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:
- 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.
- 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.
Custom metrics cannot be used to trigger a back in stock flow. Only the Klaviyo-specific metric used with one of the listed integrations or custom catalog can trigger a back in stock flow.
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.
Flow best practices
There are a couple best practices to keep in mind when using flows:
- Start with pre-built flows from the flows library for templates that implement best practices.
- Keep the flow between 1 to 3 messages to not overload your subscribers.
- Optimize your sending frequency to ensure customers have enough time to check their email.
- Turn on Smart Sending for non-essential messages.
If you haven't done so, set up these flows to maximize conversions from your subscribers:
Set up a back in stock flowSet up a back in stock flow
Klaviyo has pre-built back in stock flows available in the flows library.
- Navigate to the Flows tab.
- Choose either Create Flow or Browse Ideas to be taken to the library directly.
- You can find all loyalty and sales-oriented flows we offer by filtering your view by the following goal: "Remind people to purchase."
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.
1. Click Create Flow and name your back in stock flow.
2. Once in the Visual Flow Builder, choose the trigger option Takes an Action. In 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
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 other settings and work for both email and SMS.
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 rulesCustomer 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 when an 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.
For example, if an item's inventory of 20 units were restocked, and you set the "customers to notify" to 5, then 5 customers will be notified per unit, resulting in the oldest 100 customers being notified. The flow will then wait based on the "wait time between notifications" setting before sending to next batch of customers based on the remaining inventory.
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.
- Click on a back in stock delay component.
- Click on the View back in stock reports link in the details sidebar.
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.
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.
Additional resources
Additional resources
Find other articles on back in stock flows: