section 01
Start with the job, not the channel
A channel is a delivery surface. The program should start with the customer job: activate, recover, expand, renew, or alert. Then pick the least intrusive channel that can do the work.
guide
Multi-Channel Orchestration
Email is rarely the only customer message. Growth teams often coordinate email with in-app prompts, push, SMS, support notes, and sales tasks. Orchestration decides which channel should speak, when, and under what suppression rules.
last updated 2026-06-15 4 sections
section 02
Channel strengths
Email is durable and searchable. In-app is contextual. Push is timely but interruptive. SMS is sensitive and should be reserved for high-importance moments with proper consent.
| channel | best fit | avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Receipts, summaries, education, lifecycle prompts. | Urgent in-session nudges. | |
| In-app | Next action while the user is active. | Users who are not logged in. |
| Push | Time-sensitive product state. | Low-value reminders. |
| SMS | Critical account or billing moments with consent. | Routine marketing. |
section 03
Suppress across channels
If an in-app prompt already drove the action, the email should usually exit. If a user complained about email, that does not automatically permit SMS.
- ok Use shared journey state across channels.
- ok Keep consent separate per channel.
- ok Define priority rules for channel conflicts.
section 04
Hand off to humans deliberately
Sales, support, and success tasks should be triggered by clear account states, not every click. Human handoff should include the message history and the reason for escalation.
reading this as SaaS product teams
A SaaS product sends on behalf of its customers, so the deciding factors are tenant isolation, whether suppressions can be scoped rather than global, and whether support can answer why one specific account did not receive one specific email. Lifecycle automation and transactional sending usually need to coexist.
Applied to multi-channel orchestration, that means weighing multi-tenant support, event stream, the suppressions API, and operating track record ahead of the rest, against trial expiry notices, dunning, onboarding sequences, and per-tenant transactional mail.