55% of businesses now use SMS to contact their customers. However, there is a need to evolve messaging services so that brands can provide more reliable, conversational, and actionable messages. Tending to some of the inefficiencies of previous commercial messaging models – such as having to rely on recipients to complete arduous response forms – can help businesses achieve the successful outreach they desire and ensure better engagement from their target audiences. 

Building trust with consumers is not easy, and no marketing strategy will necessarily ensure outright success, but a more interactive and consumer-friendly approach is a step in the right direction.

Enter Rich Business Messaging (RBM), the platform empowering brands and consumers alike to communicate more effectively. It’s an upgrade to the messaging inbox for UK Android customers to provide an app-like experience for consumers. 

It works by enabling brands to collaborate with partners to curate tailored messaging 2-way conversations that allow for the seamless execution of rich and sophisticated campaigns. In turn, improving the native messaging experience to expand digital commerce opportunities for messaging between brands and consumers.

Between suppressed budgets and a resource-exhaustive pandemic, healthcare services have been stretched thin. As a result, initiatives for re-vamping communication efforts fell by the wayside, but efficient communication is imperative for ensuring valuable resources, time and patient needs are being met. 

Insufficient communication has had an adverse effect on patient engagement and, most importantly, trust. This has been an ongoing issue even prior to the pandemic, as outlined in a study jointly funded and commissioned by the Chief Nursing Officer for Scotland and the General Medical Council.

It found that failure to provide patients with appropriate and timely information was one of the most frequently reported communication failures in UK health services. Patients grapple with confusion and heightened stress surrounding appointment times, and even a lack of information in the lead up to procedures which creates unnecessary concerns for healthcare professionals and patients alike.  

This breakdown in communication over the years has provided the impetus to find new ways to reach patients and modernise communications, and we have already seen successes of this on a vast scale. During the pandemic, to help prevent the spread of coronavirus, the WHO sought to provide reliable information to over 1.5B people in seven different countries.

RBM facilitated this by creating engagement with users, increasing read-rates by up to 90% and exceeding interaction targets of 50% in some cases. Informing the masses of critical information during a time of global crisis is no easy feat, but engaging messaging helped organisations achieve that seemingly insurmountable goal. 

The value that resides in RBM is immense. Wider communications and engagement strategies are becoming attainable through RBM and minimising health inequalities everywhere. In the not-too-distant future, it could be incorporated into healthcare communication strategies on a global scale to alleviate manual, time-intensive processes for healthcare teams, while improving the end-patient experience, centralising communication streams to ensure appointment times are better communicated, prescriptions easily ordered and giving generally safeguarding patients access to information.

Messaging has come on leaps and bounds, becoming one of the most widely used marketing strategies. However, like every marketing campaign method, problems have materialised for both brands and consumers. RBM seeks to move into the future. 

As commercial messaging is often used to send important, sensitive data, trust and customer safety is at the heart of this discussion. RBM’s verified sender features and stringent brand verification process ensures that customers are communicating with brands they trust. This feature is vitally important, particularly in the current digital environment whereby fraud and scams are on the rise.

Customers should feel safe and assured when communicating with commercial accounts, and not worried that they are going to expose precious data. Trust is a vital currency in consumer marketing, and if it is not built at the inception of the outreach, then brands should not expect to retain their loyalty. 

The benefits of SMS marketing are undeniable; however, like most strategies, ensuring user engagement is not easy. The features of RBM evolve previous models, optimising consumer engagement with better metrics such as client data-based delivery reports and opportunities for targeted marketing based on customer preferences and behaviours. 

EE provided a prime example of this technology in action; using RBM to encourage sales of the Samsung S20 smartphone. Through an easy-to-use, visually appealing campaign, RBM accounted for 21% of sales of a wider, targeted marketing campaign though only 5% of marketing communications.

A key difficulty in creating engagement is that previous approaches have required laborious actions from the customer, such as requiring them to leave the messaging channel and click through to new websites, ultimately causing a significant drop-off in attention. Reducing customer’s actions with taping carousals rather than typing can help increase conversions and delights customers. In addition to this improvement, two-way communication with new, built-in suggested replies can improve immediacy and attention.

Every customer is as valuable as the next, so it’s important that no one is left out under new approaches. RBM messages fall back to all devices, meaning that although some may not receive the richer features, every device will receive the core message being sent. It is essential that this is part of the transition, as brands should be committed to accommodating those who may have older devices.  

The potential of RBM has not been fully realised yet, but once it becomes more incorporated across various industries, it has the undeniable potential to change the face of communication between brands and consumers. As well as having a real-world impact as demonstrated through its impact on the healthcare industry, leveraging its features will ultimately help brands become more effective and persuasive marketers.