RCS in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Next: SMS is losing your customers’ trust. Its successor just went live

SMS marketing will be dead by 2028. Not because a better channel launched – because fraud killed the trust. Every fake “your parcel is waiting” text trains your customers to ignore the real ones, and banks feel it first: fraud teams now tell customers to distrust any link in a text message. So the marketing budget pays for messages the fraud department tells people to ignore.

Last month, Salesforce quietly shipped the fix. RCS messaging is now built into Marketing Cloud Next – the rebuilt marketing platform Salesforce also calls Agentforce Marketing. RCS (Rich Communication Services) is the successor to SMS: messages land in the same inbox, but with a verified sender name, your logo, images and tap-to-reply buttons. An app-like experience without asking anyone to download an app. And the detail most people missed: Germany and France are in the first supported wave.

What shipped, exactly

• RCS as a native channel in Marketing Cloud Next – part of the Summer ’26 release, generally available since June 15, 2026. Salesforce’s own release note frames it as “RCS channel support” for the multichannel strategy, not a beta.
• RCS Message as a content type in Salesforce CMS: once RCS is configured and sender identities are verified, marketers build messages with text, media (images, videos, documents), rich cards and interactive suggestions – reusable content, not per-send assets.
• Verified brand identity: the carrier confirms the message really comes from the registered brand – company name and logo displayed, read receipts included. This is what plain SMS never had.
• Delivery countries at GA: United States, United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil, Germany and France.
• Sending and measurement: segment-triggered flows and automation-triggered events send RCS messages; metrics land in the Marketing Performance dashboard; data kits sync RCS engagement data into Data Cloud.

The scenario: a bank’s “suspicious login” message

Take the message every bank sends and every customer has learned to fear. The visual above shows the two versions side by side.

1. Today (SMS): a plain-text bubble from an unknown number – “Unknown +49 170 …” – with a shortened link. It looks exactly like the smishing text the same bank’s fraud team warned about last week. The rational customer does not click. The message was paid for anyway.
2. Now (RCS in Marketing Cloud Next): the same message arrives under the bank’s verified sender name with its logo and a verification badge. There is no link to distrust: a rich card carries the context, and two suggested-reply buttons – “That was me” / “Talk to us” – handle the response inside the messaging app.
3. The reply flows back as engagement data, into the Marketing Performance dashboard and, via data kit, into Data Cloud – where it can trigger the next step of a flow.
4. The Chief Risk Officer’s question – “can fraudsters spoof this too?” – finally gets an honest answer: much, much harder. The sender identity is registered and carrier-verified, not a phone number anyone can rent.

For a CMO at a bank or insurer this is not a feature toggle. It’s a channel decision.

The architecture behind it

The setup path is short on paper: Marketing Cloud Setup → Unified Messaging → RCS. There you request an RCS agent – and the naming deserves a warning, because this “agent” has nothing to do with Agentforce. It is your brand’s verified sender identity, the RCS equivalent of an SMS sender ID. That request is the step most teams underestimate. Verification runs through carriers and is country-dependent; budget weeks, not days, and plan it per market rather than assuming Germany and France clear at the same time.

Consent is the second structural piece. RCS opt-ins are stored as communication subscriptions, with default preference pages to capture them. A “rich” opt-in is still a mobile-messaging opt-in – but check your existing consent records before switching channels. If your SMS consent was collected for “text messages from us”, your legal team decides whether that covers a branded, interactive channel, not the platform. The built-in test number lets you validate connectivity before the agent goes live; only after that can marketers import consent and start building.

Content architecture is where the reuse pays off. Rich cards, carousels and suggested replies are modeled as RCS Message content in Salesforce CMS – the same content layer as the rest of Marketing Cloud Next – so an approved card is built once and referenced by many flows. Plan your content model accordingly: a card for each recurring intent (transaction alert, offer, appointment), not a new asset per campaign. Sending then rides on the standard rails – segment-triggered flows and automation-triggered events – which means RCS joins email, SMS and WhatsApp as one more channel in the same orchestration model rather than a side system.

Finally, the commercial layer: RCS is a consumption-based product. Salesforce meters it as “Salesforce Message Credits – RCS”, visible in Digital Wallet under the Consumption Cards tab, and the channel requires the RCS and Digital Engagement add-ons on top of a Marketing Cloud Next Growth or Advanced edition. That is a contract conversation before it is a configuration task.

The fine print

• Licensing applies. Enterprise or Unlimited edition, Marketing Cloud Next Growth or Advanced, plus the RCS and Digital Engagement add-ons. Message credits are metered separately from SMS.
• Country list moves. The GA wave was US, UK, Mexico, Brazil, Germany and France; the release note has since added India. Check the current list per market before promising a rollout date.
• Carrier dependency. Delivery and sender verification depend on carrier support in each country – the platform does not control that timeline.
• Fallback is a consent question, not just a technical one. Where a device cannot receive RCS, the practical fallback is SMS – so the plain-text version of every message still needs to exist and still needs to be one your fraud team would not object to.
• “RCS agent” ≠ AI agent. Salesforce says so explicitly. Do not let the word confuse a governance review that already has Agentforce on the agenda.
• Verification raises the bar; it does not remove it. Verified sender makes brand spoofing much harder. It does not stop fraudsters from using other channels, and it does not train customers back to trust overnight.

Questions for the next channel review

1. Does “SMS” in your 2027 channel plan still mean plain text – and has your fraud team seen that plan?
2. Which markets are you actually licensed and verified for, and when does carrier verification start for each?
3. Does your existing mobile-messaging consent cover a branded, interactive channel, or do you need a re-permission campaign first?
4. Which three recurring messages would you rebuild as reusable rich cards first – and who owns them?
5. What does an RCS message cost versus an SMS in your contract, and what response rate makes the difference pay off?
6. Who answers when a customer taps “Talk to us” at 11 pm?

If “SMS” in your 2027 channel plan still means plain text, you are funding a channel your own fraud team is warning customers about. The successor is live, and it is live in Germany. The question is whether your customers will still trust a verified bank message – or whether texting has already lost them for good.

Also on Marketing Cloud Next in regulated stacks: The feature that stops you from writing is the real news.

Frequently asked questions

What is RCS in Marketing Cloud Next?

RCS – Rich Communication Services – is the successor to SMS, available as a native channel in Marketing Cloud Next and generally available since 15 June 2026. Messages land in the same inbox as a text, but with a carrier-verified sender name, the brand logo, images, rich cards and tap-to-reply buttons. Delivery countries at general availability were the United States, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil, Germany and France; India has since been added.

Is an RCS agent the same as an AI agent?

No, and Salesforce says so explicitly. The RCS agent is the brand’s verified sender identity – the RCS equivalent of an SMS sender ID – requested under Marketing Cloud Setup, Unified Messaging, RCS. Verification runs through carriers and is country-dependent, so budget weeks rather than days and plan it per market instead of assuming several clear at once.

Does existing SMS consent cover RCS?

That is a legal question rather than a platform one. RCS opt-ins are stored as communication subscriptions, with default preference pages to capture them. If the existing consent was collected for text messages, whether it covers a branded, interactive channel is for legal to decide before the switch – not something the platform settles.

What does RCS cost in Marketing Cloud Next?

It is a consumption-based product. Salesforce meters it as Salesforce Message Credits for RCS, visible in Digital Wallet under the Consumption Cards tab, and the channel requires the RCS and Digital Engagement add-ons on top of a Marketing Cloud Next Growth or Advanced edition. That makes it a contract conversation before it is a configuration task.

Sources: Salesforce Summer ’26 release notes – Elevate Your Messaging with Rich Communication Services · Salesforce release notes – RCS consumption in Digital Wallet · Salesforce Ben – Top 9 Summer ’26 updates for marketers · Marketing Cloud Next Summer ’26 highlights (marketingcloudtips). Salesforce, Marketing Cloud, Agentforce and Data Cloud are trademarks of Salesforce, Inc. This is an independent analysis; no partnership with or endorsement by Salesforce. First published as part of my LinkedIn series, July 2026.