sexy, you know, cool brand. Put your best foot forward there and it should go a lot, a lot smoother for you.

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00:31:13 — 00:37:49

And now back to the hot seat. What are the most common mistakes folks are making in their application process? So we can try to make sure they don't do it? Absolutely. The biggest missteps that we're seeing is really with providing that legal entity documentation. So your business's Ein and you're like and the documentation that supports that, you are the brand and the entity that you say you are.

So that's definitely number one. And then the second one I would say is in that sign up form review, if you're not meeting the requirements that go into what you have to include in that review process, that's going to fail. And it is unfortunately later in the process. So get your business entity information down before you start, and make sure that your signup form includes all of the information that is necessary, and that should really help.

Wonderful. And I'm hopeful every platform provider that will have RCS Productize is this situation. This process is workflow so that it's easier and you are prepared all along the way. Checklists, you name it. RCS and Apple Messages for business and even WhatsApp for business are all completely different frameworks, but brands and even marketers regularly conflate them, especially post iOS 18 from your perspective.

What's the specific misconception you keep having to correct, and why do you think? Has the industry has done such a poor job of drawing that line? Clearly? Thankfully, I think in the US things are a lot more clear. But even with I think WhatsApp is where some of the initial confusion was. I'll try to spell this out as clearly as I can.

WhatsApp is not approved for marketing use cases in the US. Yeah, not approved for marketing use cases in the US, but also it's reflective of how we operate from a cultural standpoint. SMS dominates here. We generally consider WhatsApp to be more common for international senders. So it's not that they can't have both, but from an audience and a recipient standpoint, US brands are not sending marketing communications to their US recipients because that's just not really how we we operate.

We're using SMS largely. I would also push back I have a feeling the carriers are incentivized to not promote non per message costs and fees that come into situation because you can be on WhatsApp and never need cell service. Correct. Yeah, 100%. I mean yeah, money is definitely a part of the equation here.

I won't, you know, lie and say it's not the carriers benefit every time there's a message, but so does meta. Right. So meta. I mean it's not free to use WhatsApp. There's definitely it's often more expensive for a lot of those marketing use cases when you are using them elsewhere. So that's also, I think, why we haven't seen strong adoption in the US.

Like folks are very cost conscious. SMS is already pay to play, our ad networks are paid to play, so everything costs money at this point. Email is is cheap, but it's not free, right? You're still paying obviously to send email. So if you're looking at all of those things, cost is definitely a factor. Apple messages for business also of course hasn't taken off in a larger way because it's limited to to Apple.

So we don't see, you know, cross device or cross protocol support. But more importantly, similar to WhatsApp it is limited to user initiated or customer initiated conversations. So it's really essentially relegated to customer support. There are some cool brands that use it Home Depot, Lowe's, definitely some folks that are in like the banking, airline and hospitality space where you're just trying to get a branded support experience.

I don't think we just haven't seen that take off because it's so limited. There's even more guardrails and you truly can't reach everyone. So that's where RCS comes in, I think. Again, RCS the great equalizer. Shout out to Apple for finally getting on board what folks may or may not know. And I think some legal intervention to make that happen.

But here we are again. It's good and it's in service of consumers is truly what it is. Google is not. They're not gatekeeping it from everyone. They wanted partnership there in terms of driving adoption of course. So this is one of the first times we're seeing Google and Apple have to play nicely with one another in order to, again, better the experience on the consumer side.

And so that's why RCS, of course, is going to take off the way that we not just expect. We already see it doing that. It is the natural next step for SMS. It's not a different app. You don't have to download WhatsApp. You're not limited to some other messaging protocol. Yes, it is better supported by data, but you still can receive it on your carrier networks.

And what I think a lot of folks also don't realize that they're already using it. You're using it to communicate with your blue bubbles and your your green bubbles. Group chats have gotten a lot better from an experiential standpoint, assuming folks support is turned on on their device for that. So we are already seeing it in our day to day.

RCS is not just limited to brand use cases, it is a peer to peer messaging protocol. We're just waiting for the technology to catch up to what brands are trying to do with it. But yes, it's definitely the more egalitarian and democratized option. It's the only one that satisfies the use cases that marketers want, and the experience that consumers ultimately are expecting to have, without a doubt.

Not to get too tangential, but back in October of last year, I interviewed Marissa Calabrese from beehive, as well as Jacob Alexa from omnivore and more. And he brought up a really interesting point about RCS and how Google will likely cut out the carriers. And it's going to be a whole different ball game if that is actually how it plays out.

And obviously we don't know if it'll play out, but they technically have the option whether they use that or not to their advantage. Yeah, I have no comment, only because I just I don't have any insight into what that looks like. But you're right, because they own the protocol. Exactly. They would have an opportunity to kind of shorten or yeah, collapse that ecosystem a little bit more.

I think my current stance is it's good that there are folks holding Google accountable. It's good that there are multiple players here. It's making everyone better. Like everyone's working on this together. The platforms are providing feedback to Google saying, hey, this is where things are not going the way that we want them to go or the way that our end user, which is ultimately the same, the way our end user is wanting the experience to go.

So it's good right now that there are folks, there's other people in the mix to put that pressure on Google and for everyone to ultimately hold themselves accountable to provide a better experience. Agreed. It's going to be a very interesting couple of years.

00:37:50 — 00:51:22

The fallback to SMS when a recipient isn't RCS capable is positioned as seamless. But does this seamless fallback actually mean a brand can send a rich branded RCS to 40% of the list and plain SMS to the other 60%, and resulting in completely different experiences with different CTAs and no clean way to attribute which drove the conversion.