Marketing teams are running out of runway in the attention economy. Consumers are bombarded with generic campaigns, emails they never read, and push alerts they never asked for. Legacy platforms churn out content at scale but rarely help brands connect in ways that feel timely—or even relevant.

Cordial thinks it has the fix. This week, the company rolled out a trio of big updates: its Model Context Protocol (MCP) Interface, support for Rich Communication Services (RCS), and the launch of Cordial Foundry, a new innovation arm designed to ship agent-first tools in weeks, not quarters. Together, the moves position Cordial as one of the few messaging platforms betting big on AI agents, new channels, and open experimentation.

MCP: From More Content to Smarter Messaging

Most vendors brag about AI but deploy it tactically—think auto-generated subject lines or slightly better segmentation. Cordial’s new MCP Interface is different.

Built on the open standard introduced by Anthropic, MCP lets AI agents do more than spit out copy. It gives them structured access to customer data, performance metrics, templates, audiences, and campaign logic, so they can handle entire workflows in real time.

That means assistants like Claude (Anthropic’s AI) could:

• Query live customer and campaign data

• Build or analyze audiences instantly

• Recommend (or launch) the right campaign at the right moment

“MCP opens the rails for agents, so AI can move from suggesting ideas to actually augmenting marketers,” said Jeremy Swift, CEO of Cordial. “For brands, it means sending fewer, smarter messages—and consolidating bloated martech stacks along the way.”

In short: this isn’t about more automation. It’s about AI that works with full context, able to orchestrate campaigns instead of adding noise.

RCS: A New Messaging Channel Finally Gains Steam

While marketers have obsessed over email and SMS, RCS (Rich Communication Services) has quietly been building momentum. Think of it as SMS 2.0—branded, interactive, app-like experiences delivered natively to mobile phones.

Cordial’s RCS rollout makes it one of the first U.S. platforms to offer the channel directly to marketers. And the payoff looks real:

• Early campaigns see 3–7x higher click-through rates than SMS

• Consumers are 35x more likely to read an RCS message than an email

For brands, that means a new way to cut through the noise—especially at a time when inbox fatigue is at an all-time high.

Foundry: Innovation in Public

Big platforms typically ship annual bundles of updates. Cordial wants to flip that model with Foundry, its new public R&D lab. Instead of polished yearly releases, marketers get early experiments every few weeks—features they can test, break, and help shape.

The idea: move at the speed of AI, not corporate roadmaps.

Early Foundry experiments include design-to-send workflows, smart DAM integrations, and prototype AI-powered tools. Some features will evolve into core platform capabilities; others may spark entirely new directions.

“The only way to win back consumer attention is through experimentation and agility,” said Matt Howland, Cordial’s president. “We’re essentially running live experiments on behalf of marketers, ensuring they’re always working with what’s next, not what was.”

Why This Matters

The timing couldn’t be sharper. Cordial’s recent “Battle for Attention” report found that just 38% of consumers feel most of the messages they receive are personalized—and only 3% of brands can actually predict customer needs in real time.

That’s the gap Cordial is betting on: moving from treating clicks as intent to predicting—and acting on—what customers actually want, in the moment, across the right channels.

With MCP, RCS, and Foundry, Cordial is effectively telling marketers: stop blasting, start orchestrating. Whether enterprise teams are ready to hand over that much control to AI agents may be the bigger question—but Cordial is betting the urgency to win back attention will outweigh the hesitation.

Availability

• MCP Interface: Available now for all clients

• RCS Messaging: Available now for all clients

• Cordial Foundry: Launching today, first agent tools in early access

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