The digital communication landscape rapidly evolves, with new channels and service providers emerging yearly. As businesses strive to meet customer expectations and maintain a strong brand presence, managing multiple communication channels has become a challenge.
In this ever-changing environment, a notification orchestrator has become essential for streamlining your communication strategy, optimizing costs, and delivering a seamless customer experience.
In this blog post, we will examine how managing multiple channels can prevent companies from achieving their communication goals and how a notification orchestrator like Fyno can solve the problem.
What is a notification orchestrator?
A notification orchestrator is a centralized location for syncing data and managing communications across various channels, simplifying dealing with multiple service providers and efficiently handling rate limiting. If you’re wondering how a notification orchestrator differs from your notification service provider, we’ve written a detailed article comparing them side-by-side.
The ever-expanding digital landscape
Take a look at the evolution of digital communications over the past decade.
In 2010, businesses primarily relied on SMS and email for customer outreach. Fast-forward to 2016, the landscape expanded to include push notifications, voice channels, and an organized CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) industry.
Today, in 2024, we’re witnessing a proliferation of channels, with businesses needing to access over 10 different platforms and newer entrants like WhatsApp becoming mainstream to meet customer expectations.
This rapid growth has given rise to a mature CPaaS industry and multiple unicorn companies. While exciting, it has also introduced a new set of challenges for businesses seeking to maintain a consistent and effective communication strategy.
The complexities of multi-channel communication to send notifications
Template richness and complexity
Each channel has its own unique templating capabilities and requirements, making the crafting of alert notifications particularly challenging. These notifications must not only be informative but also comply with the unique templating capabilities of each channel, ensuring that when triggered by events like sensor threshold breaches, they are both seen and acted upon effectively.
For instance, SMS messages are limited to 160 characters and often require regulatory approvals like DLT in India. On the other hand, WhatsApp supports rich text, images, PDFs, and has no character limit, but requires pre-approval for template messages. Email, while offering more design flexibility and longer text, has to pass through filters set by email providers to land on the customers’ inbox and not in spam. In-app notifications, on the other hand, offer a lot of flexibility, but users can turn them off anytime.
Notifications can be triggered by a variety of events or conditions, necessitating careful design and testing to ensure they function correctly across different channels. This is especially true as new channels like RCS and iMessage emerge, where the complexity of managing templates and configurations (e.g., buttons, quick replies, CTAs) across all platforms becomes increasingly challenging.
Distinct pricing structures
The pricing models for different channels vary significantly.
For example, SMS pricing is based on character count, email costs depend on volume, WhatsApp charges per conversation, and push notifications and in-app messages are generally free (with costs associated with log storage and infrastructure).
Emerging channels like RCS and iMessage will introduce even more pricing complexities. Managing and optimizing costs across these diverse pricing structures requires an intelligent orchestration layer that balances cost-effectiveness without compromising the customer experience.
Business outcomes that are non-negotiable
Today, businesses must achieve specific outcomes to stay efficient, save financial and operational overheads, meet privacy and data regulations, and meet customer demands. These non-negotiable outcomes include:
100% deliverability: Ensuring that notifications reach their intended recipients reliably.
Offering channel preferences: Respecting customers' preferred communication channels.
Avoiding blanket bombing: Sending targeted messages instead of blasting all channels indiscriminately.
Cost optimization: Leveraging the most cost-effective channels without sacrificing effectiveness.
Lean engineering: Reducing operational overhead and freeing up engineering resources to focus on core products.
Regulatory and compliance considerations
Businesses must adhere to a wide range of regulations and compliance requirements when communicating with customers across various channels. This is even more crucial for brands that operate in the healthcare and finance sector.
A notification orchestrator can help simplify this process by providing a centralized platform for managing content approvals across channels, and making sure that every message that's been sent is in compliance with the industry standard. By centralizing and overseeing these messages, an orchestrator helps mitigate risks, avoid penalties, and maintain compliance.
Moreover, an orchestrator's audit trails and reporting capabilities can assist in demonstrating compliance during audits and investigations. With a centralized system managing customer consent, message templates, and communication logs, businesses can more easily provide evidence of adhering to relevant regulations. This streamlined approach to compliance reduces operational overhead and legal exposure.
Type of channel | Engagement level | Compliance needs (and why) | Best used for | Metrics |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Email | Moderate | Must pass through spam filters Comply with the CAN-SPAM Act and other email regulations. | Detailed information, newsletters, and promotional content. | High open and click-through rates between 15% and 25%. |
SMS | High | Limited to 160 characters and requires regulatory approvals like DLT in India. | Urgent notifications, reminders, and alerts. | Open rates are typically over 90%, with response rates around 45%. |
WhatsApp | High | Requires pre-approval for template messages and must comply with WhatsApp Business Policy. | Rich media messages, customer support, and conversational interactions. | Read rates can be as high as 98%. |
In-app | Variable | Users can turn off notifications and must comply with app store guidelines. | Contextual notifications, updates, and user engagement within the app. | Engagement rates vary widely, but active users often engage at 30-60% rates. |
The solution: A notification orchestrator for customer communication
Achieving these business outcomes in the face of an ever-expanding digital landscape and channel complexities is a significant challenge. This is where a notification orchestrator like Fyno becomes an invaluable asset. A key feature of Fyno is the 'master component', which allows for efficient notification management and scheduling, enabling the system to notify users of business events without requiring the user to be online.
A notification orchestrator acts as a centralized hub, simplifying the management of multiple communication channels and service providers. It intelligently routes messages to the most effective channels based on factors like cost, customer preferences, and message importance. This approach ensures that your notifications reach their intended recipients, maximize engagement and deliver a consistent brand experience.
Benefits of using a centralized notification orchestrator
A notification orchestrator like Fyno transforms your communication strategy from a collection of tools into a cohesive system. It addresses your current challenges, delivers the desired results, and future proofs your communication infrastructure. How does it do it?
Intelligent channel selection
Fyno goes beyond guesswork when it comes to channel selection. By analyzing customer data and message context, it identifies the most effective channel for each interaction. This means higher engagement rates and more meaningful customer experiences.
Customer-centric approach
Fyno prioritizes customer preferences. Easily tailor communication channels to match individual choices, ensuring your messages are received on the platforms your customers actually use and prefer.
Reliable message delivery
Our intelligent routing and failover systems ensure that your notifications get through, even when a primary channel experiences issues. Thus, there will be no more missed communications and no more frustrated customers.
Unified brand experience
Maintain a consistent brand voice and messaging across all your channels with Fyno's centralized template management. This builds trust and makes your company instantly recognizable to your audience.
Future-proofs your communication stack
The digital landscape is constantly evolving, with new channels like RCS, iMessage rising in popularity. A notification orchestrator can help you to adapt quickly, allowing you to leverage emerging opportunities instead of reacting to each new shift in the market.
Cost optimization
Reduce wasted spend by ending the “blast it everywhere” approach. Fyno helps you target the most impactful channels for each message type, maximizing the return on your communication investment.
Investing in a notification orchestrator like Fyno streamlines your communication strategy, saves costs, and ensures your messages reach your customers effectively. Don't let the challenges of the ever-expanding digital landscape hold your business back. Embrace the power of a notification orchestrator like Fyno and take your customer communication to the next level.
FAQs
1. What is a notification orchestrator?
A notification orchestrator centralizes and manages communications across multiple channels, simplifying the process of dealing with various service providers.
2. How has digital communication evolved over the past decade?
Digital communication has expanded from SMS and email to include push notifications, voice channels, WhatsApp, and other platforms.
3. What challenges do businesses face with multi-channel communication?
Businesses face challenges like managing different templating requirements, varying pricing structures, and ensuring compliance across multiple channels.
4. How does a notification orchestrator help with template management?
A notification orchestrator streamlines template management by providing a centralized platform for designing, testing, and deploying notifications across various channels.
5. What are the benefits of using a notification orchestrator like Fyno?
Benefits include intelligent channel routing, customer-centric communication, reliable message delivery, a unified brand experience, future-proofing, and cost optimization.
6. Why is reliable message delivery important in multi-channel communication?
Reliable message delivery ensures notifications reach their intended recipients, reducing missed communications and customer frustration.
7. How does a notification orchestrator optimize costs?
It selects the most cost-effective channels for each message type, avoiding the inefficient "blast it everywhere" approach.
8. What compliance challenges do businesses face in multi-channel communication?
Businesses must adhere to various regulatory requirements, which can be streamlined by a notification orchestrator's centralized management and reporting capabilities.
