Add Newsletter Sign-ups to Your Customer List

Turn Back in Stock sign-ups into Shopify customers with marketing consent, automatically, using Shopify's free Flow app. This builds on Notifications - Shopify Flow

When a shopper leaves their email on your Notify Me form and ticks the newsletter box, that email lives in Timesact so we can alert them about the restock. It does not automatically become a Shopify customer record, so it will not show up in Shopify Customers or in the marketing lists you build from there.

This workflow closes that gap. Every time someone signs up and ticks the box, Shopify either creates a customer for them or, if they already exist, marks them as subscribed to your email marketing.

Before you start

• Install Flow from the Shopify App Store if you do not have it.
• In the customer experience template's Notifications, on the Back in Stock tab, set the channel to Shopify Flow and Save. Timesact then sends the events to Flow.
• In the same template, under the Notify Me form settings, turn the Newsletter Subscription toggle on so shoppers actually see the checkbox. Without it, nobody can tick it and the workflow will never run past the first check. See Back in Stock.

Build the workflow

In Flow, click Create workflow, then follow these steps.

1. Choose the trigger

Pick Timesact, Customer Signed Up for Back In Stock Alert. This runs the moment somebody submits the Notify Me form.

2. Only continue for people who ticked the box

Add a Condition step and set it to:

subscribeToNewsletter equals true

Everything else in this guide sits on the "true" side of that condition. Sign-ups without the tick simply stop here, which is what you want, since they only asked for a restock alert and did not agree to marketing.

3. Look up the shopper in your customers

On the true branch, add the Get customer data action and fill it in like this:

This asks Shopify a simple question: do I already have a customer with this email address.

4. Split on the answer

Add a Condition step underneath. Set it to check the list that came back:

any item in getCustomerData where getCustomerData_item.id is not empty

True means the customer already exists. False means they are new.

5. If the customer already exists, subscribe them

On the true branch, add a For each loop over getCustomerData, and inside the loop add a Send Admin API request action. Choose the customerEmailMarketingConsentUpdate mutation and paste this:

{
  "input": {
    "customerId": "{{ getCustomerDataForeachitem.id }}",
    "emailMarketingConsent": {
      "marketingState": "SUBSCRIBED",
      "marketingOptInLevel": "SINGLE_OPT_IN"
    }
  }
}

6. If the customer is new, create them

On the false branch, add a Send Admin API request action, choose the customerCreate mutation and paste this:

{
  "input": {
    "email": "{{ customerEmail }}",
    "emailMarketingConsent": {
      "marketingState": "SUBSCRIBED",
      "marketingOptInLevel": "SINGLE_OPT_IN"
    }
  }
}

7. Name it and turn it on

Give the workflow a name you will recognise later, for example "Save back in stock signups as subscribed customers", then turn it on.

Optional, welcome them by email

If you want to greet these shoppers, add a Send email action after step 5 and step 6, put {{ customerEmail }} in the To field, and write your own subject and message. Keep it separate from the restock alert itself, which Timesact still sends when the product comes back.

Sending the shopper a confirmation instead of subscribing them straight away

The steps above record consent as a single opt-in, which matches a shopper deliberately ticking a checkbox on your form. If your market expects a confirmation email before someone counts as subscribed, change "marketingState" to "PENDING" and "marketingOptInLevel" to "CONFIRMED_OPT_IN" in both mutations, and let Shopify's own double opt-in setting send the confirmation. Check what applies to you before you go live.

What happens in each case

Test it

Open a product that is out of stock and active for Back in Stock, submit the Notify Me form with an email you can check, and tick the newsletter box. Then open Flow, go to the workflow, and look at its run history, which shows every step and the exact data the trigger sent. Finally open Shopify Customers and search for that email. Flow runs in the background, usually within 10 to 60 seconds.

If it does not work

• The workflow never runs. Check the Back in Stock channel is set to Shopify Flow in the customer experience template, the workflow is turned on, and the Timesact app extension is enabled.
• The workflow runs but stops at the first condition. The shopper did not tick the newsletter box, or the box is not turned on in your Notify Me form.
• The customer step fails. Open the failed run in Flow, it shows the message Shopify returned. The most common cause is a typo in the pasted mutation, so copy it again from this page.

Updated on: 08/10/2026