The cascade: what "next" means
The cascade is the rule that decides, for one contact at one moment, which single message they get next. It is the heart of Aura Marketing™, and it is worth understanding once.
Ordinary email tools ask: who should get this email? The cascade asks the opposite: this person is here — what should they get?
That inversion is what gives you:
- Per-contact position. Everyone starts at the beginning of a sequence whenever they arrive, not wherever the campaign happens to be.
- Preemption. Something urgent (an alert pool) jumps ahead of the sequence for everyone, then the sequence resumes where it was.
- Windows. A scheduled pool only sends inside its window and stops cleanly when the window closes.
- Rotation. Several nurture pools take turns, so a contact receiving from three streams gets a varied diet rather than three in a row from one.
You never have to work it out by hand. Simulate on a campaign runs the real cascade for a real contact and shows the sequence they would receive, with the reason for every choice.
See also: How the cascade picks the next message.