Choose Emergency or Non-emergency in Notify
Notify messages sent from the district or school level can be classified as either emergency or non-emergency. Which should you choose in order to get the best delivery rates? Here's your guide.
Emergency Messages
Reserved for urgent messages only!
Hopefully, this is a message type you won't have to send frequently. Examples of emergency messages are imminent bad weather, immediate school closing, active shooter, or active shooter drills.
We want to ensure emergency school district messages are sent with the utmost urgency, so we've notified the major cell phone carriers that our shortcode 939393 will be used ONLY for school emergencies. This ensures messages are sent as quickly as possible, without delay (in a matter of seconds).
Note that all Preferred Contacts will receive Emergency messages, even if they have blocked the district. There is NO way for a Preferred Contact parent to opt-out for emergency messages.
Non-Emergency Messages
Hopefully, the majority of your mass messages will be non-emergencies. Examples include announcements for pep rallies, PTO meetings, free dress days, special calendar events, report cards, sporting events, spirit week, etc.
These messages are sent via a long code (for example 601-555-1234). Each district using Notify will have a pool of numbers from which messages will send. This ensures messages are less likely to be marked as 'spam' from the cell carriers. Messages are sent within a matter of minutes to hours, rather than seconds. (Example: a message sent to 60,000 recipients can take up to 180 minutes. Most messages will be delivered in a matter of minutes.)
NOTE: Note that ONLY Preferred Contacts will receive non-emergency Notify messages. Preferred Contacts will not receive non-emergency messages if they have blocked communication from the district.
Messages deliverable to US, Canada, US Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico numbers, only.
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