What’s a Back in Stock flow?
If you’re a brand selling physical products, you’ve almost certainly run into a supply-chain issue in your lifetime. When you experience the inevitable out-of-stock moment, we recommend spinning up a presale or waitlist campaign ASAP so you can keep track of interested customers.
The following flow will help you drum up excitement for an out-of-stock item and give VIP customers first access when it becomes available.
Setting up your flow
First things first, if you’re running a browse abandon flow, be sure to exclude your out-of-stock item from that flow. You don’t want to remind customers about a product that isn’t currently available.
Now, for your back in stock flow, start by segmenting your list. We recommend three segments:
- VIP customers
- People who signed up for the waitlist
- People who viewed the out-of-stock item but did not sign up for the waitlist
This series has 4-6 emails:
- Email 1: Give exclusive, early access to your VIP customers. This is an easy way to remind them how much you value their loyalty. We recommend sending 2-5 days before your public release date to instill a sense of urgency.
- Email 2: Send a teaser to your waitlist cohort. The people on your waitlist are extremely high intent; they took the time to enter their email and request to be notified when your product is back in stock. Get them excited about the stock replenishment with a teaser email. We recommend sending this 1 day before your restock date.
- Email 3: It’s launch day! This is your main back in stock email and it should be sent to all of your segments. It should include a direct link to purchase your product, as well as contextual images and text to remind your subscribers why they were interested in the first place.
- Email 4: For anyone who hasn’t converted, consider sending a reminder email. This email should convey a sense of urgency, e.g. “Don’t miss out”, or “Get the blouse that sold out in 3 days.”
The goal of this series is to create scarcity and excitement—FOMO converts. 😉
