How to build a back in stock flow

read
Last updated at:

You will learn

Learn how to build a Klaviyo back in stock flow to alert customers about inventory if you are using the Shopify, BigCommerce, or Magento 2 platforms, or have an inventory-aware custom catalog feed.

The Back in Stock feature has 2 key components:

  1. Back in Stock Flow: When someone subscribes to a restock alert, a Subscribed to Back in Stock event will be tracked on their Klaviyo profile. This is the event you will use to trigger your back in stock flow. Shoppers will enter the flow when they subscribe to a restock alert and wait at a back in stock delay until their item of interest is restocked.
  2. Website Button: Once your flow is ready and waiting, add the back in stock snippet to your store's theme files. This snippet will automatically show a "notify me when available" button when items become sold out. When shoppers click this button, they'll fill out a form and go right into your flow.

Klaviyo currently supports back in stock flows for accounts with Shopify, BigCommerce, or Magento 2 integrations as well as accounts with inventory-aware custom catalog feeds.

Keep in mind that if you're using Shopify's point-of-sale (POS) hardware and an ecommerce store, the back in stock flow will count all of the inventory in your physical store as well as in your warehouse.

Set up a back in stock flow

Klaviyo has pre-built back in stock flows available in the flows library.

  1. Navigate to the Flows tab.
  2. Choose either Create Flow or Browse Ideas to be taken to the library directly.
  3. You can find all loyalty and sales-oriented flows we offer by filtering your view by the following goal: "Remind people to purchase."

    The Flows Library screen highlighting the pre-built back in stock flow category.

You can also easily find these available Back in Stock flows by searching for "back in stock" in the toolbar at the top of the flows library.

After populating any flow in your account from the library, we recommend reviewing all email content and updating the templates to match your brand.

If you'd like to build a back in stock flow from scratch, you can do this as well.

A Klaviyo email flow sample setup to alerts subscribers if an item is back in stock with an email alert1. Click Create Flow and name your back in stock flow.

2. Once in the Visual Flow Builder, choose the trigger option Takes an ActionIn the dropdown menu that follows, choose the metric Subscribed to Back in Stock. Do not add any trigger or flow filters, and click Done.

3. The next component you'll want to drag in — directly after the trigger — is the Back in Stock Delay. Recipients that enter your flow will wait at this delay until their item of interest is restocked. After this occurs, they will move on to the next step in your flow (which is typically an email but could be an SMS).

4. Typically, you will only need a single message in this flow as a notification that the item is back. Make sure to turn Smart Sending off for this message to ensure everyone gets the alert. 

You do not need to add any time delays components to this series, as the back in stock delay will ensure each person that enters your flow waits until the item they subscribed to goes back in stock before moving forward.

 

Back in stock flow settings

There are 2 key settings you can adjust regarding your back in stock flow:

  • Minimum inventory rules
  • Customer notification rules

These can be configured in your Account's email settings and work for both email and SMS. 

Klaviyo dashboard back in stock account settings, filled in to alert all customer if at least 1 item or more is restocked

Minimum inventory rules

Minimum inventory rules refer to how many items need to be restocked before you notify those who subscribed.

Depending on how you handle restocking when inventory runs out, you may only receive a few products in for a given SKU or variant at a time. If this is the case, you may prefer to have a threshold at which you consider the volume significant enough to let people know the item is back in stock.

Under Back in Stock Settings in your account's Email Settings, you will see Minimum Inventory Rules. This is where you can decide the threshold for notifying customers when an item is restocked.

Customer notification rules

Customer notification rules have 2 subsettings that work together to customize how many and how frequently to send back in stock messages. These settings allow you to send restock notifications all at once or in batches. The 2 components that you can configure are:

  • Customers to notify
    This determines how many customers are notified of each item is restocked. If you have a high-demand item, you might receive hundreds of subscriptions when it goes out of stock. If one item is restocked, you don't want to email all of those people for that single item.
  • Wait time between notifications
    This determines how long to wait between batches of emails if you choose to specify the number of emails that are sent out per item that is restocked. If a single item is restocked and "customers to notify" is set to 5, for example, we will message the 5 oldest subscribers. We will then wait for this amount of time before emailing the next 5 oldest subscribers. Emails will continue to be sent in batches until the existing inventory drops below your account's minimum inventory threshold.
    If additional items are restocked during the waiting period, additional emails won't be sent until the end of the waiting period. At the end of the waiting period, we will determine how many items are in stock for this item and notify the correct number of subscribers.

Back in stock reports

Check the back in stock reports page to see activity on your back in stock flow.

  1. Click on a back in stock delay component.
  2. Click on the View Back in Stock Product Request Report link in the left sidebar.Left sidebar inside a back in stock delay component, with the cursor hovering over the link for View Back in Stock Product Request Report

This page will show the recent back in stock activity, which you can also export to a CSV file. 

While not shown on the back in stock reports page, you can export a CSV file of all currently queued back in stock subscribers

You can also subscribe to receive email notifications for this report by clicking the Subscribe button.

Klaviyo stock reports modal, with menu options for report to subscribe to, a field for email address, and menus for frequency of delivery

The Scheduled Reports tab allows you to adjust which reports you're subscribed to and the settings for each report. You can navigate to this tab by going to Account > Settings > More > Back in Stock Reports.

View of the Klaviyo Scheduled Reports page showing report name, frequency, and who receives the reports

 

Additional resources

Find other articles on back in stock flows: 

x
Was this article helpful?
497 out of 695 found this helpful