Back-in-stock notifications

Learn how to set up back-in-stock notifications using your catalog and custom events, so you can automatically subscribe customers to receive notifications when an item is back in stock. Keep in mind, this only applies to users who’ve already opted in to notifications.

How it works

You can set up a custom event to use as a subscription event, such as a product_clicked event. This event must contain a property of the item ID (catalog item IDs). We suggest you include a catalog name, but this isn’t required. You’ll also provide the name of an inventory quantity field, which must be a number-data type.

Note that a catalog item’s stock must be at zero for a user to subscribe to it successfully. When an item has an inventory quantity greater than zero, Braze will look up all users subscribed to that item and send a custom event that you can use to trigger a campaign or Canvas.

The event properties are sent alongside your user, so you can template in the item details into the campaign or Canvas that sends.

Setting up back-in-stock notifications

Follow these steps to set up back-in-stock notifications in a specific catalog.

1. Go to your catalog and select the Settings tab.
2. Select the Back in stock toggle.
3. If the global back-in-stock settings have not been configured, you will be prompted to set up the custom events and properties that will be used to trigger back-in-stock notifications:
   
   • Fallback Catalog This is the catalog that will be used for the back-in-stock subscription, if there is no catalog_name property present on the custom event.
   • Custom event for subscriptions is the Braze custom event that will be used to subscribe a user for back-in-stock notifications. When this event occurs, the user that performed the event will be subscribed.
   • Custom event for unsubscribing is the Braze custom event that will be used to unsubscribe a user from back-in-stock notifications. This event is optional. If the user doesn’t perform this event, they’ll be unsubscribed after 90 days or when the back-in-stock event triggers, whichever occurs first.

   • Item ID event property is the property on the above custom event that will be used to determine the item for a back-in-stock subscription or unsubscription. This property on the custom event should contain an Item ID, that is present in a catalog. The custom event should also contain a catalog_name property, to specify which catalog this item is in.

   • A sample custom event would look like

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      {
       "events": [
           {
               "external_id": "<external_id>",
               "name": "subscription",
               "time": "2024-04-15T19:22:28Z",
               "properties": {
                   "id": "shirt-xl",
                   "catalog_name": "on_sale_products",
                   "type": ["back_in_stock"]
               }
           }
       ]
      }
     

4. Select Save and continue to the catalog’s Settings page.
5. Set your notification rule. There are two options:
   • Notify all subscribed users notifies all customers who are waiting when the item is back in stock.
   • Set notification limits notifies a specified number of customers per your configured notification period. Braze will notify the specified numbers of customers in increments until there are no more customers to notify or until the item goes out of stock. Your notification rate cannot exceed notifying 10,000 users per minute.
6. Set the Inventory field in catalog. This catalog field will be used to determine if the item is out of stock. The field must be number type.
7. Select Save settings.

Using back-in-stock notifications in a Canvas

After setting up the back-in-stock feature in a catalog, follow these steps to use with Canvas.

1. Set up an action-based Canvas.
2. Select Back in stock as the trigger.
3. Select the name of the catalog with the back-in-stock notifications.
4. Continue setting up your Canvas as you would.

Now, your customers can be notified when an item is back in stock.

Using Liquid

To template in details about the catalog item that’s back in stock, you can use the canvas_entry_properties Liquid tag to access the item_id.

Using {{canvas_entry_properties.${catalog_update}.item_id}} will return the ID of the item that came back in stock. {{canvas_entry_properties.${catalog_update}.previous_value}} will return the inventory value of the item prior to the update, and {{canvas_entry_properties.${catalog_update}.new_value}} will return the new inventory value after the update.

Use this Liquid tag {% catalog_items <name_of_your_catalog> {{canvas_entry_properties.${catalog_update}.item_id}} %} at the top of your message, then use {{ items[0].<field_name> }} to access data about that item throughout the message.

Considerations

• Users are only subscribed for 90 days. If the item isn’t back in stock in 90 days, the user is unsubscribed.
• When using the Notify all subscribed users notification rule, Braze will notify 100,000 over 10 minutes.
• Braze will process at most 10 item updates over one minute. If you update 11 items in one minute, only the first 10 can trigger a back-in-stock notification.