Fish, frags and “is it back yet?”: a messaging playbook for aquarium and pet stores

It’s Saturday, a quarter past ten. The livestock boxes from the wholesaler arrived an hour ago and half of them are still acclimatising. The shop phone has rung four times. Instagram has three new messages asking the same thing: “Are the otos back yet?” And somewhere in your email is a customer with a photo of a shrimp that didn’t make it home.

If you run an aquarium or pet store, you know this morning. The work itself (keeping animals healthy, giving good advice) is the part you love. It’s the messages around it that pile up.

This guide walks through the five moments that create most of those messages, and how to handle each one with less typing and fewer “sorry, just seeing this now” replies.

1. Turn “is it back yet?” into a sale

Every store has its regulars: the plants, fish and foods that sell out within a day of landing. Right now, the only way customers find out they’re back is to ask you, or to catch the right Instagram story.

A back-in-stock list fixes that. When a product sells out on your website, a Notify me form appears on the product page. Customers leave a mobile number or an email, and when the stock comes back Colvy texts them once, with a link straight to the product.

A few details that matter more than they sound:

• It works on WooCommerce and Shopify. The Colvy plugin adds the form on WooCommerce; on Shopify it’s a theme block.
• Texts never land at 6am. If stock is updated outside 9am–8pm, the messages wait until the morning.
• The AI can sign people up too. If someone asks in chat whether you’ll get more, they can be added to the list from that conversation.

How back-in-stock lists work

2. Shipment day: tell the right people, not everyone

Some arrivals deserve more than a back-in-stock text. A big shipment of discus, a new coral supplier or the first pond fish of spring are news, and your best customers want to hear it first.

The trick is not blasting your whole list. In an SMS campaign you can pick who hears about it:

Colvy counts the audience before you send, shows the cost, and checks consent for every number. Anyone who has replied STOP is skipped, and texts are held outside quiet hours unless you switch that off for a send.

3. Dead on arrival, handled kindly

It happens to every store that sells livestock. A customer gets home, and something didn’t make it. How you handle the next ten minutes decides whether they come back.

The usual way is painful. You ask for a photo, the customer sends a blurry MMS, you ask for the order number, you dig through your store admin, and you finally process a refund in another tab.

Here’s the same conversation in Colvy:

What’s happening behind it:

1. The upload link keeps photos and videos at full quality (texted videos get crushed), and the files land in the conversation. You can see when the link was opened, and on what device.
2. The DOA panel sits next to the chat when the customer matches a WooCommerce or Shopify customer. Look up the order, pick the items, and choose a refund to the original payment method, store credit (a one-time coupon locked to their email), or a resend that’s flagged for your team to pack.
3. The message to the customer is written for you, and you can edit the wording for each outcome.

Fast, fair DOA handling is the cheapest marketing a livestock store will ever do.

4. Questions at 10pm, answered from your own advice

Aquarium customers ask a lot of questions, and most of them come after hours: “Will these be OK with my betta?” “What temperature for cherry shrimp?” “Do you have any Java fern in stock?”

Colvy’s AI drafts replies using things you’ve already written: your care guides, website and help articles, plus live stock and prices from your store. Answers start as drafts that someone checks before sending.

When you trust it, you can let the AI send some kinds of replies by itself, like opening hours or order status. Every reply it sends must be backed by a live check in the same run. There’s a daily limit, and a Pause all agents switch for the days you’d rather answer everything yourself.

See how Colvy’s AI works

5. “Where’s my order?” before they ask

Live animals make customers anxious about delivery, and fair enough. Order status messages answer the question before it’s asked:

• Processing: “Thanks, we’ve got your order and we’re packing it.”
• Dispatched: with the tracking link included when there is one.
• Picked up: a different thank-you for click & collect.

Each status has its own message you can edit (leave one blank and it simply won’t send). They go by SMS or email, usually on the channel the customer last used. If someone still asks “where’s my order?”, the AI answers from the live order and tracking.

See order messages and tracking

Bonus: the review you didn’t have to ask for

Happy customers rarely think to leave a review. Colvy can ask them automatically after an order is completed, 24 hours later by default, by chat, SMS or email. It skips anyone who has already reviewed you on Google. When reviews come in, the AI can draft a reply in your voice, and 1–3 star reviews go to a real person with a task attached.

Your Saturday, with the busywork handled

None of this replaces the advice you give across the counter. It just stops the messages from eating the time you’d rather spend there.

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