When one of your products goes out of stock, do you ever continue to sell it?

In certain instances, such as when replenishment is imminent, overselling (selling more of something than exists or can be delivered) may make sense for your store, but you must inform your customer about the extended delivery time and offer them the option to cancel their order and receive a refund.

With an automated email to accompany oversold products, you can continue selling without inventory!

Below, you will see how you can use Shopify Marketing Automation to send an automatic email to customers who buy products that are out of stock.

The Use Case

On November 11, 2017, a user named Fabio_Cardoso posted in the Shopify forum that his team was developing a jewellery store and needed an email notification for scenarios when the product is out of stock, and the price is fixed.

Fabio_Cardoso needs a way to notify the client at the time of purchase that the out of stock/fixed price product will take X more days to be delivered because it’s not yet ready.

You can see the original post here and screenshot below:

Fortunately, we can use Shopify Marketing Automation to notify customers when overselling!

How to notify customers when overselling with Shopify Marketing Automations

If you prefer to watch a step-by-step video tutorial, check out this video.

Otherwise, see the guide below!

1. Find the product(s) you plan to oversell and add a tag to it. In our example, we’re going to add the tag “outofstock_priceisfixed” to the product(s) we plan to oversell.

2. In Shopify Marketing Automations, choose “Order Created” as your trigger.

3. Add the following condition: Order → lineItems → product → tags and set equal to the tag you’re adding to the product you plan to oversell.

4. Finally, choose “Send marketing email” and write your message. Please be sure to inform the customer that the order will be delayed and give them the option of cancelling their order for a full refund!

Conclusion

Shopify Marketing Automation offers an easy way to set up a flow that emails customers for sales of certain products.

You can either designate the oversold product by name or product tags. If you have multiple oversold products, it would be easier to identify oversold products by tags.

What are some other ways you might solve Fabio_Cardoso’s problem?