Klaviyo RCS campaigns give marketers a way to make the native text inbox feel less like a character-limited broadcast channel and more like a branded shopping experience. Rich cards, media, buttons, quick actions, and verified brand presentation create more room to guide a subscriber from announcement to action—without asking them to leave their messaging app first.
The opportunity is growing because RCS now reaches both much of the Android ecosystem and iPhones running iOS 18 or later. But RCS is not a reason to abandon SMS discipline: marketers still need consent, audience relevance, a concise message hierarchy, and a fallback experience that works when rich messaging is unavailable.
What Klaviyo RCS campaigns add beyond SMS
Klaviyo’s recent tutorial on creating and sending an RCS campaign walks through the practical build process: create a single-channel text campaign, choose an audience, select a rich card or text-only format, preview the result, review costs, then schedule or send. Its central takeaway is that RCS is best treated as a richer delivery format inside an existing SMS marketing program—not as a totally separate channel.
With an active RCS agent, Klaviyo sends text messages as RCS to compatible recipients in countries where the brand has an active agent. People who cannot receive RCS are automatically routed to an SMS fallback. That means a single campaign can serve two experiences, making message design and QA more important than simply choosing a more attractive template.
For marketers, the practical advantages are clear:
- Branded presentation: RCS can display a verified business identity rather than relying only on a phone number or shortcode.
- Rich creative: A card can combine an image or video with a title, descriptive copy, and interactive buttons.
- Lower-friction actions: Subscribers can tap through to a collection, product detail page, store locator, or reply path.
- More useful engagement signals: Klaviyo supports RCS open tracking, which standard SMS and MMS do not provide.
- Reach preservation: The automatic fallback prevents marketers from excluding recipients whose devices, carriers, or locations do not support RCS.
That last point matters. An RCS campaign should be designed as a paired experience: a high-impact rich message for capable devices and a clear, compact SMS message for everyone else.
How to create Klaviyo RCS campaigns step by step
The workflow shown in Klaviyo’s video is straightforward, but the decisions made in each screen determine whether a campaign feels useful or cluttered.
Start in Campaigns, create a campaign, choose Single channel, and select Text message. Give the campaign a naming convention that exposes the objective, audience, offer, and date—for example, RCS_SpringLaunch_VIP_2026-03-15. This sounds mundane, but clear campaign names make reporting and testing far easier later.
Next, select the sending audience and any exclusions. A product launch should rarely go to every SMS subscriber by default. Prioritize people who have browsed the category, purchased related products, joined a VIP list, or shown recent engagement. Exclude recent purchasers if the campaign promotes an item they already bought, and consider Smart Sending when frequency may be a concern.
In the editor, choose between text only and rich cards. Text-only RCS is a useful fit for urgent back-in-stock alerts, delivery updates, short deadlines, and other messages where speed and clarity matter more than presentation. For launches, editorial drops, bundles, or product discovery, rich cards are the stronger choice.
A typical rich-card build includes:
- One strong visual that makes sense even when cropped on a phone screen.
- A short title that communicates the product or offer immediately.
- Supporting copy that adds a meaningful reason to tap, rather than repeating the headline.
- One primary button linking to the most relevant destination.
- Optional quick actions for a secondary path, such as requesting recommendations or browsing another collection.
Klaviyo supports multiple cards and several interactive elements, but capability should not be confused with necessity. For a limited sneaker release, one product image, one concise promise, and one “Shop the drop” button will often outperform a mini-catalog that forces the subscriber to make too many choices.
Rich cards need mobile-first creative restraint
The major creative lesson from the tutorial is not merely that cards can carry images and buttons. It is that RCS creative must survive real device behavior.
Klaviyo specifically advises testing on both Android and iOS because Apple’s newer RCS implementation can render media and layouts differently. Images may be cropped more aggressively on iOS, while button placement and card layout can vary. Keep logos, product details, prices, and text away from image edges; if a detail is essential, repeat it in the title or body copy instead of embedding it in the asset.
Use copy in a clear sequence: what it is, why it matters, what to do next. A launch message could lead with the product name, follow with one differentiator such as limited availability or a new colorway, and end with a single action-oriented button.
Quick actions deserve the same discipline. They can be valuable for starting a conversation—such as “Help me choose” or “Show me styles”—but they should support the campaign’s intent. If the purpose is immediate conversion, do not bury the shopping CTA beneath a row of low-priority prompts.
The SMS fallback is part of the campaign, not an afterthought
Klaviyo automatically creates fallback content, but marketers should almost always edit it. An RCS card and an SMS message are different formats with different strengths.
A rich RCS version can use a lifestyle image, product name, description, and tap-friendly button. The fallback needs to deliver the same commercial value using plain language and a clean link. It should not read like a broken transcription of the card.
For example, instead of trying to recreate a visual product carousel in text, write a fallback such as: “New: Cloud Nine Sneakers just landed. Lightweight comfort, fresh spring colors. Shop: [link].” The point is not creative parity; it is message parity. Every eligible subscriber should understand the offer, trust the sender, and have a direct route to act.
Preview both versions before launch. Klaviyo lets teams test RCS and fallback content as specific profiles, which is especially useful when a list spans markets with different RCS availability. Test a compatible profile, an unsupported profile, an iPhone preview, and an Android preview before approving creative.
Targeting and measurement make RCS more than a novelty
The biggest risk with RCS is treating its richer format as an excuse to send broad, expensive campaigns. Rich messages have different credit implications than basic text-only RCS, and rates vary by content type and region. The billing forecast should therefore be a decision checkpoint, not just the last screen before send.
Before scheduling, check the recipient breakdown by delivery type and country. Ask whether the incremental creative and cost are justified for this campaign. A broad monthly sale may benefit from a simpler text-first format, while a product launch, loyalty-tier reveal, replenishment recommendation, or high-consideration bundle may deserve the richer experience.
Use RCS capability data where it improves the strategy. Klaviyo’s RCS capability property can support segments and conditional logic, allowing teams to identify who can receive RCS. That opens useful test designs: compare a rich-card offer against a text-only message among RCS-capable subscribers, or reserve interactive product discovery for an engaged segment while giving the broader list a simpler promotion.
Measure more than clicks. Review delivery, opens for RCS recipients, clicks, revenue, conversion rate, unsubscribe rate, and the relative performance of RCS versus fallback recipients. Open data is helpful directional context, but conversions and customer response remain the stronger indicators of whether the message earned its place in the inbox.
Conclusion: Start with one high-intent RCS use case
Klaviyo RCS campaigns are most compelling when they make an existing text moment more useful: a launch becomes shoppable, a browse reminder becomes visual, or a recommendation becomes interactive. The platform’s rich-card editor, automatic fallback, device previews, and billing review make that execution accessible, but strategy still does the real work.
Start with a single high-intent campaign, such as a new-product launch for recent category browsers. Build one focused card, write an independently strong SMS fallback, test it on iOS and Android, and compare results against a simpler control. That approach turns RCS from a flashy format into a repeatable performance channel.