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With the right back-in-stock strategy, you’ll capitalize on the popularity of your products and improve the overall customer experience.
A back-in-stock notification sent through SMS is an incredibly powerful tool that every brand should use to grow subscribers, boost revenue, and improve customer experience.
Offering an amazing product that causes you to sell out of merchandise quickly is a good problem to have. It means your brand and products are resonating with customers, getting shares on social media, and even making the rounds through word-of-mouth. On the flip side, when your highly-coveted product is sold out, you have eager potential customers being met with disappointment.
With the right back-in-stock strategy (including SMS, email, on-page messaging, etc.) you’ll be able to capitalize on the popularity of your products and improve the overall customer experience.
Now more than ever before, consumers are open to new ways of shopping, communication, and payments. They are also accustomed to incredibly fast shipping, BOPIS options, and even buy now, pay later financing. AKA, we want convenience, and we want things now.
This is why sold-out, highly sought-after items can be devastating to your customer experience—especially for first-time shoppers. But all is not lost. You have the chance to right the ship.
For example, let’s say a loyal customer has seen your social posts and is looking forward to your newest collection. They are busy with work on the day of the drop and miss out on the item they wanted. While disappointed, there is clear messaging on your product page asking them to sign up for back-in-stock text messages. They opt-in and tell themselves that they'll buy the product as soon as it's back in stock, so they don’t miss out.
Now, instead of a loyal and excited customer having a poor customer experience and losing out on potential revenue, you have turned the situation around. You give them something to look forward to and the promise that they will be the first to know as soon as the product is available.
Every marketer knows the importance of having engaged and growing SMS lists. Not only do back-in-stock opt-ins help you improve customer experience and gain revenue, but they also help expand your marketing reach for future campaigns.
Without back-in-stock communications, it's up to the customer to continually check back to see if a restock has happened. You are missing an opportunity to engage customers, build new relationships, uphold customer loyalty, and gain potential revenue.
By having customers opt-in to back-in-stock texts, you create a segmented list of interested and highly convertible leads. Not to mention, when the restock happens, there is a greater sense of urgency, leading to conversions and loyal, delighted customers.
SMS is a powerful channel of communication. In fact, it’s one of the most effective ways to recover lost revenue, with its proficiency in abandonment campaigns, customer service use cases, and promotion amplifications. So, how can brands use SMS in a back-in-stock marketing strategy?
There are two ways to ask customers to opt-in to back-in-stock texts.
The first is to use a back-in-stock button on the product page that allows customers to sign up for texts. For example, Voyage’s Back-in-Stock feature will automatically display a button with the CTA “Text me when available” on any sold-out product. So instead of visitors hitting a dead-end “Sold Out”, they are prompted to join your SMS list and get notified when it returns!
💡 Learn more about Voyage’s Back-in-Stock notifications here.
The second way to have your customer opt-in is through SMS keywords. While keywords are a viable method, the back-in-stock button route is automated and dynamically responds to the stock in your store. Meanwhile, using keywords for back-in-stock requires a lot of manual lift and maintenance.
SMS Keywords: SMS keywords are words or phrases that users text to your company shortcode to opt-in to receive text messages from your brand. These different keywords interact with shortcodes that correspond directly to specific campaigns, and can help you track their effectiveness and segment your SMS list. For example, a brand could ask customers to 'Text "newcandles" to XXX-XXX-XXXX'.
You have your list of interested leads, now is the time to delight them. You can approach your back-in-stock segment however you would like or has proved successful for your brand in the past.
For example, you could initially send them a message with something along the lines of “Hi Sam! We’re so sorry the item you wanted is out of stock. Here’s a 15% off code to shop our in-stock items” to start to build up that relationship.
When it’s time for the official back-in-stock notification, you want to make the buying process frictionless for your customers. An easy way to do this is with click-to-buy message links that will take SMS subscribers directly to your checkout with the item they would like.
After your delighted customer has secured their sought-after product, you can continue to use SMS to build relationships with them through product launches, sales and promotions, news and updates, and so much more.
With a focus on helping customers keep humble during their highs in life and hopeful during their lows, Lokai creates motivational and inspirational bracelets, jewelry, and water bottles. With partnerships with global brands like the NBA, WNBA, and officially licensed products from Star Wars (more on this in a minute!) Lokai products are constantly in high demand.
When the brand sold out of their "The Child" Star Wars bracelet, leadership wanted to ensure they did the most they could to convert dangling sales leads when the product was back in stock.
With Voyage as their partner, Lokai created a specific keyword campaign that allowed customers to opt-in for back-in-stock text notifications. Through the keyword segmentation, customers interested in hearing right away when the bracelet was back in stock received an automated drip messaging reply confirming their enrollment, followed by a back-in-stock text.
Lokai's back-in-stock text secured a CTR of 70.23% (unique clicks) against a Fashion/Apparel benchmark of 5.59%. The CVR for the text was 36.83%, for a 20,000% increase over industry benchmarks. Their ROAS was about 916X.
Lokai used the power of SMS communications to successfully deliver on a promise to a passionate, dedicated customer segment – and saw out of this world results.
💡 Click here to view Lokai’s and other SMS success stories.
While SMS marketing is one of the most effective ways for brands to communicate (the global average open rate for SMS texts is 94%, compared to the average open rate for email at 17%), combining multiple marketing channels is a great way to meet customers needs, increase touch-points, and build customer relationships.
For example, if you have a product or collection that sold out quickly, you could send an email asking customers to sign up for back-in-stock notifications to build up your back-in-stock SMS and email lists.
Or, if they sign up for back-in-stock notifications, you can send them an email confirming they're on the list, as well as suggesting similar in-stock products.
Along the same lines as email, utilizing your social media to support back-in-stock list building or communicating estimated back-in-stock times are great ways to support your marketing efforts from all angles.
A few strategies to test are:
You will fully capitalize on your most popular products by combining SMS, email, and social media for your back-in-stock strategy.
SMS is an incredibly powerful marketing channel that lets brands reach new levels of engagement and conversions. Utilizing SMS for back-in-stock notifications creates a positive customer experience, guarantees amazing open rates, and captures dangling sales leads.
Voyage provides brands with all the tools, data, and automation needed to successfully build and execute outstanding SMS back-in-stock notifications. Through our Back-in-Stock notifications, list building and segmentation capabilities, Deep Links, Click-to-Buy, and even more features, your brand can build the best possible SMS experience for your customers.
At Voyage, we seek to help brands foster thoughtful, authentic interactions with their customers and build community. We understand brands measure performance not only in today's reach, ROI, and bottom line but also in the sustainable health of customer relationships and experiences.
Start driving revenue and building meaningful relationships with your customers today. Click here to get a demo and start your 30-day free trial of Voyage.
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