Optimizing the impact of drive-to-store messaging with Eram thanks to RCS

The challenge

The SMS channel has nothing left to prove in terms of its relevance and effectiveness in generating drive-to-store behaviors.

RCS (Rich Communication Services) is an attractive opportunity to consider: in fact, this format gives brands much more room for expression by capitalizing on the functionalities offered by smartphones. It enables to send photos or videos, or integrate a carousel… in order to optimize user engagement.

However, it is still difficult to be certain about the profitability of this new communication channel, as RCS costs more than SMS and is not yet compatible with the entire cell phone fleet.

The challenge for ERAM in this project was to gather granular learning on the performance and profitability of this new conversational channel.

The solution

We therefore carried out an experimental protocol on several targets, in order to compare the incremental impact of RCS versus SMS, while isolating the selection bias, i.e. the differences in performance explained by the fact that the two RCS-compatible and non-compatible populations are not quite identical.

4 populations were targeted during a promotional event:

Churners
Good and very good customers
Newly-reactivated via email
Possible churners

Each of the 4 populations was therefore subjected to an RCS eligibility test:

Individuals with non-RCS-compatible devices received a text message
Individuals with an RCS-enabled device were randomly divided into two subgroups: half received an RCS message, half an SMS

In addition to engagement data differentiated by customer segment, we can precisely measure the number of buyers and sales directly attributable to RCS.

The results

We analyzed the impact according to the different targets, which allows us to highlight the following learnings:

On churners: the best impact, with an incremental ROI of over 10
On good and very good customers (who represent a broader target): RCS is also very profitable.
On the specific target of newly email-reactivated customers: we note no significant impact. In fact, the change of channel (whether SMS or RCS) is sufficient for conversion, with no need to enrich the format via RCS.

97%

Rate of successful messages

Higher click-through rate than Rich SMS messages

+29 %

Higher conversion rate than SMS

"This first step in measuring the profitability of RCS makes us want to go much further, by rolling it out on our upcoming promotional highlights, and exploring its richness for branding actions."

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