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Back in stock — the two emails

Back in stock sends two emails and no others.

Where to edit them

Go to Content → Back in stock, then Settings. Under Messages there is a card for each email, showing its subject line and preview text the way an inbox would. Press Edit and the email opens in the same editor your templates use. The first time you press it, your store gets its own copy to work on.

The words we start you with are a starting point, not your voice. Every store sounds different, so rewrite them the way you would say it to a customer.

Your changes go out only once you press Publish. The editor saves as you type, but what you type is a draft: shoppers keep getting the words in use until you press Publish at the top of the editor. The editor says which words are in use, and the card says Starting words until you have pressed it and Your words after — with a line when you have changes that shoppers do not get yet. Once your own words are in use we never replace them.

The no longer available email starts with the product's name and the words is no longer available as its subject, and a preview line saying the request is closed, with thanks for waiting. The body tells the person the item won't be coming back, that their request is closed, and that they won't hear about it again — and thanks them for their interest.

Both emails greet the person by first name — "Hi Ada," — and say "Hi there," when the store never learned it. A name typed all in lowercase or all in capitals is capitalized, as in every email; a subject line you write can print it exactly as typed with {{first_name|exact}}. A name we cannot capitalize safely — written in an alphabet other than Latin, Greek, Cyrillic or Armenian — is sent exactly as typed.

Both are narrower than an ordinary email on purpose, and the narrowing is the rest of this page.

What you can change

The headings, the words, the colors, the backgrounds, the typefaces, the spacing, the subject line, the preview text — everything an ordinary email lets you change about how it looks and what it says.

Four things fill themselves in from the product the person asked about, and you place them where you like: the product's name, the variant they chose, the price, and a link straight to the product page for that exact variant. The product's own image comes through the product card, cropped and sized the way it is in every other email you send.

The subject line can name the product too, which is the one editable line most stores want most. Press Product under the subject line and choose Product name, Variant, Price or Link to put it where your cursor is. The line under the box reads it with one of your store's products, or with "[Product name]" in its place while your store has none.

Publish waits while a line could not be sent. If the subject line or the preview text would be empty for somebody — a line that is only a name, with no word for when there is no name — the box says so in Settings, and Publish stays off until it is fixed.

What you cannot change

Three blocks are fixed. None of them can be hidden, and the email is not saved without them.

The editor will not delete the product block, and says so. Take out the cancel link or your store's details and the change is not saved: the checks at the top of the editor say which one to put back. That is stricter than an ordinary template, where the same problem waits until you arm a campaign: there is nothing to arm here, so the save is the only place to catch it.

Only two places: the product the person asked about, through the product card, and your store's home page — or the cancel link, inside a sentence. There is no box for a web address, and these emails carry no social links and no offer.

The product card already links to the product the person asked about. Any other link you add goes to your store's home page, or — inside a sentence — to the cancel link. There is no box to type a web address into, because an address typed into one of these emails is not saved: it is refused as a kind of link, not checked against a list of places, so there is nothing to get around.

When a product you linked to is gone. A button, image or sentence can also link to a product you picked yourself. If that product is later deleted, set to draft or archived in Shopify, the email still goes — nobody waiting misses it — and the link takes people to your store's front page instead. Back in stock then shows a warning naming the email and the product, and your store's owner gets an email about it the first time one of these emails goes out with that link (never more than one a day). Open the email from the warning, point the link somewhere else and press Publish — or publish the product again in Shopify — and the warning goes away.

No social links either. A row of social icons carries addresses of its own, so these two emails do not have one.

And no offer. A discount block cannot go in these two messages. The reason is the promise the shopper was made: they asked to be notified about one product, and an email that arrives carrying a discount code is marketing they did not agree to. Your ordinary emails are where offers belong.

One link, and it cancels every back-in-stock request that address has with your store — not only the one the email was about.

That is deliberate. Somebody pressing a way-out link in a hurry means "stop telling me about this", and a link that only stopped one of their four requests would leave them canceling four times and concluding it does not work.

The page it opens names the item this email was about first, and offers the rest only when there is something else to cancel. A request they have already canceled says so rather than reading as an error.

Canceling is not unsubscribing, and unsubscribing is not canceling. They are separate acts on separate records. Somebody can cancel every back-in-stock request and still be happy to hear from you; somebody can unsubscribe from your marketing and still be waiting for something to come back in stock. The only bridge is one box on your unsubscribe page — Also cancel my back-in-stock requests — which arrives unticked and which they tick themselves.

The no longer available email

Sent once, to everybody who was waiting at the moment you pressed Mark as discontinued. Their requests close in the same act, so nobody can be notified twice and nobody who canceled, bought or was already closed gets one.

From now on, it also goes to somebody whose ask was held back by the daily limit on requests from one address, if their address checked out. They asked like everyone else, so they hear the same news. An ask whose address could not be confirmed is closed with no email.

One person is waiting. They will be emailed once to say it is not coming back, and their request will close. This cannot be undone — if you bring it back, they will have to ask again.

It says what it is: the item is no longer available. You may put alternatives in it, or send it with none. To add them, add a product block — it starts on the product they asked about — and choose Products I pick in its panel. Nothing recommends anything on your behalf.

Who can edit them

Editing either email is template work, so a marketer, a manager or your owner can do it. A viewer sees both cards, with the subject line and preview text, and cannot open them to edit.

Editing what would be sent is not sending it. Nothing about opening these emails sends anything to anybody. They go out when a product comes back in stock in your store, or when you press Notify or Mark as discontinued.