RCS Marketing Is an Owned-Channel Bet: The CEO Investment Case for Rich Messaging

Every CEO planning a 2026 marketing budget is being asked the same question: where does the next dollar go? Average ecommerce ROAS fell to 2.87 in 2025, declining across 13 of 14 industries. Meta CPMs are up 20% year-over-year. Google CPCs climbed 12.88%. The unit economics of paid acquisition are deteriorating faster than most boards realize, and that’s forcing a structural reallocation toward owned channels. RCS marketing sits at the center of that reallocation conversation, and most leadership teams are evaluating it wrong.

They’re treating RCS as a new channel buildout: pick a sender, hire a creative team, run a pilot, then measure it against SMS. That framing systematically overstates the cost and understates the return. For brands already running image-based personalization in email (say, with Smart Banners generating measurable RPM and CTC), the question isn’t whether to build an RCS program from scratch. It’s whether your existing personalization infrastructure should render into more than one channel. That distinction changes the math entirely.

Why RCS Marketing Stopped Being Speculative in September 2024

RCS has been technically available since 2019. For most of that time, it was an Android-only curiosity with limited carrier support and no urgency for marketers to care. That changed on September 16, 2024, when Apple shipped RCS support in iOS 18. Juniper Research forecasts that Apple’s adoption will add 900 million new active RCS users by the end of 2025. Infobip reports the global active user base is on track to reach approximately 3.8 billion by the end of 2026.

The early data from actual campaigns confirms this isn’t theoretical. RCS usage grew 111% year-over-year during BFCM 2024, with RCS campaigns delivering roughly 3x higher click and conversion rates than MMS, according to Dotgo’s RCS Industry Report. North American RCS traffic on Infobip’s platform grew 70x in 2025. And 26% of retailers already use RCS, with another 35% planning investment in 2025, per Sinch’s survey of 1,600+ business leaders.

The acceleration is itself accelerating. Infobip reported RCS adoption grew 550% in 2024, up from 357% growth in 2023. When adoption curves compound like this, the question shifts from “is this real” to “what does it cost to be late.”

The Unit Economics: 3-7x CTR vs SMS and 14x Lower Cost Per Click

The performance data on RCS is unusually consistent across multiple independent sources. Sinch reports CTR running 3 to 7 times higher than Rich SMS. Infobip’s identical-creative A/B tests showed RCS rich cards converting 60-70% higher than MMS. One Sinch customer campaign produced a 79% read rate and a 22% click-through rate.

The cost side is where it gets interesting for CFOs. Cost-per-click for RCS runs approximately 14x lower than SMS on equivalent conversion objectives, according to Infobip, because fewer messages are needed to reach a target conversion. When your paid channels are returning a 2.87 ROAS and your CAC has climbed to $318 per customer, a 14x reduction in cost-per-click on an audience you already own is not incremental. That’s the kind of asymmetry that reshapes a media plan.

Named case studies reinforce the upside. Casas Bahia, the Brazilian retailer, generated 6.2x higher ROI and 1.6x more conversions via RCS compared to other conversational channels. Club Comex saw 115% revenue growth and up to 10x higher CTR through Infobip’s RCS platform. These aren’t projections. They’re documented outcomes from brands that deployed and measured.

The Marginal Investment Math: Extending Email Personalization into RCS

Here’s where the framing error happens. Most executive teams model RCS as an absolute-cost decision: new sender contracts, new creative workflows, new measurement stacks, new headcount. That framing is correct if you’re starting from zero. It’s wildly wrong if you already run image-based dynamic content in email.

The Zembula architecture works like this: a single image URL renders at request time into email, RCS rich cards, and MMS without rebuilding the creative stack. The personalization layer sits above the sender (whether that’s Sinch, Infobip, Twilio, or Bird) and supplies the dynamic image, not the delivery. The sender handles the pipe. Zembula handles what goes through it.

For brands already running Smart Banners and Smart Blocks in email, the marginal cost of extending that same content into an RCS rich card is close to zero. The image already exists. The decisioning logic already exists. The personalization data already exists. The attribution model (module-level RPM and click-to-conversion) carries over. What’s new is the surface, not the infrastructure.

That changes the CEO question from “should we build an RCS program” to “why is our personalization infrastructure only rendering into one channel.” The second question is harder to answer in a way that justifies inaction.

What RCS Marketing Looks Like When Image-Based Content Is Already Your Infrastructure

Think about what a typical Smart Banner does in email: it pulls real-time data (loyalty points, abandoned cart items, pricing, inventory status), renders a personalized image at open time, and attributes the resulting click and conversion back to that specific module. Every element of that workflow, the data pull, the image render, the attribution, works identically inside an RCS rich card.

The open-time decisioning extends from email to rich messaging. Content updates at the moment the message is viewed, not when it’s sent. If a price changes, if an item goes out of stock, if a loyalty balance updates, the RCS image reflects reality at view time. This is the same capability that makes Smart Banners in MMS and RCS fundamentally different from static creative: the content is always current.

For CMOs who’ve spent two years building performance vocabulary around email (RPM per module, CTC rates, benchmarked against our 2025 email performance benchmark report), RCS doesn’t require learning a new measurement language. It’s the same language applied to a new surface. That continuity matters when you’re making the internal case to reallocate budget.

The Risks Worth Naming: Carrier Coverage, Sender Approval, and Measurement Gaps

RCS is not without real constraints, and any honest investment case should name them.

Carrier coverage is still uneven. While Apple’s iOS 18 support was the biggest unlock, A2P (application-to-person) RCS delivery depends on carrier-level agreements that vary by market and device. Coverage is expanding fast, but it’s not universal. Any RCS deployment needs a fallback strategy (typically SMS or MMS) for recipients whose devices or carriers don’t support RCS delivery.

Sender verification takes time. Brands must register through an RCS Business Messaging agent verification process, which involves brand validation, logo approval, and carrier-specific onboarding. This isn’t a weekend project. Plan for 4-8 weeks of lead time depending on the sender platform and carrier mix.

Measurement is good but not yet at email parity. RCS supports read receipts, delivery confirmation, and click tracking natively. But the attribution infrastructure (tying a click to a downstream purchase with the same granularity as email) is still maturing. This is where a channel-agnostic measurement layer matters. If your attribution already tracks at the image-module level rather than the channel level, the gap is smaller than it looks.

None of these risks are fatal. They’re sizing considerations. The question is whether the upside (3-7x CTR, 14x lower CPC, access to an audience you already own) justifies moving through the friction. For most brands doing $50M+ in ecommerce revenue, the answer is clearly yes.

How to Size the RCS Marketing Bet for 2026 Planning

A practical framework for CEOs and CMOs evaluating an RCS marketing investment:

Step 1: Identify what you already have. If you’re running image-based personalization in email (Smart Banners, Smart Blocks, Smart Kickers), your content infrastructure is already RCS-ready. The incremental cost is sender fees and integration time, not a creative rebuild.

Step 2: Model the marginal cost, not the absolute cost. RCS sender fees (through Sinch, Infobip, Twilio, Bird) are the primary variable cost. Integration into your existing personalization layer is the primary fixed cost. If the personalization layer already supports RCS rendering (as Zembula does), the fixed cost approaches zero.

Step 3: Size the return against your current SMS program. Take your existing SMS send volume and conversion rates. Apply a conservative 3x CTR multiplier (the low end of published benchmarks). Model what that does to revenue per message and cost per conversion. Then compare that to what you’d need to spend in paid media to generate the same incremental revenue.

Step 4: Allocate from the right budget. This is the critical framing shift. RCS isn’t a CRM line item competing with your email platform fee. It’s a first-party performance channel competing for the same dollars currently going to Meta and Google. When paid ROAS is 2.87 and declining, even a modest RCS program with 5-10x ROAS changes the portfolio allocation math.

Key Takeaways

• RCS marketing is no longer speculative. Apple shipped iOS 18 in September 2024, RCS usage grew 111% YoY during BFCM, and 26% of retailers are already deploying it.
• The performance data is compelling and consistent: 3-7x CTR over SMS, 14x lower cost-per-click, and documented ROI multiples of 6x+ from named brands like Casas Bahia.
• For brands with existing image-based email personalization, the marginal cost is near zero. The same image URL that powers a Smart Banner in email renders inside an RCS rich card. The infrastructure investment has already been made.
• The CEO question is not “should we build an RCS program.” It’s why your personalization infrastructure is rendering into only one channel when it could render into three (email, RCS, MMS) for minimal incremental cost.
• Size the bet against your paid media spend, not your CRM budget. With ecommerce ROAS at 2.87 and declining, the owned-channel alternative has never been more economically attractive. Check the numbers in our 2025 email performance benchmark report for context.
• Account for real risks (carrier coverage, sender verification timelines, measurement maturity) but don’t let them override the asymmetric return profile.
• The window for first-mover advantage is open now. With 35% of retailers planning RCS investment in 2025, early movers who deploy in H1 2026 will have measurement data and optimization learnings before competitors launch their pilots.