When Thales Laray isn’t teaching thousands of entrepreneurs how to scale with automation, he’s testing bold new ways to simplify sales and explode engagement.
As the founder of Automation School, Thales wanted out of the weeks-long funnel setup grind. Endless emails — no, thanks. Sales pages — gone! Complex integrations? Uh, bye!
His goal was to build a lean sales machine entirely inside Instagram DMs. So he turned to Manychat (and honestly, we don’t blame him).
Thales turned clunky campaigns into slick conversations and banked over $1.2 million doing it. All without a traditional funnel.
The Challenge
Thales was stuck in a funnel merry-go-round.
A typical campaign looked like this:
Lead → Sales page → Email → WhatsApp → Sales
Weeks to set up. Engagement that’s a snoozefest. Sales friction? Off. The. Charts.
DMs started piling up. They were impossible to manage. Dozens of messages a day: Unanswered. Missed leads. Lost sales.
He tried other solutions — unofficial bots, sketchy scripts — but they were unstable, risky, and frankly a pain to implement.
He needed official, reliable, and simple. And most of all, fast.
The Goal
Thales knew he had to strip the funnel down to its essentials.
Which meant he wanted to:
- Capture leads directly in Instagram DMs
- Qualify and engage them in real-time conversations
- Close sales inside the DMs or on WhatsApp
- Ditch sales pages and email marketing entirely
- Radically reduce setup time (we’re talking days, not weeks)
- Scale sales. Explode engagement. Do both. Fast. 💨
How it Works
Here are the exact steps Thales follows.
Step 1: Grab leads right from Instagram
Thales used Manychat automations to capture leads through IG Stories, posts, and organic/paid traffic. No more clunky forms or landing pages, just straight into the DMs.
Step 2: Qualify and warm them up
Once inside the chat, automated convos qualify and engage leads with personalized messaging. The idea was to move hot prospects toward purchase, without them ever leaving Instagram. Smart.
Step 3: Build next-level engagement
Think DM updates, tips, value bombs. Thales kept his audience hooked and coming back.
Step 4: Close the sale
Qualified leads were either guided to a WhatsApp sales convo or closed directly inside Instagram DMs (yes, really).
Thales also created an automation that generated a personalized ticket (with name and profile pic) when leads confirmed class attendance. It became a viral tactic, copied across the industry. Flattery, right?
Step 5: Recover lost sales with AI Step
Using Manychat’s native AI Step, Thales built automations that recovered $7,190 in lost sales during launches. No human needed.
The Results
- $1.2 million+ in total revenue (and counting)
- An $18,000 launch with zero sales page or email
- 90% DM response rate (vs. 20% for email)
- $7,190 in recovered sales via AI automation
- 4.5x more engagement than traditional campaigns
- Campaign setup reduced from weeks to days
Why This Works (And Why You Need it Too)
Work smarter, not harder.
The old way: Weeks of setup. Complex flows. Low engagement. A funnel that stalls, stumbles, and breaks at every step. 😢
The new way: Lead → DM → Sales. Clean. Fast. Scalable.
With Manychat, Thales is building real connections at scale and converting like crazy.
Swipe this Strategy
Steal Thales’ DM-first strategy:
Step 1: Ditch the old sales funnel and drive traffic straight to your DMs.
Step 2: Capture, qualify, and engage leads with Manychat flows.
Step 3: Build trust and value inside the conversation.
Step 4: Close sales in DMs or WhatsApp (no sales page needed).
Step 5: Let Manychat’s AI close the loop and scale your biz even further.
Simple. Scalable. Rinse-and-repeatable.
| Step 1: Sign up for Manychat (oh, did we mention it’s free?!) Join 1 million+ smart brands and sign up for a risk-free trial. No lock-in contracts here. | Step 2: Build your first automation (with a lil help)Choose from one of our ready-to-go templates and get it up and running faster than ever before. | Step 3: Secure the bag! 💅No, really. Get more sales from Instagram every time you post. |
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