Back-in-stock alerts
the moment it lands, to the people still waiting
Demand for a sold-out product decays. Purands alerts waiting customers as stock returns, ordered by who is most likely to buy now.
The problem
A product sells out with customers still wanting it. By the time stock returns, most of them have bought something else somewhere else.
A single blast to everyone who ever viewed the item is noise. It reaches people who moved on and buries the ones who did not.
What triggers it, and what it reads
The trigger is a catalogue change: a wishlisted or waitlisted item going live again, or stock crossing back above zero.
- Who asked for the item, and how long ago
- Purchase intent, scored daily
- Whether they have since bought a substitute
- Channel affinity and peak engagement window
- How much stock actually returned
Back-in-stock alerts are one of the Agentic Skills, and wishlist items going live trigger them automatically.
What gets sent
Examples only, written for this page. Real messages are generated per customer from their own profile and your catalogue.
- WhatsApp: Hi Amelia, the Glow Essence Toner you asked about is back. Shall I put one aside?
- Email: Subject names the product. The body links straight to it, with the size and shade that customer wanted.
- SMS: Back in stock: Glow Essence Toner. Limited run: [link]
- Push: Deep-links to the exact product page, not the category.
- Web assistant: Tells a returning customer their item is available before they go looking for it.
How the agent picks the moment and the channel
A short restock is not announced to a long waitlist. The agent works down by purchase intent, so the alert matches the stock that exists.
Customers who have since bought an alternative are not chased with the original, which is what a blanket waitlist send does.
Each alert goes on the channel that customer reads, inside their engagement window, and counts against their cross-channel frequency.
The same catalogue signal drives low-stock and price-drop nudges, so inventory context is not bolted on to one skill alone.
Setting it up
Connect the store so the catalogue and stock levels sync. Alerts follow inventory state, so the sync has to be live.
Collect interest somewhere the profile can see it: a wishlist, a notify-me form, or a conversation with the web or WhatsApp assistant.
The other retention jobs
- Abandoned cart recovery: one decision per shopper, not one schedule.
- Replenishment reminders: before they run out, not after.
- Win-back campaigns: a reason to return, not a blanket discount.
- Review requests: asked at the moment the answer is yes.
- Order updates: the messages customers actually open.
All six run on one engine: Agentic Skills, reading Profiling.
Back-in-stock alerts
See this running on your own data
A 30 minute demo on your catalogue and your customers, with the decisions the agent would make shown one by one.