Has RCS Solved Mobile Marketing's Biggest Problem: Trust?
RCS and mobile messaging are reshaping customer engagement, but Karine Terzibachi of Attentive outlines that relevance, visibility and trust will determine whether brands can turn richer messages into lasting customer relationships.
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Messaging has become the place where consumers increasingly want to deal with brands. Nearly three-quarters (73.3%) of consumers globally prefer messaging when communicating with a business, according to Meta’s 2026 State of Business Messaging report.
That shift is changing what the inbox can be: not just a place to receive updates, but a space to discover products, make decisions and complete transactions. RCS is accelerating this evolution by bringing the visual and interactive qualities of an app into a channel consumers already use.
But a more capable inbox does not automatically make brands more welcome in it. When messages can display products, invite responses and guide purchases, consumers have more reason to question whether they are useful or intrusive.
Karine Terzibachi, Chief Business Officer at Attentive, sees the opportunity in that tension. She argues that the next phase of messaging will be defined less by what brands can put into a message and more by whether it is relevant, visible and trustworthy enough to earn attention.
That makes RCS (Rick Communication Services) more than an upgrade to SMS. It is a bet that the inbox can become a lightweight storefront, where convenience draws customers in, but relevance and trust determine whether they stay.
The question, then, is not simply what RCS can do for brands, but whether it can make mobile marketing feel more useful, and ultimately more trustworthy, to the people receiving it.
The Inbox is Becoming the New App
The app economy was built around ownership. Download the app. Create an account. Open it when you want something.
Messaging works differently.
It meets customers in an environment they already inhabit, which makes it particularly powerful for brands trying to reach people in moments of intent rather than waiting for them to return.
“Most shoppers don’t want to download and manage a separate app for every company they buy from,” says Karine Terzibachi, Chief Business Officer at Attentive. “They want personalised reminders and recommendations in the moment, through the platform they use every day.”
That shift helps explain why messaging is becoming more than a notification channel. Terzibachi describes SMS and RCS as “the best platform for real-time, contextualised assistance.” RCS extends that idea by giving messaging some of the characteristics that once made apps indispensable.
- Less friction: Customers can engage without downloading another destination.
- More context: Brands can respond to preferences, browsing behaviour and purchase history.
- Richer interaction: Visual and interactive experiences can happen inside the conversation itself.
But the deeper change is behavioural. Messaging brings the brand closer to the customer’s existing routine rather than asking the customer to enter the brand’s ecosystem.
“RCS is the natural next step in the text channel,” Terzibachi says. “With visual content and interactive experience, it allows messaging to act like an app, but packaged in a more accessible channel that fits seamlessly into daily routines.”
The inbox, in other words, is becoming less like a mailbox and more like a lightweight storefront.
The Hardest Part of Messaging May Be Getting Noticed
Getting a message delivered has never meant getting someone’s attention.
That distinction is becoming more important as inboxes fill with everything from personal conversations to alerts, promotions and automated notifications. The technical success of delivery can therefore conceal a much more important failure: the customer never actually notices the message.
Terzibachi’s framing is blunt: “‘Delivered’ and ‘seen’ are not the same thing.”
The difference forces marketers to reconsider what communication success looks like. A message can arrive perfectly and still disappear into a crowded or unfamiliar thread. A customer may not recognise the sender.
Or the timing may be so poorly aligned with their behaviour that even a relevant message becomes background noise.
The questions marketers need to ask are increasingly human rather than technical:
- Will the customer recognise who is speaking?
- Will the message appear where they expect it?
- Does it feel like part of an existing relationship?
- Is the timing consistent with how that person actually engages?
This is where visibility becomes inseparable from relevance.
A customer who routinely checks messages at night should not necessarily be treated like someone who opens every notification immediately. Likewise, a consumer who responds well to a branded RCS experience may not behave like someone who prefers the simplicity of SMS.
The implication is uncomfortable for marketers accustomed to thinking about reach as the primary objective. Being present is no longer enough. The message has to arrive in a way that makes sense to the person receiving it.
The Richer the Message, the Higher the Bar for Relevance
RCS can make a message look more like an experience. The danger is assuming that experience alone changes behaviour.
A carousel, product image or branded interface may improve presentation. But the more meaningful shift comes when messaging becomes responsive to what the customer actually tells the brand.
“Two-way feedback loops are one of the most meaningful changes,” Terzibachi says. “RCS gives brands a simple way to ask customers what they want and act on the answer quickly.”
That turns messaging into a feedback system rather than a broadcast mechanism.
- Preferences become signals: A customer interested in skincare does not need to keep receiving irrelevant makeup promotions.
- Behaviour becomes a guide: Browsing inside a message can shape what comes next.
- Interaction becomes discovery: Customers can explore products without immediately being pushed out to another destination.
Terzibachi points to FragranceNet as an example of how this can change the behaviour itself. Customers could swipe through products inside the message thread rather than leave the conversation to start browsing elsewhere. The result was a click-through rate that more than doubled.
The significance is not simply that a richer format generated more engagement. It is that reducing friction changed what customers were willing to do.
Even visual elements can serve a deeper purpose. A verified, branded message can help people recognise who is speaking. Product imagery can provide enough information to decide whether to continue.
Richer messaging, therefore, raises the standard for relevance. Once a message can do more, customers have more reason to ask why it is doing it.
Trust Has to Be Earned Before the Next Message
Messaging’s advantage is also what makes it so sensitive. A message arrives in a space people consider personal, which means permission to communicate is only the beginning of the relationship.
“Each message has to justify why it is arriving and why now,” Terzibachi says.
That distinction separates useful interruption from noise. A back-in-stock alert for a product someone wanted feels relevant. A generic discount repeatedly sent to every subscriber does the opposite: it teaches customers to ignore the brand.
The same principle applies to timing and frequency. One customer may open a message immediately; another may check messages at the end of the day. Some respond to personalisation, while others care more about the usefulness of the information itself.
As RCS gives brands more ways to communicate, the responsibility to use those capabilities thoughtfully only grows. Richer formats cannot compensate for irrelevant messages, and more automation cannot replace judgment.
The real opportunity is simpler: make every message feel like it has a reason to exist.
RCS may make the inbox more interactive, visual and commercially useful. But trust will determine whether customers continue to open it. And in messaging, that next open is ultimately the relationship a brand is trying to earn.
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