Incident Report vs. Text Notification

What are the two features?

Incident Report and Text Notification are two ways you can send SMS text messages to an audience. It’s important to understand which feature is most appropriate for your use case. One is used to send Alerts to contacts near a specific address, the other to a mass audience that you select. 


Incident Report Text Notification
Incident Reports is a feature used to send SMS text alerts to selected audiences about an ongoing event happening at a specific location.  Notifications is a new premium feature* used to broadcast SMS text messages to selected audiences 
A notification is a mass text broadcast. That is a one-to-many text.

Characteristics:

  • Contacts receive the messages from your hotline number. 
  • Contacts can reply and call back. 
  • Location-based. 
  • Fetches contacts based on a radius near the incident. 

Characteristics:

  • Contacts will receive the messages from a non-hotline number. 
  • They cannot call or text the number they receive the text from. Therefore, you should include the message “DO NOT REPLY”
  • Great for broadcasting notifications to a large audience (hundreds or thousands of people).
Example use case: Ongoing ICE raid at 5503 Cermak Rd, Cicero, IL 60804, USA. 
Reply OTW to this number if you can go.

Example use case: DO NOT REPLY:Legal Observers Needed- Saturday, 7/11, tentative time 5:30-9:00 p.m.Car and foot marshals/legal observers for the March for Vanessa Guillen. Sign up here: bit.ly/VM


* Text Notification is a premium feature of Rapid Response. If you would like to enable Text Notification on your account, please contact us at support@rapidresponse.io.

Which one should I use?

We recommend using the Incident Reports whenever there is an immediate need for legal observers at a specific address. For example, an ICE raid or Emergency incident that needs rapid responders that have zip codes near the location of the incident. 

We recommend using Text Notifications whenever there is a need to send information to a large group of contacts. For example, you need to send your 2k+ DACA audience about a legal clinic being offered at the local community center.