The cascade: what "next" means
The cascade is the rule that decides which single message one contact gets 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.