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Back in Stock + Product Recommendations

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  • Updated

Back in Stock campaigns are an effective way to re-engage customers by alerting them when products they’ve shown interest in are available again. By pairing these alerts with personalized product recommendations, you can create relevant, high-converting messages that drive repeat purchases and recover missed sales opportunities.

What You’ll Learn

In this guide, you’ll learn how to:

  • Set up real-time Back in Stock alerts to notify customers automatically when products become available.

  • Enhance alerts with personalized product recommendations for increased engagement and conversion.

Before you begin

  • Prerequisites

    • Access to Email by Optimove

    • Access to Optimove Personalize for product recommendations

  • Required data

    • PRODUCT VIEW events (Mandatory): Identify which products a user has shown interest in.

      • Key fields: userid, url, product_id

    • Online Order events (Mandatory): Exclude users who have already purchased the product.

      • Key fields: userid, product_id

    • Inventory (Mandatory): Contains product metadata, pricing, and stock levels.

      • Key fields: price, stock, product_id, sku_id, variant_id, isavailable, release_date, product_image, product_description, product_url

Back in Stock overview and data requirements

Setup process

Step 1: Configure the Back-in-Stock Event Generator

  1. In Optimove Personalize, go to Smart Campaigns → Event Generators → Add New Event Generator.

  2. Complete the following fields:

    1. Info: Enter a name and description.

    2. Channel & Provider: Select Email and Optimove.

    3. Use Case: Choose Back in Stock.

  3. Parameters:

    1. Activity Window — Set how many days of user and purchase history to analyze.

    2. Minimum Stock Level — Prevent promoting items that may sell out quickly by setting a stock threshold.

    3. Number of Recommendations — Define how many products to include. (One is recommended for highest accuracy.)

  4. Frequency Capping: Control how often customers receive alerts (e.g., minimum hours between alerts or daily maximum).

  5. Messages:

    1. Choose External.

    2. Enter an External Template ID (e.g., back_in_stock_daily). This will be the name of your event and must contain only alphanumeric characters and underscores.

    3. Make note of the Available Fields for later setup.

  6. Schedule: Set to Always On (recommended) for real-time alerts, or restrict to specific times.

  7. Save: Use Test Mode to validate accuracy before switching to Enabled.

Smart Campaigns Overview · Back in Stock specifics

Step 2: Set up a Matching Event in Optimove Settings

  1. In your Optimove instance, go to Settings → Events.

  2. Click Add Event to create a new event.

    • Event Display Name: Use the same name as the External Template ID from Step 1.

  3. Add all Event Parameters listed in the Available Fields section of your Event Generator.

  4. Verify that all parameters match before saving the event.

⚠️ Common Mistakes

  • If the event display name and event generator name do not match, the campaign will fail to trigger.

Step 3: Set up a Real-Time Trigger

  • Create a trigger for your campaign based on the event created in Step 2.

  • Refer to this guide for full instructions: Managing Triggers.

Step 4: Build the Back-in-Stock Email Template

  1. Open Email by Optimove and create a new Triggered Email template.

  2. Build your template using text, images, and design elements as usual.

  3. Leave space for the back-in-stock product and optional product recommendations.

  4. Under the Personalization menu, select the parameters to display — these correspond to the available fields in your Event Generator.

  5. If you do not plan to include recommendations, save your template and skip to Step 6.

Step 5: Include Product Recommendations in your template (Optional Step)

Optionally, in addition to the Back-in-Stock item you can include Optimove Personalize recommendations to further personalize your email campaign.

This requires two additional steps, if you only want to include the back-in-stock item, skip this section.

  1. Create a placement

    1. In Optimove Personalize, create a new Placement by going to Recommend → Placement Manger → New Placement.

      1. Placements are used to deliver product recommendations, you can configure recommendation models to recommend items that match your campaign strategy (e.g., recommend personalized popular items).

      2. For more details on creating placements see here.

  2. Create a Smart Banner

    1. In Optimove Personalize, create a new Smart Banner by going to Smart Content → Widget Library → Visual Banner Editor.

      1. Banners are how you can design and embed recommendations into your email campaigns.

      2. Configure:

        1. Banner Name (unique)

        2. Select the placement created in previous step

        3. CTA URL (fixed, templatized, or dynamic)

        4. Define the number of items and grid layout

        5. Dimensions (match them to your email container to ensure fit).

      3. Design the banner, similar to Email, use a drag and drop editor to design your banner including merge tags to include recommendation content from your connected placement.

      4. Preview and QA your banner (sample profiles and edge cases before launching your campaign).

      5. Save the banner.

      6. To place the banner within your Email+ template, simply open the template, drag a “Opti-X Banner” content block into the template and select the banner you want to place.

    2. For more details on creating Smart Banners with the Visual Editor see this article:

      Full article on how to build a Smart Banner with the Visual Banner Editor

      Now, simply choose from your existing Opti-X Smart Banners.

Step 6: Create the Real-Time Back-in-Stock Smart Campaign

  1. Go to Campaigns → Smart Campaigns → New and choose Triggered.

  2. Select the Back in Stock event (from Step 1) as the trigger.

  3. Define eligibility (e.g., opted-in subscribers or recent OOS viewers) and apply capping/throttling.

  4. Set Always On and choose your delivery channel (Email).

  5. Configure goals/measurement and save.

Smart Campaigns and Triggered Campaigns in Optimove

Testing and Previewing

Before deploying your campaign, use the built in tools in Optimail to preview your Back-in-Stock email as different customers. Use the instant preview option to confirm layout and data rendering, or send yourself a test email to see the final version live in your inbox.

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