We recently surveyed businesses in the UK to find out what they’re saying about business messaging in 2025. Not surprisingly, UK senders are optimistic about 2025’s messaging landscape and eager to adopt new technologies and features.
Increased volume, high ROI
Senders in the UK have already widely embraced business messaging, as evidenced by some of our general survey findings:
- Messaging volume in the UK rose by 29% from 2023 to 2024.
- Global messaging remains a priority for 85% of UK businesses.
- 45% of those surveyed see a higher ROI for text message marketing spend than for e-mail or social media spend.
Many jokes have been cracked about the differences between American and British cultures. One says “cookie”; the other says “biscuit.” One parks its cars in a parking lot; the other uses a car park. And let’s agree that we have very different understandings of the word “football.”
But if there’s one thing we believe on both sides of the pond, it’s that 2025 will be a landmark year for business messaging.
Here are three additional takeaways from our UK messaging survey:
RCS: Richer global messaging
Senders in the UK are excited about the opportunities presented by RCS. A whopping 93% of those surveyed are looking forward to using RCS to increase messaging as a communication channel; 55% of those surveyed said they would increase RCS use for marketing purposes, while 38% said they’d increase it in the realm of customer support.
It’s not surprising that senders everywhere are looking forward to expanded reach of RCS. With RCS, senders can leverage brand trust and improve the customer experience. Of the features RCS offers senders, 36% of survey respondents said they are most excited about verified branding; 29% said they are most excited about interactive buttons.
Deliverability: The key to messaging results
Both UK and US senders agree that deliverability is the most important factor in choosing a business messaging provider; in both regions, around 60% of respondents rated deliverability the most important factor, far more important than capacity, feature range, or price.
However, capacity is the second most important factor in choosing a provider for UK senders. In the messaging space, capacity refers to the amount of messages which can be sent over a certain increment of time, usually tracked with a metric like messages per second (MPS). Interestingly, price is the second most important factor for US senders.
But deliverability is like making a proper cup of tea–you need three key ingredients: properly registered campaigns, clean contact lists, and compliant message content. If any one of these is missing or off, the whole brew falls flat. And, just like brewing tea, each of these steps can throw up its own challenges for senders to get right.
For example, different channels require different registration processes. A company that wants to use SMS long codes and short codes, WhatsApp Business, and RCS must navigate two different registration processes to send the same messages. Our survey revealed that 50% of UK senders say duplicative registration processes prohibit expanding into as many channels as they’d like.Want to make sure your messages get through? Download our SMS deliverability checklist!
Customer experience: Improve the experience for big results
Senders in the UK continue to see positive results from messaging across a variety of use cases—not surprising since a study by the messaging platform Attentive found that 90% of UK consumers want SMS from brands!
Consider the following top use cases:
- Appointment confirmations: A whopping 71% of senders saw a reduction in cancellations when they use messaging for appointment confirmations.
- On-time payments: Senders who use messaging for billings and payments saw a 54% increase in on-time payments.
- Purchasing behavior: An astounding 83% of respondents saw an increase in purchasing when they use SMS messaging for retail or e-commerce.
From better follow-through to bigger sales, SMS for business drives a positive customer experience and delivers results for businesses.
Get the State of Messaging report: UK edition
Read up on all of the latest trends, and get our experts’ insider predictions for what’s coming next in the A2P messaging space. Don’t miss the in-depth coverage on RCS!
Looking ahead: Our predictions for 2025 and beyond
As we lay out in our 2025 State of Messaging Report, we predict increased adoption of business messaging across industries over a variety of channels and platforms to reach their customers where they are.
Global businesses will prioritize providers who offer RCS, SMS for business, and WhatsApp, and businesses will increasingly create seamless customer experiences by merging Voice and Messaging with the help of supplemental AI tools.
Bandwidth stands ready to help businesses with improved traffic monitoring and alert tools, a streamlined registration center, and better number intelligence to improve deliverability.
Ready to take business messaging to the next level in 2025? Contact the experts at Bandwidth to learn how you can get the best results from your business messaging in 2025.
