Send a Google RCS campaign

Send interactive, branded messages with rich media, quick replies, and suggested actions

How to create and send a Google RCS campaign

In this guide, we'll show you how to set up and send your first Google RCS marketing campaign.

What you'll need

• Install a Google RCS channel

• Google RCS message template.

• list or segment of contacts with valid phone numbers

Create your Google RCS campaign

• From the main side menu, click Campaigns.

• Click Create campaign.

• If no Google RCS channel is installed yet, click Install - it redirects you to create a new Google RCS Agent and Channel

• Once Google RCS channel is installed select Google RCS. It opens the campaign builder to start creating your campaign. You can start by giving your campaign a name.

Step 1: Recipients

• Select the lists or segments in the Send to dropdown to target your campaign. You can create a segment directly from here as well.

• Select the lists or segments you want to exclude in the Don't Send to dropdown

Note: You can only select up to 5 lists or segments here

Advanced Options

You can expand to define any advanced options such as:

• Skip recently messaged contacts: Turn this ON if you want the frequency cap settings defined in your workspace to be applied. By default, this is turned ON and the frequency cap settings are 1 message in 1 day.

• Limit maximum number of recipients: Turn this ON and define if you want to limit recipients to be targeted to a specific number. This will randomly select recipients to be limited out of your defined lists/segments

• Global Holdout: This will skip any recipients of they match the global holdout criteria defined in your workspace. If no criteria is defined, no one will be skipped. This is turned ON by default but no global holdout is defined by default on the workspace hence it will not impact your sending

• Campaign Holdout: This will skip recipients based on a defined percentage randomly as a control group out of your campaign recipients. This is OFF by default.

Step 2: Sender

Select the specific Google RCS channel from which you want to send this campaign to. This is the channel that you installed.

Step 3: Google RCS Template

Use the Select a template dropdown to choose the Google RCS message template that you want to send as your campaign. You'll be able to see a preview of your message.

If there are variables in your template message, map them in the Variable Matching section after adding the template under the template preview

Step 4: Schedule

• Under Schedule section, you can select if you want to send the campaign on a fixed time, gradually or immediately

• For a fixed time scheduling, you can select a date, time and timezone for sending

• By default, we have selected local recipient timezone for scheduling but you can select a specific timezone

More Settings

Tags

You can optionally apply one or more tags to your campaign before sending

Additional data

This section allows you to upload a csv file of additional data for personalization such as personalized links which are specific to the campaign. You can map this to the unique identifier of the targeted contacts when uploading as a column and then define which column contains the unique identifier for matching

Once done, you can map any predefined custom variables in the SMS content to any columns of the uploaded csv file

Tracking

By default we have UTM parameters automatically appended to all the links in the message so that you can track clicks on your web analytics solution.

You can edit the UTM parameters under settings and also customize if needed for this campaign

Locale Matching

Locale matching is set to Automatic by default which matches the template locale with the contact locale. You can have 3 options here:

• Automatic Matching: This will automatically send the template locale which matches the contact locale attribute. If contact Locale attribute is not set, it will send the default locale version.

• Strict Language: This will automatically send the template locale which matches the contact locale attribute. If contact Locale attribute is not set, it will NOT send the message.

• Single Language: This will only send the selected locale version of the template to all recipients.

Campaign A/B Test

You can turn ON A/B test for a campaign here. Note that if you have selected maximum recipient limit or recipient local timezone, you will need to change them before enabling A/B tests.

Once enabled, you will have 2 variations added for your message automatically by cloning. You can edit content for each of these variations

You can define A/B test settings as follows:

• Winning metric: Select click rate or conversion rate based on what you want to optimize on

• Test size: Select the test audience pool size for each variation. Rest of the audience will be sent the winning variation

• Test duration: Select how long the campaign will be waiting to collect winning metric data for the test result after sending to the A and B test pools before determining the winner

• Winner fallback: Select your strategy in case there is not sufficient data to make a test winner decision.

Estimated Recipients

At the bottom of the page on the left side, you will see number of estimated recipients based on your subscription, targeting criteria, contact attributes and campaign settings.

Send a test message

Click on Send test option on the top right to test your message before sending.

You can send your test to a contact and their selected contact or a proof list. Note that the contact must have a phone number to receive the Google RCS message.

Send your campaign

Click Schedule campaign or Send campaign button on the top right to finally confirm to schedule or send.