You want to notify your customers that their favorite product is back in stock but aren’t sure how many times you should do this? This, dear reader, is a tailor-made blog for you.
If every eCommerce business owner sits to make a list of the worst news they have to send to their customers, a product that went out of stock will probably be the first one in almost all of them. No matter how much it sucks, it is still a part of the business.
But then there’s another news that eCommerce store owners love delivering — products back in stock!
And how can they not? After all, the customers that were going out of their reach might just be back. Not only the customers who wanted the product, this back in stock alert works equally well for attracting new ones too.
It’s because no customer wants to miss an opportunity to get the bestseller (the product that just went out of stock).
But then comes one of the most difficult conundrums for the marketing experts — how many times should we notify the customers? To be honest, there’s not a direct answer to it. We can’t just say send the alert four times, and all your lost customers will buy the product. It’s not that simple.
Let’s decode this complexity. Hop on!
Logical Flow > Frequency of Back in Stock Alerts
Okay. So there’s a huge possibility that your ideal customers have subscribed to newsletters and alerts from many other stores too. And because they are drowning in promotional alerts, the notification that you sent might not reach them ever.
This makes it quite clear that sending the alert only once is not enough. You will have to do more than that. But then the fear of annoying the customer kicks in. More just lately many online casinos have made their software accessible for immediate play so there is no such thing as a must download anything, so you can play slots right now!
In the case of back in stock alerts, customers’ tolerance is a bit high because it was them who opted for the notification. Now, this doesn’t mean that you can send them an alert after every hour passes. You have to make the flow more logical. It’s the logical flow of alerts that matter more than the frequency of alerts.
Here’s what an ideal back in stock alert flow looks like.
Product Will Be Back in Stock Soon
Let’s consider a typical product out of stock scenario. Your customers will reach the product page, will see the product is out of stock, and then they leave disappointed. Here you don’t get any chance to even notify them if the product will be back in stock or not.
But when they are really interested in the product and see a Notify Me (when it’s back in stock) button, they feel quite happy that (at least, in the future) they’ll be able to buy the product. So to maintain a back in stock flow, first, you have to ensure that there’s a Notify Me button on your out-of-stock product page.
How do you do that? Well, you can completely rely on an app like Shopify Back in Stock – Restock Alerts app to make things easy for you. It automates the whole notifying process when your inventory runs out. It gives customers an option to pick the channel of their choice to receive the notification on — email, Facebook messenger, web push, or SMS.
Your first email can be the confirmation mail that tells your customers that they have successfully subscribed to receive the notification when a specific product is restocked.
The second mail, you can send a couple of days before you’re opening the sales for that product.
This builds excitement and ensures that the customers are ready and waiting for the day.Your first two alerts are sorted. Let’s move to the next one, shall we?
Product Back in Stock
Now that you have tickled the customers with the news that the product they wanted will be back in stock soon, just wait for the day to come. And when the product is finally restocked and ready to sell, you can send the alert with complete product details.
Your alert still has to be exciting. For example, if you’re sending an email, the subject line is the first thing you have to optimize. Considering that 47% of the receivers open the email based on the subject line, it surely has to be prioritized.
You can be funny or creative with it, create a sense of urgency and FOMO, personalize it — do all you can to make sure that the customer notices it and takes the right action.
With every alert you send, the goal is common — make them purchase the restocked product they wanted. The sooner you manage to exit this back in stock alert flow, the better. And in most cases, because customers are already intrigued, a majority of them will buy the product in this alert.
Offer on the Back in Stock Product
Yes, a majority of them will buy the product after your last alert. But what about those who didn’t see your message? Or the ones who didn’t take action even after coming across that alert?
You give it another shot to convert these customers too.
Just a reminder is enough for those who didn’t see your message. But you also have to target the customers who didn’t take any action, so you reach out to the remaining subscribers with an offer.
You can use a push notification like 10% off on the restocked bestseller you wanted! Or, if it’s an email, you can add a subject line with an offer — Product restocked! Flat 20% off.
People hate missing out on good discounts. And when they see a discount on a product that was just sold out — it’s an opportunity that they’ll never want to miss out on.
Product Running Out of Stock Again
Okay, so our goal is to convert as many customers as we can. And sending an alert is still worth it even if there are only a few subscribers remaining who haven’t yet taken any action. You tried to intrigue them with a restocking soon alert, you’ve sent the alert at the right time, even gave them offers — none of it worked.
What more can we do?
We can create urgency. After all, it can boost sales by 332%, which is quite Brobdingnagian. The reason why urgency makes us grab the deals is purely psychological.
We are wired to act positively in urgent situations. Moreover, urgency also gives rise to loss aversion — where people feel the fear of missing out on a great opportunity that others are grabbing.
You can create urgency by saying something like — Hurry Up, John! The product we restocked for you is running out of stock again. And because the customer was interested in the product, seeing it go out of stock again will definitely develop an urge to get them quickly. And boom! You will convert some more lost customers.
Last Opportunity To Get Restocked Product on Discount
In an ideal situation, all your back in stock alert subscribers who wanted to buy the product would’ve purchased it by now.
But if, in your case, there are still some customers remaining, give it one last shot. Take a page from the Godfather’s playbook and make your customers an offer they can’t refuse. And amalgamate urgency with this offer to make it more lethal.
Here are some of the lines you can use:
- Flat 15% off. Only 15 pieces left in stock!
- Last few units left. Get them at a 10% discount.
- Hurry up! Last day of sale for your favorite bestseller.
It’s all up to your customers after you send them this alert. If they are still interested in your product, they will buy it. And if they don’t — they might have purchased it from somewhere else, or their budget doesn’t allow them, or they’ve simply lost interest in it.
This brings us to the next point — when is the right time to exit the flow?
Exit the Flow at the Right Time
Well, exiting the flow at the right time is quite simple compared to sending the alerts at the right time.
One of the biggest concerns of sending multiple alerts for the same reason is that your customers might get annoyed. You don’t want that.
So first things first, always give your customers an option to unsubscribe to the alert at any point they want. Don’t send them these alerts anymore once they do so because they’ve already made up their mind.
Now, the alerts will be more exasperating for your customers if they keep receiving them even after they have purchased the product.
For example, if the customer was enthusiastic about getting the product and purchased it as soon as they received the first alert, sending more alerts to them will be irrelevant. So, ensure that you exit the flow for a customer when they have purchased the product.
Moreover, it is also recommended to exit the flow after 4-5 alerts because if they haven’t acted by now, they probably won’t. Any more than that will probably make your customers irritated, and they won’t ever sign up for a back in stock alert again.
A Step Closer to Success With Back in Stock Email
Back in stocks alerts boosts your sales by bringing back the lost customers — that’s for sure. But after an extent, when you’re sure that customers have made up their minds, there’s no point sending alerts to them.
There’s no right frequency, though. You just have to follow a logical flow to ensure you’ve catered to every possibility — pre-launch notification, alert after the sale is live, given offers, create urgency, etc. It’s also essential that you exit the flow at the right time to not bother the customers.
That said, managing the flow of these alerts manually is next to impossible, especially if you have a huge customer base.
What you can rather do is get an app like the Appikon Restock Alert for your Shopify store to automate the whole process.
With this app, you can give your customers an option to receive an alert on the channel of their choice, which makes alerts more effective.Feel free to reach out to us for any queries.
Ready to set up your back in stock alerts?
