Peter Thomas Roth, one of the largest independent prestige skin care brands in the U.S., has collaborated with its ecommerce marketing partner, the cross-channel personalization platform Listrak, to implement Rich Communication Services (RCS) messaging, delivering branded, interactive mobile messaging to RCS-enabled devices.
Since 2024, Peter Thomas Roth has partnered with Listrak to grow its ecommerce business and personalize customer communications. The addition of RCS builds upon the retailer’s mobile messaging program, delivering higher conversion rates and revenue per send than SMS.
RCS brings the features of messaging apps into the native texting app on a shopper’s phone. Android phones have supported RCS for years and Apple added support with iOS 18 in September 2024, opening the channel to brands messaging both iPhone and Android users. Listrak was the first marketing platform provider to launch an RCS marketing campaign in the U.S., during the 2024 holiday season. With RCS, marketers can send creatively dynamic messages featuring carousels, high-resolution images, videos and interactive buttons, while enabling quick replies and in-message engagement, and enhancing trust with verified sender information and brand styling.
Peter Thomas Roth’s recent RCS campaigns included promotions supporting several of the brand’s key fall shopping moments, including early access to sitewide sales, free gift-with-purchase offers, loyalty rewards messaging and more.
Early RCS campaign results and program learnings included:
- Higher Conversion Rates: RCS outperformed SMS on conversion rate by an average of 40% in 50/50 RCS vs. SMS tests.
- Increased Revenue: RCS generated 29% higher revenue per send than SMS over the same period.
- Growing Engagement: Click-through rates increased with each successive RCS send (going from a -14% decline on the first send to a 3% lift), suggesting engagement can strengthen as consumers become more familiar with receiving messages from a verified brand sender.
- Broad RCS Reach: Approximately 85% of Peter Thomas Roth’s subscribed mobile audience was RCS-enabled, with 15% of the list defaulting to SMS messaging. The results highlight the importance of identifying the RCS-addressable portion of a brand’s subscriber base before testing in order to have even 50/50 test groups across RCS/SMS.
- Messaging Efficiency: Branded sender names, URLs and call-to-action buttons don’t count toward an RCS message’s character limit, so content that would be billed as two or more SMS messages can often go out as a single RCS message.
The campaigns also provided an important lesson for brands evaluating RCS: performance should be assessed across multiple sends rather than a single test. As customers become familiar with the verified sender and richer messaging experience, engagement patterns can continue to develop.
“With RCS, we can elevate the mobile messaging experience, showcasing products, highlighting promotions and delivering tailored, personalized messages,” said Rochelle Jacobs, managing director, Peter Thomas Roth. “Together with our partners at Listrak, we are excited to embrace the latest in messaging technology, creating real-time consumer communications that drive results.”
“Listrak was the first marketing platform provider to launch an RCS campaign in the U.S., and we are now at the inflection point where it is becoming imperative for brands who want to build relationships with their customers to adopt RCS,” said Ross Kramer, co-founder and CEO, Listrak. “The team at Peter Thomas Roth is at the forefront, leveraging the latest innovations to connect with consumers in meaningful ways.”
