B2B Messaging: What Happens If Someone Doesn’t Have RCS?

RCS messaging (Rich Communication Services) is redefining B2B messaging with branded sender IDs, rich media, interactive buttons, and real‑time delivery insights. But here’s the practical reality every marketer has to face: not everyone has RCS, and not every message will be delivered as a rich experience. So what actually happens when a contact doesn’t have RCS, and what does that mean for your strategy?​

How RCS fallback works in the real world

For RCS to work, both the sender and the recipient need RCS support from their device, messaging app, and carrier or provider. If any of those pieces are missing, or if the user has RCS turned off, rich messages typically fall back to SMS or MMS. Many messaging platforms and APIs treat SMS as a backup transport, so your message is still delivered as plain text (and sometimes as a basic multimedia message) instead of a fully interactive experience.​

From a recipient’s point of view, they still get the information you sent; they just don’t see carousels, suggested replies, or branded layouts. From your point of view, the campaign still reaches them, but with a stripped‑down version of your original design.​

What you lose when a contact doesn’t have RCS

When a contact can’t receive RCS, a few important things change:

• No rich UI: Interactive buttons, image carousels, and branded layouts are replaced by simple links and static text when the experience falls back to SMS/MMS.​
• Limited analytics: Advanced delivery and engagement data, such as rich delivery receipts and interaction tracking at the button level, may not be available in the same way for fallback traffic.​
• Less differentiation: Rich business messaging helps your brand look and feel more like a modern app; when you fall back to SMS, you’re competing in the same basic thread as every other text your contact receives.​

This doesn’t make RCS a bad bet. It simply means your strategy has to assume that some portion of your audience will see a “lite” version of what you’ve designed.

Why SMS fallback is actually a good thing

The upside is that SMS is still one of the most universal, reliable channels you can use. Even when RCS isn’t available, messages that fall back to SMS or MMS continue to reach contacts on older devices, non‑supported networks, or in regions where RCS isn’t fully deployed.​

Think of it this way:

• RCS is your “best available” experience, when device and network conditions allow.
• SMS/MMS is your safety net, ensuring that important alerts, confirmations, and offers don’t disappear just because someone doesn’t have RCS.​

For Sureshot customers, that safety net is built into the orchestration layer. You can design journeys that prioritize RCS for eligible contacts while automatically falling back to SMS or other channels if rich delivery isn’t possible, without creating separate campaigns by hand.​

Designing campaigns for a mixed RCS/SMS audience

Because not everyone has RCS, the smartest approach is to design with graceful fallback in mind. A few practical considerations:

• Make links do the heavy lifting
  Even in rich campaigns, ensure that critical calls‑to‑action are accessible via links that still work in plain SMS. That way, non‑RCS recipients can still click through to landing pages, forms, or content experiences.
• Keep core messaging channel‑agnostic
  Your value prop, offer, and next step should be clear in text alone. Rich elements should enhance the experience, not carry the entire message.
• Use data to segment and optimize
  Over time, you can identify which contacts consistently receive RCS versus SMS and adapt your targeting, content, and testing strategy accordingly. Sureshot’s orchestration capabilities help you route messages through the best available channels based on data, not guesswork.​

Where Sureshot fits in

Sureshot’s role is to help B2B marketers orchestrate these realities behind the scenes, so you can confidently lean into RCS without sacrificing reach. By integrating RCS alongside SMS, email, and other outbound channels, Sureshot enables you to:

• Detect when rich delivery is possible and when you need to fall back.
• Maintain consistent messaging across RCS and SMS variants of the same campaign.
• Capture and use engagement data across channels to refine journeys and improve outcomes over time.​

The question isn’t “What if someone doesn’t have RCS?” The question is “Does your messaging strategy have a smart plan for when they don’t?” With the right orchestration, the answer can be yes, without adding complexity for your team.

If you want to explore how to blend RCS and SMS in your B2B campaigns, Sureshot can help you design journeys that deliver the best possible experience to every contact, every time.