How to Notify Customers When Products Are Back in Stock

Potential sales can slip away because items are out of stock on your Shopify store. 

“Sorry, this product is currently unavailable.” Those words can send eager shoppers straight to your competitors. 

Today’s eCommerce shoppers are used to convenience at every turn. They can track packages in real-time, get same-day delivery, and receive personalized recommendations for discovering new products that might interest them. Against this backdrop, a simple “we’ll let you know when a particular product is available again” option is increasingly expected.

Let’s discuss how back-in-stock notifications can help you recover those almost-lost sales and grow your customer email lists.

Why do back-in-stock notifications matter?

Running out of popular items happens to every Shopify store. But customers who try to buy something that’s unavailable are showing serious shopping intent. These are people ready to spend money with your brand!

Have you ever checked your analytics to see how many people visit out-of-stock product pages and abandon your store immediately afterward they can’t make a purchase? Those numbers represent real money left on the table. 

Without a system to capture this interest, you’re essentially saying goodbye to guaranteed revenue. But with the right approach, you can transform stockouts from frustrations into future sales opportunities.

Shoppers who sign up for back-in-stock alerts convert at higher rates than your average site visitor. Why? Because they’ve already shown they want that specific product from your store.

What happens when customers hit the "Out of Stock" wall?

When customers face this dead end, they typically do one of three things:

They give up completely

“Well, that was disappointing.” Closes tab

This is the worst-case scenario. The customer may walk away from your brand along with the purchase. Retail research summarized in Harvard Business Review found that 21% to 43% of shoppers who hit a stock-out buy the item at another store, depending on the product category. That’s a lot of lifetime value walking out the virtual door.

They promise to check back (but rarely do)

“I’ll just try again next week…”

We all know how this story ends. Despite their best intentions, most customers won’t remember to manually check your store again. Life gets busy, other shiny products catch their eye, and that potential sale slowly fades away. Even the most determined shoppers who do return might find the item still unavailable. That could lead to creating doubt between your customers and your brand.

They find it somewhere else

“I wonder if another store has this…”

In just a few clicks, your customer buys the same or a similar product from another store. You’ve lost this sale, and you’ve potentially introduced your customer to a competitor they might stick with long-term.

When it comes to telling customers "It's back!", you've got options

Let’s break down the main channels and see which might work best for your Shopify store. 

Email notifications: the reliable workhorse

Email is a dependable channel for back-in-stock alerts, and for good reason.

In Barilliance’s email data , back-in-stock emails had the highest open rate of any campaign type, at 65.32%. Why? Because they’re solving a specific problem that the customer already told you they have.

Complete guide HERE. 

One thing to watch out for is timing. If your inventory system and email platform don’t talk to each other quickly, you risk sending alerts after items have sold out again. 

SMS alerts: when speed matters

For high-demand products that might sell out quickly again, SMS is worth considering.

A text lands on the shopper’s phone with a link straight to the product, which suits a fast-moving restock. Timesact can send back-in-stock SMS alerts to shoppers who sign up with their phone number.

SMS works particularly well for limited edition releases, seasonal items that sell fast, products with historically quick sellouts, and items with waiting lists.

You need explicit consent (separate from email opt-in), and you must make it easy to unsubscribe. Also, remember that SMS typically costs more than email to send.

Push notifications: for your most engaged fans

If you have a mobile app, push notifications can be powerful for customers who already have your app installed.

Push notifications shine when your customers are repeat buyers, you can deep-link directly to the product page, and you have an active mobile app community.

Timesact can send its back-in-stock events to Klaviyo or Shopify Flow, so if your app’s push notifications already run through one of them, you can trigger the restock push from there.

The multi-channel approach

Many Shopify merchants offer more than one channel and let customers choose their preferred notification method.

Some shoppers want the detailed information in an email. Others want the immediacy of a text. By offering options, you increase the chances of reconnecting with that customer, regardless of their communication preferences.

Check out our best practices for back-in-stock notifications . 

How Timesact makes this whole process automatic

You’re already juggling inventory management, marketing, customer service, and a dozen other tasks. The last thing you need is another manual process to handle. The Timesact app can take this off your plate.

Set it and forget it: The Timesact approach

Timesact Preorder turns back-in-stock notifications from a manual headache into an automatic revenue generator. Once it’s set up, it works in the background, collecting interested customers and notifying them at exactly the right moment, without you lifting a finger.

What makes Timesact different?

Smart opt-in widget that actually converts

Timesact Preorder adds a clean, customizable widget to your product pages that appears when items are out of stock. Customers can enter their email with a single click to register their interest.

What makes this widget special? It’s designed specifically for conversion. You can:

• Customize colors and text to match your brand
• Place the back in stock notification exactly where shoppers are already looking

Real-time inventory monitoring

“When will I know if something’s back in stock?”

With other solutions, you might need to manually check inventory and trigger notifications. Timesact Preorder connects directly to your Shopify inventory system and detects when items are restocked, then notifies each subscriber once the variant is back in stock, or once it reaches the Quantity threshold if you set one in your Back in Stock experience.

Real results from real merchants

Here’s what other Shopify merchants say:

“Timesact has been a really useful preorder and back-in-stock email notification solution for our store. The back-in-stock email notification is a must-have.” – Thermaltake USA

What you experience as a Shopify store owner:

1. Install the Timesact Notify me app from the Shopify App Store

2. Create a Back in Stock experience, assign your products, style the Notify Me form and publish the Notify Me email so it shows Live. Then enable the Timesact App Embed on your published theme (Online Store → Themes → Customize → App embeds) and click Save

3. The system automatically starts collecting interested customers

4. When products are restocked, notifications go out automatically

No spreadsheets. No manual emails. No trying to remember which customers wanted which products. Just automatic sales recovery that works. 

Out-of-stock doesn't have to mean out of luck.

  Want to see how much revenue you could recover? Install the app and start collecting sign-ups on your sold-out products. 

If you have specific needs, book a free setup call and let’s catch up. 

FAQs