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Back in stock — the two messages

Back in stock sends two emails and no others.

• The restock message — this is back, here it is.
• The discontinued message — this is not coming back, sent once when you mark an item gone for good.

Both are yours to edit, in the same email editor your templates use. Both are narrower than an ordinary email on purpose, and the narrowing is the subject 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.

What you cannot change

Three blocks are fixed, and none of them can be deleted or hidden.

• The product — the thing this email is about. An email that did not name it would be an email nobody could act on.
• The cancel link. Every one of these emails carries a way out, and it is the same link whether somebody presses it in the email or uses their mail app's own unsubscribe control.
• Your store's details — the name and address the law requires at the foot of email you send.

If you remove one, the editor refuses the save and says which. 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.

Links go to three places and nowhere else

Any link in these two messages may point at:

• the product the person asked about,
• your store's front page,
• the cancel link.

Anything else is refused when you save. That is not a hostname rule with holes in it — the editor refuses a typed-in address as a kind of link, so there is nothing to get around.

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.

The cancel link, and what it cancels

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 a restock. 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 discontinued message

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.

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 not coming back. You may put alternatives in it — product cards you choose by hand, linking to your own product pages — or send it with none. Nothing recommends anything on your behalf.

Who can edit them

Editing either message is template work, so a marketer, a manager or your owner can do it. A viewer reads them.

Editing what would be sent is not sending it. Nothing about opening these messages emails anybody; the only two acts that do are a restock arriving and you pressing Notify or Mark as discontinued.