Moving with the times, the leap from SMS to RCS

The background:

Trussell, the anti-poverty charity and community of food banks, has a single mission: to ensure no one in the UK needs a food bank to survive, by providing food and practical support to people left without enough money to live on.

Last year, the community of food banks distributed 2.6 million emergency food parcels through 1,400 food bank locations, 40,000 volunteers, and hundreds of thousands of community groups, schools and individuals across the UK.

The opportunity:

SMS reaches every phone in the country, on any network, on any device. No smartphone required. No Wi-Fi required. With a 98% open rate, it's read faster and more reliably than almost any other channel your charity can access. When something has to land, SMS gets it there.

Cymba has worked with Trussell since 2021, drawing on exactly that reliability. However, over the years, the plain text offered by SMS felt like it was losing its appeal, becoming a stale, safe option that just wasn't performing as they hoped.

Trussell were keen to look at new ways to inject fresh interest and attention into their supporter communications, bringing new life to their outbound reach whilst embracing new technology to reach them where they already are, on their phones. 

“RCS just gives, as its acronym suggests, a Richer Communication solution. By adding small details, such as photos, a branded profile complete with logo and no character limit its proposition is something entirely different from standard SMS.  Instantly, the audience is more intrigued to open and interact with the message. From a charity's perspective, they are building and nurturing the relationship while also alleviating any concerns about nefarious scams, thanks to the verified profile.”

James Briggs, Account Manager, Cymba

The project:

Cymba suggested Rich Communication Services (RCS), the evolution of SMS. RCS brings app-like functionality directly into the native messaging inbox. From interactive media and branded visuals to advanced two-way conversations that rival social platforms, it transforms ordinary texts into powerful, lasting interactions.

With a verified sender profile, Trussell's messages are instantly recognisable by their logo and branded colours, alongside richer formatting and imagery for its recurring supporter journey.

Trussell runs a monthly Package of Support series: a simple update to supporters letting them know their support has been delivered, and thanking them for helping people facing hardship. An SMS fallback runs alongside every RCS broadcast, so supporters whose devices don't yet support RCS still receive the message.

The result:

The Package of Support series has been running for several months, with the messaging and imagery alternating each time to keep the format feeling fresh rather than routine. Across the months sampled so far, performance has held remarkably steady: delivery consistently lands around 94%, and close to three in ten supporters read each message, a strong, dependable result for a recurring update rather than a one-off appeal.

Opt-outs have stayed at 0% throughout. It's reasonable to think the verified sender profile is helping here, giving supporters confidence the message is genuinely from Trussell rather than an unfamiliar number, though a like-for-like comparison against Trussell's prior SMS opt-out rate would be needed to say that with certainty.