While it is generally the most cost efficient to send one notification to the recipient in the manner in which he or she has indicated would be most effective, some situations might call for a more aggressive approach in which several modes are used. There are a couple of ways to do this:
- via “Cascading” attempts, wherein an SMS is sent, for example, and then after some designated period of time if there is no reply, a voice to a land line might be attempted. Then after some period of time (delay), another mode might be attempted if there is no reply
- via “Blast”, wherein all the modes are attempted immediately
With AMG Alerts, we take the Blast approach because we consider it superior for several reasons:
- A Cascading model has delays built into the process, presumably so that no more modes will be used than necessary. This COULD have capacity benefits for the mass notification supplier (or could cost them in capacity if they don’t make the “delay” long enough. )It could have cost benefits for the end users. depending on the pricing model. But if a message is important enough to be launched multi-mode, why introduce these delays just to save a few dollars? Just send it out all at once.
- In 99% of the situations that we see, notification messages don’t require a response, and without that, a cascading system can’t work! You couldn’t just use the simple fact that a voicemail was left or an SMS message was delivered as confirmation that you don’t need to move to the next mode