Are out of stock products costing you sales? Here are the tools you need to recover them!

Your sales and marketing teams may be doing a great job of bringing in new customers, but if you don’t have the right tools in place to manage your out-of-stock products, then all your efforts could be for nothing.

Here are some of the tools that we recommend every eCommerce store owner should have in place.

Marketing toolkit you need to bring back sales lost to out-of-stock products

Restock Alerts

This tool allows customers to receive notifications when a particular product will be back in stock. You can then use this information to update your inventory levels and restock your store with the product.

You can simply auto swap the Buy Now or Add to Cart button with a Notify Me button when a product goes out of stock.

Key features:

Quick and easy setup that takes less than 2 minutes
Offers 100% customizability
Multi-channel restock alerts (email, SMS, web push notifications, Facebook Messenger)

OptinMonster

OptinMonster offers you an array of options to create high-converting popups. It’s a great option if you want to create popups that can be triggered on pages of products going out of stock.

Key features:

Offers geolocation targeting to personalize campaigns based on a user’s location
Uses Exit-Intent Technology to detect users’ mouse behavior and display targeted messages before they leave the site
Easily convert any image or link to an Optin form in just 2 steps; it is proven to boost conversions by 785%.

RetainIQ

When you find a product that’s out of stock, you have to act fast. The longer it takes you to respond to your customers, the more likely they are to leave you for another store.

RetainIQ helps you manage your back-in-stock flow by sending emails when products come back into stock so that you can quickly react and restock your inventory.

It’s simple to set up, and you can create campaigns that will automatically send emails to customers when an item they ordered is back in stock. You can also manually add items to the list of items that should be notified when they are back in stock.

Key features:

Simply choose from a recommended list of pre-tested flows that work best for your product category and market
Access to easily customizable 1000+ pre-built email templates
Get guaranteed results in days vs months

Postscript

SMS is one of the most effective ways to communicate with your customers about a product being out of stock, and it can be used to communicate with multiple customers at once.

Postscript.io is a simple, yet effective tool for sending back-in-stock notifications to customers. It’s easy to use and can be set up in minutes.

Key features:

Easily grow your subscriber list with easy-to-use tools
Improve conversions with triggers, automation, and deep segmentation
Boost retention rates by nurturing strong customer relationships through high-quality support on their preferred channel

QuickReply.ai

With QuickReply.ai, you can automate your out-of-stock product WhatsApp notifications.

Quickreply.ai is an AI-powered chatbot that lets you automatically send WhatsApp messages to customers who try to buy your products but are sold out. It’s easy to set up, and it’ll work with any eCommerce website or online store you run!

Key features:

One inbox for all campaigns and conversations
Powerful analytics to track your WhatsApp marketing campaigns, personalize messages and optimize for more conversions
Pre-trained ai assistants for e-commerce to eliminate the bulk of customer queries

Recart

Recart allows you to set up a Facebook Messenger bot that automatically replies to customers who are trying to purchase an item that’s out of stock.

This can be especially helpful if you want to get ahead of the game and let customers know about important updates so you can seamlessly improve your conversions.

Key features:

Grow all your marketing lists with one tool
Build automated flows in minutes
Connect with your customers at every stage of their journey

AdRoll

Retargeting ads have less cost per acquisition since people are already interested.

AdRoll is an ad retargeting platform that allows you to keep track of the shoppers who have already shown interest in your products, then target them with ads that remind them about what they might be missing out on. This is a great way to bring back those shoppers who left their carts, so they can finally make that purchase after all!

Key features:

Quick and easy setup
Run AI-optimized ads on all major platforms to boost higher ROI
Offers a combination of ads & email that leads to increased conversions

Push Down & Hide Out of Stock

If you’re selling products that are back-ordered, slow to restock, or out of stock, it’s important to be transparent about your inventory situation.

The Push Down and Hide Out of Stock app is a great tool for handling these situations.

You can push down items that are taking time to restock, or hide them from the public’s view if they’re going to take longer than expected. This way, you won’t have customers waiting around for something that isn’t coming back. And you can get back to what really matters – serving your clients!

Key features:

Move out-of-stock products to the bottom of the collections automatically
Auto-hide sold out products that are not in stock for long or ever again
Strategically improve SEO with the sold-out item.

Product Labels & Badges

You can use Product Labels & Badges to replace the product label with a sticker. This is great for when you have an item that’s out of stock and need to fill in the empty space on your shelf.

Key features:

Easily add catchy labels on the product images
Add badges on any custom position
Freely customize your own label or badge

Pre‑order Today

Pre-ordering is a great way to capture the purchase intent of your customers, as well as increase sales. By allowing your customers to place an order before the product is actually in stock, you can secure their loyalty and make sure they won’t go elsewhere when the product comes in.

Pre‑order Today by Appikon is a great tool to easily execute this on your Shopify store with no hassle whatsoever!

Key features:

Swap Add to Cart with Pre-order buttons for out-of-stock & backorder products
Powerful & flexible features like pre-order badges, product tagging, pre-order discounts, etc

Conclusion

If you’re an online store owner, you already know that it can be difficult to successfully manage your inventory. If one of your products is out of stock when a customer orders it, it can be quite annoying for that customer, and negatively affect future sales.

With all of these great tools at hand, you should be well equipped to handle out-of-stock products.

Additional resources:

Not sure if your back in stock strategy toolkit is in place?

Book a demo of RetainIQ to find the missing piece.

List Of Tools You Need To Handle Out-Of-Stock Products

Marketing toolkit you need to bring back sales lost to out-of-stock products

Conclusion