AI Out of Stock Overview

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Table of Contents

What Is AI Out of Stock?
Why AI Out of Stock Matters
How AI Out of Stock Works
Channels and Message Behavior
Key Benefits for Your Brand and Customers
Requirements and Readiness Checklist

When shoppers land on out-of-stock products, they often leave the site without making a purchase. Buying intent turns into a dead-end experience, frustrating customers and quietly eroding revenue over time.

AI Out of Stock Experiences are designed to solve this problem. They automatically identify visitors who leave after viewing unavailable items and follow up with them via email and/or SMS (depending on how your program is configured). Each follow-up includes personalized recommendations for similar, in-stock products that align with what the shopper originally wanted.

Instead of losing these visitors entirely, you can turn stock limitations into a new opportunity to engage, convert, and build stronger customer relationships.

What Is AI Out of Stock?

AI Out of Stock is an automated, behavior-based experience that targets shoppers who:

1. View one or more out-of-stock products, and
2. End their session without making a purchase.

For this audience, the experience:

• Uses behavioral data and affinity modeling to understand what the shopper was likely looking for.
• Identifies similar products that are currently available.
• Delivers tailored recommendations via email and/or SMS to bring the shopper back and help them complete a purchase.

This isn’t a simple “back in stock” alert. Instead, it focuses on immediate alternatives, so you can capture demand even while specific items remain unavailable.

Why AI Out of Stock Matters

1. Fixes a major leakage point in the funnel

Out-of-stock pages can be one of the biggest silent sources of revenue loss. Shoppers who reach them typically have high intent, but there is often no structured follow-up to show alternatives.

Over time, this creates a persistent leakage point:

• Strong intent → out-of-stock product → no clear next step → session ends.

AI Out of Stock transforms this failure mode into a dedicated recovery channel by re-engaging shoppers who would otherwise disappear.

2. Improves the customer experience

From a customer’s perspective, running into an unavailable item can be disappointing. AI Out of Stock turns that frustration into a helpful, guided experience:

• Instead of a dead end, shoppers receive timely, relevant recommendations for similar, in-stock items.
• Messages feel like a continuation of their browsing, not a generic promotion.

This helps customers find something they love faster and builds trust that your brand will proactively support them, even during inventory gaps.

3. Drives incremental, high-ROI revenue

Because AI Out of Stock focuses on visitors who have already expressed clear intent, recovered conversions tend to be high quality. The program:

• Recovers revenue from a previously overlooked audience.
• Adds incremental sends and conversions on top of your existing abandonment and catalog-based experiences.
• Runs automatically once configured, requiring minimal ongoing manual work.

How AI Out of Stock Works

AI Out of Stock can be broken into a clear, step-by-step flow.

Step 1: Track visitor behavior

As shoppers browse your site, their actions are tracked, including:

• Which products they view
• Whether those products are in or out of stock
• How they navigate and when they leave the session

This behavioral data provides the signals needed to identify out-of-stock abandonment and power accurate recommendations.

Step 2: Detect out-of-stock abandonment

A visitor becomes eligible for AI Out of Stock when they:

• View an item (or items) that are currently out of stock, and
• End their session without purchasing.

These visitors have high intent but were blocked by availability, making them ideal candidates for a follow-up experience.

Step 3: Evaluate eligibility and experience priority

Some visitors may be eligible for multiple experiences at once—such as standard browse abandonment or cart abandonment, in addition to AI Out of Stock.

To protect your core performance:

• Primary abandonment experiences are prioritized first (for example, cart abandonment), since they generally indicate stronger purchase intent.
• AI Out of Stock steps in when the out-of-stock interaction is the key behavior signal and there is no higher-priority experience that should trigger instead.

This ensures that AI Out of Stock complements, rather than competes with, your existing journeys.

Step 4: Use AI to select relevant alternatives

For visitors routed into AI Out of Stock, the system uses behavioral scoring and affinity modeling to determine which products to recommend. It evaluates signals such as:

• The specific out-of-stock item(s) viewed
• Related categories and products the shopper browsed
• Other behavioral patterns available through your program

Using this information, AI Out of Stock surfaces similar products that are currently available and most likely to drive a conversion.

Step 5: Send personalized follow-up messages

Once recommendations are selected, shoppers receive a message that feels tailored to their browsing history:

• Channels: Email and/or SMS, depending on how your program is configured.
• Content: A curated set of in-stock alternatives (for example, similar styles, colors, or price points) that match what they were originally viewing.

The goal is to make it as easy as possible for the shopper to pick up where they left off and complete a purchase—without needing to start the discovery process from scratch.

Channels and Message Behavior

AI Out of Stock Experiences can run across one or more owned channels, based on your setup and consent:

• Email:
  • Ideal for showcasing multiple recommended products with rich imagery, pricing, and descriptions.
  • Works well for shoppers who frequently engage with email and browse on desktop or mobile.
• SMS:
  • Best for short, high-impact nudges that quickly bring a shopper back to your site.
  • Particularly effective for recipients who have opted into text updates and typically browse on mobile.

AI OOS always starts by sending an email. AI OOS will additionally send a text message when text is the shopper’s preferred channel, and if it fits the brand’s SMS strategy and compliance rules.

For SMS, AI OOS can also help brands use limited SMS budgets more intelligently, thereby optimizing text sends. Instead of treating every shopper the same, the model focuses texts on people who are more likely to click and buy, so brands get more value out of every text they send. As AI Experiences scale to more traffic, this becomes increasingly important for both performance and cost efficiency.

You can work with your account team to determine the right channel mix and messaging approach for your audience and KPIs.

Key Benefits for Your Brand and Customers

For your brand

AI Out of Stock helps you:

• Unlock incremental revenue from shoppers who previously had no automated follow-up path.
• Increase the value of existing traffic by recovering conversions from inventory-related friction, not just traditional abandonment.
• Run an always-on, high-ROI program that leverages your existing feeds and messaging setup, with limited additional operational work once live.

For your customers

Your customers benefit from:

• Fewer dead ends: Out-of-stock moments become helpful recommendation moments.
• Personalized alternatives: Suggestions are based on real browsing behavior and product affinity, not generic catalog pushes.
• A smoother journey: Shoppers can transition from unavailable items to new options with minimal effort, helping maintain trust and satisfaction.

Requirements and Readiness Checklist

To get the most value from AI Out of Stock, you should have:

1. Meaningful out-of-stock abandonment volume

• A noticeable share of your abandonment should stem from out-of-stock products.
• This ensures there is enough audience volume to drive impact and give the AI room to optimize.

2. A product feed with availability data

• Your product feed should include current stock status so recommendations can focus on items that are actually available.
• The more complete and accurate your catalog data, the more relevant the AI’s recommendations will be.

3. An active email and/or SMS program

• You should already be using email and/or SMS to communicate with your customers, with consent and sending practices in place.
• AI Out of Stock will layer on top of this to target a specific behavioral segment (out-of-stock abandoners).

If you’re unsure whether your current setup meets these criteria, your account team can help review your performance and determine the best path forward.

Example Customer Journey

Below is an example of how a typical AI Out of Stock journey might look:

1. A shopper searches for a popular item and clicks through to a product page.
2. The product is currently out of stock in the size or color they want.
3. After viewing the page, the shopper leaves the site without adding anything to their cart.
4. AI Out of Stock identifies this behavior as out-of-stock abandonment and evaluates the shopper’s browsing data.
5. The system selects a set of similar, in-stock products (for example, alternate colors of the same style, or closely related products from the same category).
6. Within a configured time window, the shopper receives an email or SMS highlighting those alternatives.
7. The shopper clicks back to the site, reviews the recommendations, and completes a purchase.

This type of journey turns a potential lost sale into a positive, assisted shopping experience.

Feedback & Support

To share feedback or request enhancements:

• Submit a ticket via the Wunderkind Help Center
• Contact your Customer Success Manager for feature discussions or roadmap visibility

For technical assistance, submit a ticket via the Wunderkind Help Center or reach out to support@wunderkind.co.