The 160-Character Trap: Why Revenue Teams Are Finally Moving Beyond Traditional SMS

The move from regular text messaging (SMS) to Rich Communication Services (RCS) is not just about prettier messages. It is about putting more control in the hands of marketing, sales, and customer success teams, and fixing a major problem in digital communication: trust.

Why SMS Is Holding You Back

SMS was invented in the 1980s with one simple rule: 160 characters. It was built for short, plain-text messages. That was fine for reminders and basic alerts, but it does not match how modern revenue teams work today.

For marketers and sales teams, SMS now creates a few big problems:

• You cannot use rich visuals or interactive elements.
• You are stuck trying to drive engagement with just a line or two of text.
• There is no built-in way to build trust or show your brand identity beyond a link.

In short: SMS puts a hard cap on what you can do with customer engagement.

The Trust Problem and How RCS Fixes It

There is another issue with standard SMS: credibility.

Customers constantly receive texts from random short codes or unfamiliar 10-digit numbers. That makes it easy for bad actors to send phishing or spoofed messages. So even when your message is legitimate, people hesitate.

RCS changes this by making your brand clearly visible and verifiable inside the user's default messaging app.

How it works:

• To use RCS, a business must be verified by carriers or messaging platforms.
• Once verified, your brand name, logo, and a checkmark appear at the top of the message thread.
• Customers can instantly see: "This is really [Your Brand], not a scammer."

The impact is measurable:

• A 2024 Twilio survey found that 49% of consumers trust a brand more when they see a logo or checkmark in the message.
• Sinch research shows that 79% are more likely to trust a message when those visual cues are present.

When customers do not have to guess if a message is real, they are more likely to open, click, and convert. RCS does not just protect your audience from fraud; it directly supports higher engagement and conversion rates.

Why TrueDialog Matters in This Shift

TrueDialog is a Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) provider founded in 2008 and based in Austin, Texas. Instead of relying on middlemen, they built their platform on direct carrier connections, which is important for:

• High-volume, enterprise messaging
• Deliverability
• Compliance and control

Historically, using advanced messaging tools in this kind of infrastructure meant:

• Heavy developer involvement
• Long lead times for campaign changes
• Complex technical setup

That is a problem for revenue teams who need to move fast.

From APIs to a Marketer-First Interface

This is where TrueDialog's RCS Composer is a real strategic shift.

Most RCS solutions are API-first:

• Great for engineers
• Frustrating for marketers and sales
• Campaigns depend on dev cycles and ticket queues

TrueDialog flips this model by moving RCS control into a visual interface that marketers and frontline teams can use directly, no code required.

Amanda McGuckin Hager, CMO and CRO at TrueDialog, captures it well:

This is what we can call Interface-Driven Autonomy:

• The power of RCS is available inside the platform your teams already use.
• Marketers and sales can design branded, secure, interactive RCS experiences themselves.
• No tickets. No waiting. No code.

What This Means for Your Strategy Over the Next 5 Years

Looking ahead, two things will define the value of any engagement channel:

1. Who controls it
   • Is it locked behind engineering, or can marketing, sales, and CX teams act on their own?
   • If you need dev support for every campaign or test, your go-to-market motion slows down.
2. Whether it can prove your identity to the customer
   • Channels that can cryptographically verify your brand (like RCS with Verified Sender) will win.
   • Channels that still look like anonymous SMS short codes will struggle with trust and performance.

Teams that keep advanced messaging stuck behind engineering tickets, or stay dependent on unverified SMS, will face:

• Lower campaign velocity
• Lower customer trust
• Lower conversion rates

To hit pipeline and revenue goals, marketing and customer success teams need direct, self-serve control over their messaging. They need tools that:

• Hide the complexity of carrier connections
• Offer intuitive, visual composition and testing
• Automatically include brand verification and security

TrueDialog's approach shows a clear pattern: adoption accelerates when complexity is removed from the end user and power is put in the hands of the practitioner.

The future of customer experience and revenue-focused messaging will be built on:

• Verified trust (logos, checkmarks, and authenticated brand identity)
• Marketer-led control (no-code tools, instant iteration, faster testing)

For revenue teams, the question is no longer "Should we move beyond SMS?"
It is "How quickly can we put RCS, and verified, branded messaging, directly in the hands of the people who own the number?"

Works Cited

• PitchBook. "TrueDialog Company Profile." PitchBook, pitchbook.com/profiles/company/59220-46.
• Sinch. "Master Your RCS Branded Messages Strategy." Sinch, 3 Sep. 2025, sinch.com/blog/rcs-branded-messages/.
• Twilio. "Drive up ROI and consumer trust with RCS, branded email, and branded calling." Twilio, 27 Aug. 2024, www.twilio.com/en-us/blog/drive-up-roi-consumer-trust-rcs-branded-communications.