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Stephanie Griffith has experience in retention and lifecycle marketing across brand, agency, and platform roles, making her a rare, credible voice on RCS business messaging. In this episode, she sits at the center of a real contradiction: selling brands on a channel that runs 15-30% CTR, with standout campaigns topping 50, while those same brands sit in an 8-to-16-week carrier-approval queue with no clear timeline on the other side.
This is an honest breakdown of what the RCS approval process actually requires, where brands consistently blow it, and why the wait is still worth it.
Stephanie also argues that SMS optimization and RCS prep are not competing priorities. They run in parallel, and the brands treating them that way will hit the ground running when the channel opens up.
Timestamps
01:35 — From CheetahMail to Klaviyo: Fourteen years, one career arc, told through the tools she's used.
01:50 — Kill Email, Make Room for Better: Email hasn't evolved in 20+ years, and it's built on bad consent. Time's up.
03:58 — SaaS Shilling Has No Credibility: Calling out influencers who evangelize whatever platform pays them, no receipts required.
05:15 — Three Hottest Takes in Marketing: It depends is the only honest best practice. Send fewer, better messages.
06:10 — Selling Patience to a Q4 Brand: The RCS wait isn't downtime; it's the exact moment for SMS optimization.
34:34 — RCS: The Great Equalizer: The only channel that satisfies marketers and consumers at once, no download required.
35:20 — Consumers Are Already Here: Brands aren't introducing RCS. They're catching up to what people already use daily.
42:00 — Even Google Isn't Done Building: Adopting RCS now doesn't put brands behind. It puts them right where the platform is.
Sponsor
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Creators and Guests
What is Making Sense of Martech?
Unfiltered takes on the biggest shifts in marketing technology. We spotlight what matters, who's leading (or lagging), and what's next. In Martech, clarity is power — and we're here to deliver it.
Welcome to making sense of MarTech with a 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, DTC Bros. Respect, and now she is at
Clio, selling brands on a channel where the Approval Cube 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. Clavijo. Agency time at Toni
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. Welcome,
Stephanie. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to dive in. We're going to
start off with some quick questions. Rapid answers. What was your first run to actual 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
exacttarget. So really dating myself at this point. Well, you know, you went from the same
behemoth to a different behemoth with a different font. 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,
or 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 bona
fide now and consulting side. Which seat had 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. 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. I'm Um, 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 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. Due to see 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 shilling platforms you've
never used just to make a buck is something that I, 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. Last of the rapid fire. What is
your hottest take? Because I know you have a lot. 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, corner
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 aerial
approval cube. 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 will speed 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, right? 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. Q 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 this space. So I think if 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 SMS 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. 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 had to transfer it. Exactly. Yep. Crawl walk, run I think is a great
approach here. SMS walked so 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, an 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. SMBs 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's 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. And we're getting closer. You know, a year ago I was hyping this up saying 2026 is the year
for RCS. Same lots of us have been, you know, watching and waiting. The truth is it's it's here.
Obviously there's things changing all of 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 carrier 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 clavus 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 and 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 us, Amazon and Ms.. 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. 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 small 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. Yeah,
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 SMS, 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 Sims space. 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
snitching. I love learning new terms, especially fun ones like that. Don't
get smashed. Consumers don't want to be snitch. 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, 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 SS 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 the 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 productized 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, and 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
story. Oh, it's so hard that 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
are. There should be an appeal process. 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 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. 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, to 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 thought 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? I don't. Deserve it. Yeah. There is something a little bit different that is
different, right? For what we've seen on the smart 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 crossed pins. And yeah, Google
is the final boss of who is allowed to send on that channel. And if they've gone through the
shortcut 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 short code. 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. Oh yeah, probably touched upon
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Awesome. 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, this 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 clearer. 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
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 mean 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 it's 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 is 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 Omniverse 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
will play out, but they technically have the option whether they use that or not to their
advantage. Yeah, I have no comment. 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. 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 in plain SMS, with the other 60%, and resulting in
completely different experiences with different cars and no clean way to attribute which drove
the conversion. So how are brands supposed to measure RCS ROI when the channel itself is hybrid
by default? And I think this is sort of one of those times where brands need to effectively
trust the process. This is where that patience and preparation kind of comes back into play. Yeah,
we're asking them right now, of course, to be patient with the evolution of how we ultimately
report on the data. The best version of this though, or the best defense, I would say, of this, is
that we get more data through RCS than we do right now through SMS, so it's not like they can't
attribute. It just gets tricky. Of course. Yes. If you're if you're trying to send both. And so I
think from an e-com standpoint, we aren't actually seeing such a dramatic split again. When brands
commit to RCS, they really should be making the full switch. And that fallback experience is
seamless to the end user. They're not really seeing anything different than what they would
expect. Everyone's pretty used to and familiar with SMS right now. You essentially just lose the
ability to have tap able buttons. Obviously you revert back to having to type out replies instead
of click button based replies that we call quick actions. Quick replies just so folks are hip on
the lingo there, but at this point we're really expecting to again support 85% or more from a
device standpoint, and that gap's only going to get smaller in terms of who can expect to receive
a fallback. And so similar kind of to the email space where largely for E-com, we're optimizing
for Apple and Gmail support. Yes, there are still the outlooks of the world, but they make up a much.
Yes, our faces, they make up a much smaller component. So it's not like you're going to say,
hey, don't you know, don't send an email or don't send a message to outlook. There's just an
understanding that there are small trade offs there. But we know SMS is effective. We know RCS
improves on that effectiveness. So it's not like there's a major loss there from a reporting
standpoint. RCS is just building on the success that we've seen in SMBs and really is that next
unlock. So not a perfect answer where some of those things take place. But I don't expect that
split to to be that dramatic in most situations at all. And we are consistently seeing and hearing
engagement is better. A lot of the engagement is cleaner. Mm. Yeah. SMS still runs the risk of bots
from a click standpoint. We go down the technical rabbit hole. Their RCS is much more because it's
authenticated and it is much more trustworthy. You're not seeing folks impersonate actions the
same way that you can see that on the SMS side. So it is actually making wording cleaner which is
another reason to to kind of make that jump. So I wouldn't worry about that. We're just in the messy
middle of making that transition to the next version of the channel. So I don't think I don't
want brands to be worried or stressed about that. And you can thoughtfully the last thing I'll say.
You don't have to jump from SMS to the most sophisticated and most expensive RCS use cases,
right? Just focus on getting RCS approval. You can send basic RCS texts, which is really just what
a fancy SMS looks like. Pricing is effectively at parity there as well. Everywhere, where you see the
increased in cost and the bigger risk that brands are trying to prove out is things like rich cards,
rich carousels. The more back and forth conversational use cases that just take a lot
more time and resources and are a bigger investment. I wouldn't worry so much right now of
doing, you know, sprinting right into that. Be thoughtful, get your approval, get set up on the
channel. What if you're doing well on the SMS side, you should expect to see that follow you into the
RCS side. And then you can just continue to to build on that as well. And to say Google has not
finished Delivering every single promised version of campaigns. And not only are you not
behind even just doing something Google's behind, or they're evolving their roadmap. As
expectations arise. We are truly all in this together. Be patient with your platform providers.
Be patient with the carriers because it is changing frequently. And yes, there are. We are all
hurrying up and waiting for some of the sexiest features that were demoed and are going to be
available. We are giving a lot of grace and a lot of time in that process, but more to come. For sure.
More to come. This years Black Friday, Cyber Monday, I am intrigued. I am ready. And speaking for
myself right now. Yes, I am happy to hypothesize that Black Friday this year is going to be where
we really start to see that big kind of take off. That's when the risk is lowest for brands to send
these packages. That is a great time for them to test and prove out the adoption of RCS, and also
to get consumers way more used to it. So it's going to be hard to go back from that, right? Once
you set that new standard, you're going to want to continue to meet it because consumers are going
to say, wow, this looks pretty good. This is easier for me to engage with. It's easier for me to buy.
So folks that roll back to SMS in that regard, it really is going to be a step back in experience,
and we really want brands to continue moving forward. Without a doubt. And of course, we've been
talking about all these things that are impacting our industry. But I want to share that just like
RCS isn't arriving in a vacuum, like we have been right in the middle of this AI generated
messaging, SMS list saturation, and a consolidation of the vendor landscape. As all of these things
are converging and colliding, brands that get this wrong won't just miss a channel the likely fall
behind a retention fundamentals. So RCS CTAs are somewhere between 15 to 30%, occasionally
higher. SMS revenue per cent has flattened year over year at around $0.71 for the
first time in five years. As list saturation really does set in, so is RCS a genuine
evolution of the channel or a feature upgrade being marketed as a strategy to re-energize the
mature one? That is a valid question, but it is definitely an evolution. You're right. SMS
quickly became saturated, much like we see email is saturated, right? That's why brands just keep
sending more and more and more on the email side. Yes, pretty much every brand now has adopted SMS
from a messaging standpoint or as part of their marketing strategy. And this is forcing them to
get smarter about how they play in that space. So yeah, they should definitely view it as an
evolution. And this is, you know, where we talked about earlier. Early adopters are really going to
be the ones again to reap the rewards here because they are going to be setting a better
standard for those who are still using SMS. I think it's truly a rising tide lifts all boats
situation, since consumer trust is ultimately what's driving that evolution itself. So when
consumers on the receiving end start seeing branded, verified, trustworthy messages, it's going
to be really hard for brands who don't adopt that to cut through the noise. Because if I'm presented
with two options, I have brand affinity and trust and loyalty towards certain brands. I get the
imagery of the branded sender that comes through on my device, and then I have a phone number I
don't recognize which 1 a.m. I going to gravitate towards engaging with? It's absolutely going to be
brands that are verified and sending through RCS. Hopefully in a year we get to look back and it's
like, duh, yes, everyone you know, everyone sees and has has kind of bought into that, but I can't
really see a scenario in which it becomes defensible to put brand verification and consumer
trust on the back burner, where again, Google is ultimately building the protocol that consumers
are asking for. They want brand verification. They want to know that the messages they're receiving
can be trusted. And so brands that adopt that are ultimately going to deliver better experiences,
and it's going to benefit brands and consumers in the long run. Without a doubt. And also, I'm looking
forward to fewer unknown senders in my filtering system of text messages coming in. Double opt
in, tap to text, y'all. But yeah, it'll mitigate a lot of those things too, because you have to be
verified. Exactly. All right. There's a stat that complicates the someone's dragging their feet
theory. So Juniper Research projects global RCS operating revenue to grow roughly $2 billion this
year to 6.5 by 2030, a 225% growth. That is astounding,
exciting, and kind of terrifying. At the same time, if carriers are about to see that kind of upside.
The incentive should be to unclog this queue. That and maybe make this application process a little
bit easier and not just sit on it and long wait times and frustrate the brands that want to
pursue this. So why does it still feel slow on the ground and who's actually the bottleneck? I think
we've answered it, but I'm curious, is it Google the carriers or something structurally and how
brands prep their applications? Cost is absolutely a factor. Revenue opportunities are definitely a
factor. So of course everyone wants a piece of the proverbial pie, right? SMS brought new revenue
opportunities, not just for brands and platforms that were expanding into that new channel. We saw
platforms jump on that. RCS is not going to be different in that regard. So there's a lot of
incentive on all sides to to make this successful. Yes, because it's the right thing to do. Yes,
because it provides a better experience. But also yes. And because there's cost benefit there. So yes,
in terms of, you know, what's kind of slowing some of those things down, as we determined earlier in
our conversation, Google is ultimately the final boss, but they're not the only player in the mix,
right? So yes, you've got Google that you have to ultimately pass the the kind of the final boss
challenge and all of those requirements. But carriers are in the are in the mix as well.
Platforms are in the mix and brands are also figuring this out. So really there's many moving
pieces because this technology is so new on the marketing side and we're all sort of figuring it
out at the same time. It's new for brands, it's new for marketers, it's new for platforms, and it's
newer. I'll caveat that for the carriers, the pressure is definitely on, and it's primarily on
Google at this point. They know this. They are responsible. So the pressure is on Google to help
make the technology more approachable ultimately for upstream and downstream users. Yeah, I
hope they finally make it so it's no longer as inaccessible and difficult to get to.
but, you know, slow progress to then hopefully make it the next new channel that I honestly
think could replace a lot of sales teams, customer support teams, you name it. Not replace in
terms of AI, but replace and really centralize those conversations and that information into one
place. So I think there's a lot of interesting downstream effects of like, what does that mean
about a CRM? What tools do we use? How do we actually figure out our org chart? Because
everyone has to see the same things. So I still have so many percolating thoughts about the
future of RCS, because it's just so much untapped conversation and potential. And we'll have to have
you back on, because I still have so many more questions for you. But in the meantime, Stephanie,
this conversation about the industry is the one we all need to be having out loud, and not just in
a vendor webinar, which is very few about these as well as not varied in a very micro community of a
slack channel and thread that really, that's how you and I got introduced throughout the years. And
the brand sitting in approval limbo deserve a much clearer picture and even a how to guide. And
you've been one of the few people who's been on every side of this table and willing to show up
not only to the hot seat, but to show up and show out for how RCS is the future. So before I let you
go, who is someone we should have on the podcast? You bet. I've got those in spades. First, thank you.
This has been great, but yes, I would be remiss if I didn't suggest folks who I think have probably
spicier takes than me, who I regularly love to chat with. And so those two gals are Mindy right
now. Many folks probably know her as the head of market intelligence at Clio. She's got so
much knowledge in addition to spicy takes. Really, it's because she has so much knowledge. So she's a
great one. And then Val Geisler, who is now the director of strategy at barrel, which is a CPG
strategy agency. So yeah. highly recommend following those folks. And yeah, get them in the
hot seat. They will only make it so much hotter. I will gladly take introductions. Well, with that,
thank you so much. It's been an honor. Working folks find you follow along because I always
loved your spicy takes and hot takes. And I have a feeling everyone else will. Find me on LinkedIn. We
can go down in the DMs, tag me on posts if you want me to participate, but also happy to talk to
folks directly through email so they can find me at my consulting address primarily. So that's
Stephanie at Down to consult.com spelled how it sounds, and then I'm still very active for anyone
that's in email geeks. So we don't just talk about email. There's lots of chatter about SMS
compliance RCS. Of course the for anyone that's not in the email geek space and that is a part of
their purview. Go ahead and find me over there as well. Perfect.