Back-in-stock email for beauty brands

A back-in-stock email built for beauty and cosmetics brands whose hero SKU sold out before the batch could land. Restock the hero product, give the waitlist first access, and keep the ingredient claims compliant, all in ESP-safe HTML that drops into Klaviyo or Mailchimp.

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What makes this back-in-stock work for beauty / cosmetics

A beauty back-in-stock is not a generic "good news, we restocked" blast. The hero SKU sold out because demand outran the batch, and the people who clicked "Notify me" are your highest-intent shoppers. Treat the email accordingly.

Trigger and timing. The Klaviyo Back in Stock flow (or your PDP waitlist) should fire the moment inventory crosses a threshold, say 50 units on hand. Send the first email within 15 minutes of the restock going live. Beauty restocks sell through fast: a batch of 8,000 units that cleared in six days the first time will not sit for a week the second time. Send a second email at 48 hours to non-openers, and a third "almost gone" send at 72 to 96 hours once stock drops below 20 percent. With 12,400 people on the waitlist and 5,000 units to sell, every hour of delay is lost revenue.

Offer. Resist the discount. The hero product just sold out at full price, so cutting it trains shoppers to wait for the next markdown. Remove friction and lift average order value instead. Free shipping on the hero, a deluxe sample of the companion moisturizer with every restock order, or a "subscribe and save 10 percent" nudge all outperform a price cut in a category where reorder rates run 35 to 45 percent.

Copy angle. Lead with the active and the cosmetic claim, not the price. "15% L-ascorbic acid with ferulic acid and vitamin E. Brightens the look of dark spots and evens tone." Pair it with one verified reviewer line ("Three weeks in and my post-acne marks are visibly lighter") and one social proof number (4.8 stars across 6,200 reviews). State the claims buyers screen for: cruelty-free, vegan, fragrance-free. Put the price as live text, not baked into an image, so it survives dark mode.

Compliance. The line between a cosmetic claim and a drug claim is where beauty brands get into trouble. "Reduces the appearance of fine lines" is fine. "Erases wrinkles" is a drug claim. For anything with SPF, follow the FDA OTC sunscreen labeling rules. If you ship to the EU or UK, confirm the product is registered (CPNP for the EU, SCPN for the UK) and link the full INCI ingredient list. Skip "treats," "cures," "heals," and "prevents."

CTA. One button. "Claim the restock." Do not stack a row of secondary links under it. Restock emails that run a single CTA land higher click-to-purchase than versions with nav, cross-sell, and social piled underneath.

Subject line: "It's back. 15% Vitamin C Brightening Serum." Preheader: "5,000 units restocked. The waitlist gets first access."

Why it renders in every inbox

Beauty emails tend to be image-heavy and styled within an inch of their life, which is exactly what Gmail, Apple Mail, and Outlook will dismantle. This build is table-based email that holds up where it matters.

The layout is nested HTML tables, not divs or flexbox. One 600 pixel outer table wraps stacked inner tables with role="presentation". This is the structure Outlook's Word engine understands, and it keeps your rows from collapsing into each other.

Every style is inline on the element it styles. Gmail strips the <style> block from the head, so any CSS that lives only in <head> disappears in the Gmail web client and the Gmail Android and iOS apps. Inline styles are the only guaranteed path.

The CTA is a bulletproof button. Outlook's Word renderer ignores border-radius and background color on an <a> tag, which turns a pretty pill into a flat link. MJML's mj-button generates the VML fallback (a v:roundrect with a v:fill) so Outlook paints a solid filled rectangle with working corners. No image required, so the button still shows when images are blocked.

Headline, product name, and price are live text. If your hero text is baked into an image, it vanishes in dark mode and reads as a blank box with images off. Live text survives both and stays readable to screen readers.

Dark mode is handled with the color-scheme meta in the head plus a prefers-color-scheme: dark block that swaps the background and text. The body and footer invert cleanly instead of leaving a bright white slab in a dark inbox.

One mobile media query. At max-width 480px the hero headline drops to 28 pixels, the eyebrow tightens, and the CTA button stretches full width on a phone. One breakpoint, no float hacks.

Web fonts load in the head but the stack always declares Georgia, Times New Roman, serif as a fallback. Gmail and Outlook ignore remote fonts, so the email falls back to a serif that still reads as editorial and beauty-appropriate rather than defaulting to Arial.

How to use it in Klaviyo or Mailchimp

The HTML exports paste-ready. Copy the full file.

In Klaviyo, open your Back in Stock flow email (or a one-off campaign), toggle the text block to Source, and paste. For a full custom template, go to Templates, Create Template, Import HTML, and upload the file. In Mailchimp, start a campaign, choose Code your own, then Paste in code, and drop the HTML in.

Swap three things before anything else: the brand (Marisol to your client's name), the hero image and its alt text, and the CTA link to the restocked product page. Then swap colors with a single find-and-replace pass on the hex codes. The accent is a nude rose (#B5654A) and the page background is warm sand (#F7F1EA). Change both to your client's brand palette.

Wire the merge tags. In Klaviyo, the Back in Stock event carries the product for you: {{ event.extra.product_name }} for the SKU, {{ event.extra.product_url }} for the PDP link, and {{ event.extra.variant_name }} for the shade or size, such as "30ml" or the lipstick shade "Riviera." Greet with {{ first_name|default:"there" }}. In Mailchimp, use *|FNAME|* for the first name and *|PRODUCT_URL|* for the PDP link, with *|LIST:COMPANY|* for the brand name in the footer.

Then test. Send to Litmus or Email on Acid and check four clients: Gmail web, the Gmail iOS app, Apple Mail in both light and dark mode, and Outlook 365 desktop on Windows. Confirm the VML button paints as a solid filled rectangle in Outlook, the headline and price stay legible when the inbox flips to dark, and the CTA stretches full width on a phone. Run the dark mode check on Apple Mail specifically, since that is where most beauty shoppers read email.

Questions

Is this back-in-stock email free to use for my beauty clients? +

Yes. The HTML and MJML are free to copy and use. Paste them into Klaviyo or Mailchimp for any beauty or cosmetics client and keep the result. You do not owe us anything and there is no watermark.

Will it break in Outlook? +

No. The CTA uses a bulletproof VML button, so Outlook's Word engine paints a solid filled rectangle with rounded corners instead of flattening the link. The layout is nested tables, which is the structure Outlook supports. We test in Outlook 365 on Windows before shipping.

Can I change the nude rose to my client's brand color? +

Yes. Find-and-replace the hex in the inline CSS. The accent (#B5654A) and the warm sand background (#F7F1EA) are the only two colors you need to swap for most beauty brands. The dark mode block flips them automatically.

Do I need to know HTML to use this? +

No. The markup is paste-ready and the text you edit sits in clearly marked spots. If you want to restructure the layout, edit the MJML source and recompile, and you get the same ESP-safe HTML back out.

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