Every brand understands the importance of customer relationships. Connected customers buy more, stay longer, and spend more over time. But the mechanics of building those connections have changed dramatically in the last two years.

Messaging is now the dominant digital channel for customer engagement. Consumers don’t want to wait on hold, dig through FAQ pages, or send emails into the void. They want to text a brand the same way they text a friend—quickly, conversationally, on the channels they already use every day.

In 2026, a digital engagement strategy without messaging isn’t incomplete. It’s behind.

This post explores what’s changed, why messaging channels like TikTok, Instagram, Google RCS, and Apple Messages for Business are now essential, and how AI is transforming the economics of conversational engagement. We’ll also share a practical framework for incorporating messaging into your digital engagement strategy—whether you’re just getting started or expanding what you already have.

Digital Engagement in 2026: What’s Actually Changed

Consumer expectations for speed and convenience haven’t just increased—they’ve been completely reset. A few forces are driving this shift.

Consumers Expect Instant, Conversational Engagement

Waiting is no longer acceptable. According to a 2025 Meta-commissioned study by Kantar, surveying over 11,000 consumers across 22 global markets, 69% say waiting on hold is a waste of their time. Meanwhile, 75% want to message businesses the same way they message friends and family.

75% of consumers want to message businesses the same way they message friends and family.Source: Kantar / Meta, State of Business Messaging, 2025

This isn’t just a preference—it’s tied directly to revenue. The same research found that 72% of consumers are more likely to purchase from brands that offer messaging. People don’t just want to talk to you. They want to buy from you, right there in the conversation.

Messaging Channels Are Multiplying

It’s no longer enough to support SMS and email. Consumers are spread across a growing ecosystem of messaging channels: WhatsApp, Instagram DMs, TikTok, Apple Messages, Google RCS, Facebook Messenger, LINE, and more. And their channel preferences shift depending on the context—browsing, buying, getting support, or following up on an order.

Messaging app users globally are projected to reach 4.6 billion in 2026. In the U.S. alone, Google reported that over one billion RCS messages are now sent daily—a milestone driven largely by Apple’s decision to support RCS in iOS 18.

1 billion+ RCS messages are sent daily in the U.S. alone.Source: Google, May 2025

The Stakes Are Higher Than Ever

The conversational commerce market—where transactions happen directly inside messaging threads—was valued at over $11 billion in 2025 and is projected to nearly double by 2030. U.S. social commerce sales alone are forecast to surpass $100 billion in 2026.

Brands that can meet customers in their preferred messaging channels, deliver personalized experiences, and close the loop on purchases inside the conversation will capture a disproportionate share of this growth. Those that can’t will keep losing ground to competitors who can.

Why BYOC Channels Are the New Competitive Advantage

Out of the box, most CRM and engagement platforms support a handful of messaging channels—typically SMS, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. That was sufficient a few years ago.

It isn’t anymore.

The channels driving the most growth in 2026 are Bring Your Own Channel (BYOC) channels—platforms not natively supported by most engagement tools, but critical to reaching customers where they actually are. Here are the ones that matter most right now.

TikTok and TikTok Shop

TikTok has transformed from an entertainment app into a commerce juggernaut. TikTok Shop’s U.S. sales grew over 100% in 2025 to reach $15.8 billion, making it nearly 20% of all U.S. social commerce. By 2026, half of all U.S. social shoppers are projected to make purchases on TikTok, and TikTok Shop’s U.S. ecommerce sales are forecast to exceed $23 billion—surpassing the online sales of Target, Costco, and Best Buy.

For brands, this means TikTok isn’t just an advertising channel. It’s a place where product discovery, conversation, and purchase all happen in the same flow. Being able to manage TikTok messaging alongside your other channels—inside your CRM—is essential for any team that wants to convert social interest into revenue.

TikTok Shop’s U.S. ecommerce sales are forecast to exceed $23 billion in 2026.Source: EMARKETER, Dec 2025

Instagram

Instagram remains one of the highest-intent social commerce platforms, especially for beauty, fashion, and lifestyle brands. Reels video views for luxury brands grew 234% in Q2 2025, and Instagram Shopping continues to be a primary product-discovery channel for consumers aged 18–44. Instagram DMs are where many of those discovery moments turn into conversations—and conversations turn into purchases.

Managing Instagram messaging within Salesforce (rather than through a separate tool) ensures those conversations are captured, tracked, and connected to the rest of the customer record.

Google RCS

RCS (Rich Communication Services) is the biggest shift in mobile messaging since iMessage. With Apple now supporting RCS on iPhone via iOS 18, the channel has gone from Android-only to universal. RCS business messaging traffic grew 50% in 2025 alone, and adoption has increased roughly 30x over the past two years.

Why it matters for brands: RCS delivers app-like experiences inside the native messaging app. Verified sender identity, rich media, interactive carousels, product cards, and in-thread actions—all without requiring a customer to download anything. In one Vibes survey, 81% of consumers preferred RCS messaging over SMS. Infobip reported that brands using RCS rich cards saw 60–70% higher conversion rates compared to MMS.

81% of consumers prefer RCS messaging over SMS.Source: Vibes Mobile Consumer Insights, 2026

Apple Messages for Business

Apple Messages for Business gives brands a direct line to over a billion active iOS devices through the native Messages app. Customers can initiate conversations from Apple Maps, Siri, Safari, or a brand’s website—and those conversations support rich media, Apple Pay integration, appointment scheduling, and more.

The channel is privacy-first by design: end-to-end encrypted, opt-in only, and customer-initiated. For brands targeting premium, tech-savvy, or privacy-conscious audiences, it’s an increasingly valuable engagement channel—one that most CRM platforms don’t natively support.

AI Has Changed the Math on Messaging

Two years ago, the biggest objection to expanding messaging was operational cost. More channels meant more agents, more complexity, and more conversations to manage.

AI has fundamentally changed that equation.

AI-Powered Automation at Scale

In 2020, only about 5% of customer service teams used AI-powered chatbots. By 2025, that number exceeded 80%—one of the fastest adoption curves in enterprise technology. Gartner projects that by 2026, 80% of routine customer interactions will be fully handled by AI, including ticket categorization, common inquiries, order tracking, and basic troubleshooting.

From 5% in 2020 to 80%+ in 2025: AI chatbot adoption in customer service grew 16x in five years.Source: Gartner

For messaging specifically, this means brands can deploy AI across every channel—answering routine questions instantly, qualifying leads, providing product recommendations, and routing complex issues to the right human agent. The cost per AI interaction is roughly $0.50, compared to $6.00 for a human-handled interaction. That 12x cost difference makes it economically viable to be present on more channels without proportionally scaling headcount.

Smarter Conversations, Not Just Faster Ones

The latest generation of AI doesn’t just handle volume. It handles nuance. Natural language processing has advanced to the point where AI chatbots can understand context, detect sentiment, and maintain multi-turn conversations that feel natural rather than scripted.

According to Nextiva research, 82% of customers would rather interact with an AI chatbot than wait for a human agent. And 92% of businesses that have implemented AI chatbots report improved customer satisfaction scores.

AI also enables brands to deliver personalization at scale. By analyzing customer data, purchase history, and behavioral patterns in real time, AI can tailor product recommendations, offers, and responses to each individual—across every messaging channel.

Consumers Are Ready

Consumer acceptance of AI in messaging has crossed a tipping point. The Meta/Kantar study found that a clear majority of consumers agree that getting a response from an AI chatbot is helpful. And according to SimpleTexting’s 2025 research, 81% of businesses report that AI has improved their SMS marketing success, with most saving four to six hours per week on average.

The upshot: AI isn’t replacing human agents. It’s amplifying them—handling the routine so your team can focus on the conversations that require empathy, judgment, and expertise.

How to Incorporate Messaging Into Your Digital Engagement Strategy

The brands winning at messaging in 2026 didn’t get there overnight. They followed a methodical approach. Here’s a practical framework for getting started—or leveling up what you already have.

Step 1: Define Your Goals

Business messaging supports a wide range of objectives. The first step is clarity about what you’re solving for.

Are you trying to reduce customer care wait times? Convert more social media interest into purchases? Enable in-store associates to follow up digitally with shoppers? Collect first-party data through conversational interactions?

Your goals will determine which channels to prioritize, which AI capabilities to deploy, and how to measure success. Document them clearly—they’re the foundation of everything that follows.

Step 2: Prioritize the Right Channels

With so many messaging channels available, it’s tempting to try to be everywhere at once. Resist that impulse.

Start with the channels where your customers already are—and where the gaps in your current setup are most costly. If you’re a consumer brand targeting Gen Z and Millennials, TikTok and Instagram should be near the top of the list. If your customers are primarily iPhone users, Apple Messages for Business is a natural fit. If you want to upgrade your SMS strategy with richer, more interactive experiences, Google RCS is the most immediate opportunity.

Start with one or two BYOC channels. Optimize and prove value before expanding further.

Step 3: Choose Technology That Unifies, Not Fragments

The biggest operational risk in multi-channel messaging is fragmentation. Managing each channel through a separate tool means disconnected customer data, inconsistent experiences, and wasted agent time switching between platforms.

If your brand uses Salesforce, the most efficient approach is to manage all messaging channels within Salesforce—your single hub for customer engagement. Out of the box, Salesforce supports SMS, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. But the BYOC channels that are driving the most growth in 2026—TikTok, Instagram, Google RCS, Apple Messages for Business, LINE, and others—require a solution built to extend Salesforce’s native capabilities.

Messaging Studio from 1440 bridges that gap. It’s the only Salesforce-native solution for conversational commerce, enabling brands to manage all of their customers’ preferred messaging channels—including TikTok, TikTok Shop, Instagram, Google RCS, Apple Messages for Business, and more—directly within Salesforce. No separate logins, no disconnected data, no context lost between channels.

Step 4: Deploy AI Where It Creates the Most Leverage

AI isn’t a feature you turn on and walk away from. It’s a capability you deploy strategically.

Start with the highest-volume, lowest-complexity interactions: order status inquiries, FAQ responses, appointment confirmations, and product availability questions. These are the conversations where AI delivers immediate ROI—customers get instant answers around the clock, and your team’s capacity is freed up for higher-value work.

From there, layer in AI-powered capabilities like suggested responses for agents, sentiment-based routing, and personalized product recommendations within messaging threads. The goal is a seamless handoff: AI handles what it can, escalates what it can’t, and gives your agents full context when they step in.

Step 5: Create Smart Entry Points

An entry point is how and where a customer starts a conversation with your brand. The more intuitive and contextual the entry point, the higher your engagement rate.

The obvious entry points are on your website and in your app—a WhatsApp icon on a product page, a chat prompt on a contact page. But the highest-performing brands in 2026 are going further.

QR codes in physical stores, on packaging, or in print advertising can launch a messaging conversation instantly. Social media posts and paid ads with “click to message” CTAs capture customer interest at the moment it’s highest. TikTok content that links directly to a messaging conversation bridges the gap between discovery and engagement. The key is meeting customers at the exact moment of intent—and making it effortless to start a conversation.

Step 6: Measure, Optimize, Expand

Messaging strategy is iterative. Once you’ve launched, establish a regular cadence for reviewing performance against the goals you set in Step 1.

Track metrics that matter: response time, resolution rate, customer satisfaction (CSAT), conversion rate from messaging interactions, and cost per conversation. If AI is handling a high volume but customer satisfaction is low, tune your flows. If a specific channel is driving strong conversion, consider expanding your presence there.

Use measurement as the basis for expanding your channel mix. Success on one channel builds the operational muscle—and the business case—for adding the next.

Step 7: Use Conversational Data to Fuel the Entire Customer Experience

Every messaging conversation generates valuable data: product preferences, purchase intent signals, sentiment, questions asked, issues raised. When those conversations happen inside Salesforce, that data feeds directly into your 360-degree customer view.

This is where messaging becomes more than a channel—it becomes a data asset. Use conversational insights to personalize future marketing, refine product recommendations, identify trends in customer needs, and inform your broader engagement strategy.

The Bottom Line

In 2026, messaging isn’t an emerging channel. It’s the primary channel. Over 73% of consumers globally prefer messaging when communicating with a business. The conversational commerce market is growing at double-digit rates. And AI has made it operationally viable to deliver personalized, responsive engagement across every channel your customers use.

The brands pulling ahead are the ones treating messaging as a core part of their engagement infrastructure—not an afterthought. They’re meeting customers on TikTok, Instagram, RCS, Apple Messages, and beyond. They’re using AI to scale without sacrificing quality. And they’re managing it all from a single platform.

73% of consumers globally prefer messaging when communicating with a business.Source: Kantar / Meta, State of Business Messaging, 2025Ready to see how Messaging Studio from 1440 enables brands to engage with customers through more of their favorite messaging channels—all from within Salesforce? Contact us to see Messaging Studio in action.

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