If you are already running or planning RCS business messaging campaigns, the natural next question is: what numbers should you actually expect? This report compiles benchmark ranges for RCS open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, and read-receipt engagement across the industries that use the channel most in India, and compares them against SMS and WhatsApp so you know where RCS fits in your channel mix.
Quick answer: RCS campaigns in India typically see open rates of 70-85%, click-through rates of 15-35%, and e-commerce conversion rates of 8-12%- all significantly higher than bulk SMS (1-5% CTR) and generally ahead of WhatsApp Business messaging (10-20% CTR) on click-through, though WhatsApp often edges ahead on read receipts for opted-in conversational threads. BFSI and e-commerce post the strongest RCS numbers, driven by verified sender trust and rich product visuals respectively.
Why Benchmarking RCS Matters
RCS is still a newer channel for many Indian marketing teams, and without a reference point it is easy to either under-invest because a campaign "feels" underwhelming, or over-invest without knowing if results are actually strong. Comparing your own numbers against real benchmark ranges- by industry, not just as an overall average- gives you a much more accurate read on whether a campaign is performing well.
These figures reflect patterns observed across RCS campaigns run through carrier-connected platforms like Get Click Media's RCS messaging service on Jio, Airtel, and Vi, and should be read as directional ranges rather than guarantees- actual results vary by list quality, creative, and offer.
RCS Engagement Benchmarks by Industry (2026)
| Industry | Open Rate | Click-Through Rate | Conversion Rate | Read-Receipt Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| E-commerce | 72-82% | 18-32% | 8-12% | 65-78% |
| BFSI (Banking/Fintech) | 78-88% | 15-25% | 6-10%* | 72-85% |
| Travel | 70-80% | 12-22% | 4-8% | 62-75% |
| D2C brands | 68-80% | 20-35% | 7-11% | 60-74% |
| Real estate | 65-75% | 10-18% | 2-5%** | 58-70% |
*BFSI conversion measured as completed action (payment, renewal) rather than purchase. **Real estate conversion measured as site visit or enquiry booking, a longer-consideration action.
For comparison, bulk SMS across the same industries typically shows a 95%+ open rate but only a 1-5% click-through rate, and WhatsApp Business messaging typically shows 10-20% CTR with strong read-receipt visibility for opted-in threads. The full mechanics behind the SMS comparison are covered in our RCS vs SMS guide, and the WhatsApp comparison is covered in RCS vs WhatsApp.
RCS vs SMS vs WhatsApp: Engagement Comparison
| Metric | RCS | Bulk SMS | WhatsApp Business |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 70-85% | 95%+ | 70-90%* |
| Click-through rate | 15-35% | 1-5% | 10-20% |
| Avg conversion rate (e-commerce) | 8-12% | 1-3% | 5-9% |
| Read receipts | Yes | No | Yes |
| Verified sender identity | Yes | No | Partial (Business badge) |
| Requires opt-in / app install | No | No | Yes |
*WhatsApp open rate is measured only among opted-in recipients, which is a narrower, pre-filtered audience than RCS or SMS reach.
The important nuance in this table is audience composition. SMS's high open rate reflects near-universal reach including many disengaged habitual opens. WhatsApp's strong numbers come from an audience that has already opted in, which is a smaller, more willing pool to begin with. RCS sits in between- broad reach similar to SMS, combined with engagement quality closer to WhatsApp, which is why the click-through and conversion numbers are the most directly comparable indicator of real campaign performance across all three.
Factor 1: Verified Sender Status
Campaigns sent from a Google-verified RCS sender consistently outperform unverified test sends by a wide margin, particularly in BFSI and insurance, where customers are primed to be suspicious of unfamiliar payment or account messages. The verified sender badge- brand name, logo, and checkmark- is the single largest trust signal available in the channel today, and it is a major reason BFSI benchmarks lead nearly every category above except pure e-commerce click volume.
Factor 2: Rich Media Usage
Rich cards that include a specific, relevant image (the actual product, the actual location, the actual offer) outperform text-only or generic-image RCS messages by a wide margin on click-through rate. Carousels personalized to browsing or purchase history outperform generic carousels sent to a full list. See our RCS campaign examples post for 15 real setups showing exactly how media choice shapes these numbers in practice.
Factor 3: Call-to-Action Clarity
Cards with a single, verb-first button ("Track Order," "Pay Now," "Confirm") consistently outperform cards with two or more competing buttons or vague labels like "Click Here." Our RCS message templates guide breaks down button and copy structure for eight common template types, each built around this single-action principle.
Factor 4: Send Time
Send time affects RCS performance similarly to other channels, but with one added nuance- because RCS is not restricted by TRAI's DND rules or the 9 AM-9 PM promotional SMS sending window the way promotional SMS is, businesses have more flexibility to test send times outside those hours. That said, aligning sends with actual customer behaviour patterns (evening browsing peaks for e-commerce, morning hours for transactional banking updates) still measurably outperforms indiscriminate send times.
Factor 5: Audience Segmentation
Campaigns segmented by past behaviour- previous purchase category, cart contents, booking history- consistently show higher open and click-through rates than broadcast sends to an entire list. This is especially visible in the carousel formats used for re-order prompts and new-arrival campaigns, where relevance to the individual recipient is the main driver of scroll-through depth across multiple cards.
How to Benchmark Your Own RCS Campaigns
- Track four core metrics per send: delivery rate, open rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate (defined consistently for your business, whether that is a purchase, a booking, or a confirmed payment).
- Compare against your industry range, not an overall average. A travel campaign performing at 14% CTR is healthy for that vertical even though it would look weak against an e-commerce benchmark.
- A/B test one variable at a time. Test image versus no image, one button versus two, or a personalized carousel versus a generic one, on comparable audience segments, before scaling a change across your full list.
- Use read-receipt and button-tap data to retarget. Recipients who opened but did not click are a different audience than those who never opened at all, and they warrant a different follow-up message.
- Re-benchmark quarterly. As RCS adoption grows in India and more brands adopt the channel, baseline engagement will shift, so benchmarks should be revisited rather than treated as fixed.
Why These Numbers Matter for Budget Decisions
The click-through and conversion gap between RCS and SMS is large enough to change the cost-per-conversion math even when per-message pricing is similar. If RCS delivers 3x to 7x the click-through rate of SMS on a comparable send, the effective cost per click or per conversion is proportionally lower, even before accounting for the added value of read-receipt data and verified trust. Our RCS messaging cost guide walks through this calculation in more detail for Indian pricing.
For businesses still deciding how much of their messaging budget to shift toward RCS, RCS coverage in India is also worth reviewing- since benchmark performance only matters for the portion of your audience RCS can actually reach today, with SMS fallback covering the rest.
Benchmarks by Message Type
Beyond industry, the type of message itself has a measurable effect on engagement, since transactional and promotional content are read with different expectations.
| Message type | Open Rate | Click-Through Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Transactional (order confirmation, payment alert) | 82-92% | N/A- often no button needed |
| Appointment or booking reminder | 78-88% | 20-30% (confirm/reschedule taps) |
| Promotional offer (single card) | 65-78% | 12-22% |
| Promotional carousel (multi-card) | 68-80% | 18-35% |
| Re-engagement / win-back | 55-68% | 8-15% |
Transactional messages post the highest open rates because customers are actively expecting them, while promotional and win-back sends depend far more heavily on relevance and timing to reach comparable engagement. This is one reason a blended channel strategy- transactional RCS paired with a lighter promotional cadence- tends to protect long-term engagement better than a purely promotional send schedule.
Common Benchmarking Mistakes to Avoid
- Comparing RCS open rate directly against SMS and concluding RCS underperforms. As covered above, SMS's headline open rate includes a large share of habitual, low-attention opens. RCS's lower headline number combined with its far higher click-through rate is the more accurate read on genuine engagement.
- Averaging across industries instead of comparing like-for-like. A blended average across e-commerce, BFSI, travel, D2C, and real estate obscures the fact that a real estate campaign at 14% CTR is strong for that category, while an e-commerce campaign at 14% CTR is below range.
- Judging a campaign on a single send. Message relevance, list quality, send time, and creative all vary send to send. A meaningful benchmark needs several campaigns' worth of data, not one send judged in isolation.
- Ignoring read-receipt data in favor of click data alone. A message with a high open rate but low click-through rate often signals a content or offer problem, not a delivery or trust problem- which points toward a different fix than a message with low open rates in the first place.
- Not separating new versus returning customer segments. Returning customers with an existing relationship to the brand typically show meaningfully higher engagement than a cold or lapsed segment, so blending both together into one benchmark can mask which group actually needs creative or offer improvements.
Get Click Media is one of India's leading RCS messaging service providers, giving businesses full visibility into delivery, open, click, and conversion data across RCS and bulk SMS from a single dashboard. Request a demo to see how your campaigns benchmark against these industry ranges.
Frequently Asked Questions
A good open rate for RCS messaging in India typically falls between 70% and 85%, depending on the industry and how relevant the message is to the recipient. This is generally lower than SMS's 95%+ open rate, but RCS open rates are considered more meaningful because they reflect genuine attention to a message the customer recognizes as coming from a verified sender, rather than habitual opens.
RCS campaigns typically see click-through rates between 15% and 35%, compared to 1% to 5% for bulk SMS and roughly 10% to 20% for WhatsApp Business messages. The exact rate depends heavily on industry, message relevance, and whether the campaign uses rich media and a single clear call-to-action button.
RCS conversion rates for e-commerce campaigns typically range from 8% to 12%, compared to 1% to 3% for SMS and 5% to 9% for WhatsApp Business messaging. The gap is largest for visually driven purchase decisions, where RCS's rich card format lets customers see the product and act in a single tap, unlike SMS which requires an external link click first.
Banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) and e-commerce typically see the highest RCS engagement in India, often posting open rates above 80% and click-through rates in the upper end of the 15% to 35% range. This is largely driven by the verified sender badge, which is especially valuable for trust-sensitive financial communication, combined with high message relevance for e-commerce offers.
The factors with the largest measurable impact on RCS campaign performance are verified sender status, use of rich media that shows the actual product or offer, clarity of the call-to-action button, send time relative to customer behavior, and audience segmentation. Campaigns that get all five factors right typically perform at the top end of published benchmark ranges, while campaigns missing even one or two of them fall toward the bottom.
To benchmark your own RCS campaign, track delivery rate, open rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate for each send, then compare them against your industry's published range rather than an overall average, since performance varies significantly by vertical. Running a small A/B test between two creative variations on the same audience segment is also one of the fastest ways to establish your own baseline before scaling a campaign.
Yes. RCS read-receipt data shows exactly when a message was opened and, in many cases, which button was tapped, which lets a business retarget non-openers with a follow-up message or a different offer rather than guessing. This level of interaction data is not available with standard SMS, which only confirms delivery to the device, not whether the customer engaged with the content.
RCS benchmarks from other countries can be a useful general reference, but Indian businesses should weight local data more heavily, since engagement is affected by carrier rollout maturity, device mix, and consumer messaging habits that differ by market. In India specifically, Jio, Airtel, and Vi's RCS rollout and the growing base of Android and iOS 18+ devices shape the benchmark ranges cited in this report.
