What if you could wave a magic wand and make one dream come true? No, it can’t get you Eras Tour tickets, but it can save you from having to answer the same question every day for the rest of your life.
It can also help you get higher-intent leads, build better relationships with your fans, and boost your engagement to massively high rates. This magic wand is Instagram DM automation; we’d take that over a Fairy Godmother any day. With automatic Instagram DMs, you get back your time while engaging more.
Let’s discuss building your engagement with automatic Instagram DMs and the best practices for building automated messaging flows.
Why Should You Use Automatic Instagram DMs?
Why use automatic Instagram DMs as part of your larger Instagram marketing strategy?
Save yourself TONS of time.
You’re growing your brand. And that’s a good thing. Except for when you have a post go wild online, hit the viral jackpot, and get overloaded with approximately five billion comments that require DMs. You can’t do that alone without missing hundreds of interaction opportunities. You don’t have the time to respond thoughtfully AND manually, but your automatic Instagram DMs do.
Keep your brand voice consistent.
If you’re in the marketing world or have dipped your toe in brand-building before, you know how much keeping your voice consistent matters. It’s jarring to talk to a brand that goes from “Hey, girlie!” to “Our dear valued customer” throughout a conversation. By creating automatic Instagram DM flows, your fans all get the same brand voice, with interactions you can better control before they happen.
Answer those FAQs without having to answer the same questions yourself.
If you’ve ever woken up to an inbox full of the same question repeatedly, you need automatic Instagram messages. Rather than spending hours answering that same question, your automated DMs can answer it instantly.
Nurture your high-intent leads.
If you share a post and ask someone to comment if they’re interested in learning more, you’re taking steps to vet your leads — with them directly telling you that they’re interested. From there, your automated DMs continue to vet for you, encouraging them to learn more about your product and company. The result? You get a sales-qualified lead (SQL) to use a fancy marketing term. That type of lead is further down the sales pipeline than marketing-qualified leads (MQL), usually generated by social media marketing.
Best Practices for Automatic Instagram DMing
Here’s a rundown of some definitely-do’s and some oh-please-don’t’s when setting up your automatic Instagram DMs.
Guide followers to use the right keywords.
Using the wrong keywords can result in you DMing people who aren’t expecting your DM and might think you’re spamming them. If you have a message you want to send to your fans via DM, tell them exactly what keyword you want them to use to get that message.
Look at how @thepeachiespoon, a cookbook author and recipe creator focusing on blood sugar-friendly recipes, directs her audience toward her recipes, like her gingerbread protein muffins. She has an automatic Instagram DM set up so that if someone comments “muffin,” they receive the muffin recipe in their DM.
This strategy is clever. By DMing her recipes, she gets more traffic going to her website from her social media. And by using an automated Instagram DM, she doesn’t have to send that recipe out to every person who seems interested. Because the people who want her recipe directly tell her that they want it, she doesn’t have to waste time DMing people who might not even care to have the recipe.
Consider sentiment in your keywords.
I’m not about to call anyone out, but one of the worst habits I see online with automatic DMs is using keywords that don’t consider sentiment.
Without making anyone’s social media manager feel like they’re not doing a good job (hey, you social media managers have a demanding job, and you don’t get enough credit), I want to highlight a trend I often see online. A specific publication I follow has an upcoming event happening next year. They send an automated DM to every. single. person. who comments on one of their posts saying the name of that event.
So a comment that says, “[Event name] looks terrible, and I would never go,” gets an automated DM with a guide to that event. It’s…not a great look.
You may want to be more thorough in your keywords so as not to spam people’s inboxes who are either not interested in what you’re offering or may just not be your fans. You want automated Instagram DMs to help you build relationships. This type of DMing means that you’re not focusing on your fans and instead building a negative reputation for spamming uninterested inboxes.
Another thing to consider is setting up “anti-keywords” or blocking certain words or phrases from triggering an automation. In the case of this publication, they could block words that suggest a negative comment. So, even though someone writes the event’s name, they’re blocked from getting the DM because their comment reads as negative.
Build multiple personalized flows.
Your girl is a big fan of how Disney-inspired workout wear company Crowned Athletics does their social media. But I couldn’t resist including a small suggestion: using automatic Instagram DMs to sell individual pieces of their collections or workout sets.
For instance, Crowned Athletics has a collection dedicated to the sisters from “Encanto.” On a post showing off the collection, the caption asks, “Which sister are you?”
That question creates a prime opportunity to engage their audience through automatic Instagram DMs. The company can set up multiple flows for each sister. When someone comments, “Isabella,” the company can send a message via DM, like, “You’re a true, unique flower in our eyes! For commenting on our post, we wanted to send a special code to get 25% off anything from our Blossom Hermana set!”
They can do the same for the sets inspired by Louisa and Mirabel. By building these multiple flows, their DMs become more personalized. They could set up a flow that says, “Thanks for commenting! Here’s 25% off.” Instead, they would show that they listen to what fans say and send them exactly what they want. Plus, the suggested response is in their brand voice, which is essential to keep your automated DMs from feeling so, well, automated.
Build out an FAQ in your flows.
Fun fact (that’s maybe not so fun): 38% of people would rather get a cavity filled than talk to a customer service rep. Spare them the headache (toothache?) and have your automated Instagram DMs do some heavy lifting.
(Disclaimer: We are not saying to get rid of your customer service team and replace them with automated Instagram DMs. But automatic DMs can save them from some frustrated phone calls.)
Build flows triggered by specific frequently asked questions, like “How long does shipping take?” or “Do you ship internationally?” When someone asks these questions or similar variations, you can set up a trigger to send an auto-reply.
This tactic is super helpful for two reasons:
- You keep your messaging consistent. If everyone who asks about how long shipping takes receives the same automated reply, there’s no room for mistakes being made about what the answer is.
- It shows you’re listening. But not, like, in a creepy way. You’re answering questions and engaging with your followers directly, not leaving them to search online for the answer and have to call a customer service rep.
But…
Know when the right time is to go manual.
Makeup brand Glossier receives a lot of questions on their posts. For instance, on this post someone asks, “Will the Hot Cocoa Balm be restocked again?” That’s a pretty simple question to answer via automated message.
But what if the person responds to the DM by asking a follow-up question like, “If I ordered the Hot Cocoa Balm by December 20, will I get it in time for Christmas?”
As not a Glossier rep, I can answer that myself: Probably not. But Glossier probably can’t (and shouldn’t) set up an automated DM to that message. Instead, it’s time for a real person to step in.
No one likes having to keep talking to a chatbot that can’t *quite* answer their message. They could set up an automated message that says how long shipping typically takes, but it wouldn’t factor in the date that the person wrote or how hectic the mail system can be around the holidays.
Wait, Will Automatic Instagram DMing Make You Look Spammy?
Not necessarily. Misusing automation tools can make you look more like a robot than a human. But that just means it’s so important to follow the best practices for Instagram DM automation. It’s also essential to follow Instagram’s guidelines for automated Instagram messages:
- Automated DM messengers used must be approved by Meta.
- You have to tell people when they’re receiving automated messages at the start of the conversation, after a significant lapse of time, and when the conversation reverts to automated chat from a human.
- Automated bots need to respond to any and all input from users within 30 seconds.
You should also consider what you do with your user information. Data privacy is a significant topic of concern, and you can lose all that trust you’re working to build if you aren’t careful with your user data. Make sure that whatever tool you use has built-in protection for your user data.
When Should You Use Automatic Instagram DMs
You can use automatic Instagram DMs on a plane, on a train, or in the rain. You can use them here or there. You can use them everywhere!
Use automatic Instagram DMs to:
- Send users a link to your website when they say they’re interested
- Offer users a personalized coupon code
- Let users know they’ve entered into a giveaway
- Answer a frequently asked question
- Ask for feedback after a not-so-positive comment
- Qualify your leads
- Automate your sales funnel
- Just say thanks for being awesome!
You can use them anywhere, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you should. Some places not to use an automatic Instagram message include:
- Sending links to uninterested Instagram users
- Attempting to continue answering questions via chatbot when they need a real person
Which Automatic Instagram DM Tool Is Right for You?
Think automatic Instagram DMs are for you? (Hint: They are because everyone from a growing content creator to the social media manager for a giant business can benefit from them.) In that case, you should get started with the best automatic Instagram messenger.
With Manychat, you deliver fast responses 24/7. Convert more followers by building your contact list, generating and nurturing leads, and re-engaging your prospects to turn them into your champions. You shave down the time it takes to get your prospect on a call, launch new collections, and get those oh-so-helpful reviews.
Manychat’s Flow Builder is easy to use. You can build multiple flows, set up your keywords and triggers, and set up your Story reply mention whenever someone mentions you in their Story.
You engage with your fans better — and you save time doing it. Win-win.
