Create a low inventory journey

Updated July 26, 2024 15:08

Heads up: This article details how low inventory journeys work and how to use them, and assumes that you’re already familiar with how journeys work in Attentive. If you’re not, you may want to check out What are journeys? If you’re interested in building low inventory journeys for specific products, you’ll also want to be familiar with branching in journeys.

Low inventory journeys drive revenue by emphasizing the scarcity of products your subscribers have shown interest in. When subscribers view a product or add it to their cart but don’t complete the purchase – and the product has a limited remaining quantity – low inventory journeys message subscribers, prompting them to return to your store and complete the purchase.

Watch: Create a low inventory journey

You can customize whether low inventory journeys trigger on any low inventory products, low inventory variations for any products, or for specific products.

As with other journeys, you can include an offer in low inventory messages, further boosting your conversion rates.

You should know

Low inventory journeys require that you share your inventory data with Attentive. For more, check out Product Catalog.
This article references subscribers who “show interest” in a product. Subscribers show interest in products when they either view a product or they add it to their shopping cart, but don't complete the purchase. You can set whether journeys trigger on product views or on adding products to cart.
Low inventory journeys are retroactive for the view or add to cart window that you set. For example, if you turn on the journey today and set either your view or add to cart window to In the past 30 days, any subscriber who viewed a product or added it to their cart and became low inventory within the last 30 days would enter the journey.
Want to learn best practices for low inventory journeys? Check out Use cases: Low inventory journeys!
With an eCommerce integration or the Product Catalog API, you can input product data to incorporate product attributes in your subscriber segments or journey branches. This allows you to create product-change triggered journeys. For more information, see Use your product data in Attentive.
You can use unique or shared discount codes with low inventory journeys, but not integrated offers like Shopify auto-gen offer codes. Because low inventory journeys may trigger for multiple subscribers at the same time, price drop messages could get dropped if the offer depletes more quickly than it can be replenished.

Which products trigger low inventory journeys?

You can customize low inventory journeys to send messages to subscribers who show interest in low inventory products in multiple ways:

When subscribers show interest in any item that’s low in inventory. This option triggers on any item in your store that’s low in inventory.
When subscribers show interest in an item variant that’s low in inventory. This option triggers on any item that has a variant that’s low in inventory. For example, if a black shirt has three variants for size and only the large variant is low in stock, the journey will trigger when subscribers show an interest in the large variant of the black shirt.
When subscribers show interest in a specific product, category, collection, or tag that’s low inventory that you define. Note that unlike the options above, you’ll need to use the new low inventory branch.

How low inventory trigger settings work

Low inventory and price drop journeys bring some new options to journeys: trigger settings. You can tell which journeys have additional trigger settings by the Settings badge on the trigger:

Once clicked, the trigger settings panel opens where you can set:

Units: How few units of a product remain before the low inventory journey is triggered. For example, if you set Units to 10, the journey will trigger once only 10 units remain in stock.

Tip: Don’t set Units too low! You’ll get the best results – and provide the best experience – if multiple subscribers get a chance to purchase low inventory items before they’re gone. In general, aim for 3-6 units.
Unit level: This setting is how you define what a Unit is for this journey. There are two options:
- On product level: Triggers when any item across the entire product is low inventory. Selecting On product level will let you include either subscribers who have added a low inventory item to their cart in the past, or who have viewed the low item product in the past. When journeys with this setting send a message, the {{triggerEvent.product.name}} personalization will show the name of the product.
  
  Tip: Use this setting for items in your store that don’t have variations. If you want to maximize the reach of a low inventory journey, include subscribers who viewed a low inventory product more than once in the past week.
- On variant level: Triggered when a variant of one of your products reaches low inventory. Selecting On variant level will let you include only subscribers who added low inventory products to their cart in the past. When journeys with this setting send a message, the {{triggerEvent.product.name}} personalization will still show the name of the product, not of the product variant.
  
  Tip: Use this setting when you know specific variants of a product are more likely to sell out, like shoe or clothing sizes. If you want to maximize revenue on product variants that often run low on inventory (like particular sizes of clothing or shoes), include subscribers who added the product to their cart at least once in the last 30 days.

Include subscribers who: The subscribers that you want to enter this journey.
Exclude subscribers who: The subscribers who you don't want to enter this journey. You’ll usually want to set this to exclude subscribers who purchased the product that triggered the low inventory journey, as well as excluding subscribers who purchased the item recently to avoid message fatigue.

Go further with low inventory journeys

Don’t add a wait step before branching! Price drop journeys are all about urgency, so don’t hamstring your sale by waiting.
If you’re running a time-sensitive sale like a midnight collections drop or a Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale, consider disabling Smart Sending and Quiet Hours.
Use time-sensitive messaging to create a sense of urgency for subscribers. You can even A/B test different variations of time-sensitive messages to find which approach works best for your brand.
Include dynamic product images to visually remind subscribers which item has low inventory.