What Is Instagram DM Automation?

Everyone is talking about Instagram DM automation (also known as IG automation), but not many business owners, entrepreneurs or IG creators know how to actually use this new feature with Messenger Marketing.

Instagram DMs automation allows you to quickly and easily send messages to specific people on Instagram who interact with your IG page.

It's a great way to show off your brand, product, or service, or to reach people in a friend group who might be interested in your message.

In Instagram DM automation, you can use messenger marketing to effectively automate leads and sales while letting you focus on working on your operational business tasks.

This is a very clever new way to attract your ideal audience and connect with them. The people who do not engage with your brand or your vision are usually the people you don’t want to invest your time and energy into.

Instead, devote your time to those who want more from your business and believe in your values.

By leveraging the power of this new feature, you will significantly amplify your engagement on DMs, connecting with a minimum of double the number of people (results may vary).

As of August 16th, 2021, Instagram has announced that anyone who has an IG business account, regardless of the number of followers, can now start using their favorite messenger platform to use these new features to reach a larger audience you want to attract.

Nevertheless, in this blog post, I want to share 8 IG entry strategies (our way of saying "methods to attract subscribers into your workflows") that will start getting you more followers and potentially sales to grow your piggy bank.

What Are The 8 Instagram Entry Points For DM Automation?

With over 1 billion Instagram accounts and over 500 million active users every day, it is no wonder why lots of marketers who know how to use a messenger platform (to market, sell and provide customer service) want to take advantage of these new features.

… to have a more intimate conversation (one on one) with people who are trying to interact with their brand.

According to the Instagram business website every 9 out of 10 IG accounts follow at least one business and with these facts we can essentially help a business grow even more or help our own brand grow even further with the power of messenger marketing.

1.- Comment On A Post Or Reel

Keyword messaging involves selecting specific words to use in your Instagram content, whether it's for individual posts or reels. Here are two steps I personally use for this feature and for the rest of the entry points as well:

Before releasing any of my "conversations" to the public, I prefer to conduct testing to offer a realistic customer experience by simulating a direct message conversation with myself.

If I encounter any issues along the journey, I can simply return to my chatbot builder and fix them.

Once I am content with the flow, I will proceed to share the keyword in an IG post, IG carousel, or on an IG reel and engage with my audience by initiating a conversation when they reply to my DM with the specific key that triggers my automation.

Imagine you have a captivating lead magnet that you are eager to offer to your audience at no cost. To quickly get your free lead magnet, send a DM with the word "PDF" on your IG post.

Include the word in both the captions and the image. The automation will deliver it to your audience in seconds.

To see this in action, write now, go to my Instagram, and DM me the word "SmartBot" to see my IG automation and have a dialogue with you!

Another immediate example of this in action is by visiting my Instagram and following the simple instructions in my bio.

2.- Reply To Stories

Instagram is a popular social media platform that has its own unique set of features for users.

One of those features is story mentions, which allow people to tag other accounts in their stories. A person’s story will be visible for 24 hours and then disappear.

With IG automation, you can now effortlessly engage with users who tag your brand in their story posts by automatically responding to them through a private DM.

Before doing this, make sure that your IG automation is working properly with the keyword message tactic described above.

This tool helps you reach new audiences and builds up your credibility among followers because of its visibility on the profile page.

IG automation with story mentions is great for getting and attracting influencers and just thanking people for tagging you and giving them some gifts in exchange (optional). This is a great method to generate more IG subscribers.

3.- Bio On Profile

Autoresponse allows you to set a "catch all" workflow that will respond if someone DM's you but there's no keyword message that matches. Anyone who decides to DM you privately, the autoresponse will generate the same message to everyone.

I say that it is best to have a personal touch and not rely on autoresponses for interaction with customers if you're under 5k followers to build a stronger relationship with your followers who can potentially become your customers in the near future.

Others say that these automated responses allow more time for creativity and engagement in their personal brand which is true, but this is once you scale over the 10k followers range.

It may decrease the personal touch with your followers which could lead to unfollowing.

4.- Story Tags

This allows you to private message anyone who comments on your posts on Instagram on the Instagram DM. This new feature enables users to reply in private, without making the content public and exposing it to everyone.

It only allows you to send one private message so any other messages after the first interaction the feature of private reply will not work any longer. Here is a smart way to use this feature though:

Send them to a website or maybe to another social media to extract the most of the “One Time” private reply.

5.- Instagram Ads

Instagram ads will allow you to pull the JSON from a sequence and upload it to your Facebook ads interface, so the ad will trigger your premade sequence inside of Instagram DMs.

Instagram ads are delivered through Messenger and are either slideshows or carousel ads with engaging sales copy to capture the audience's attention.

6.- Story

7.- Direct Messages

8.- Comment On IG Live

Conclusion

Instagram DM automation is the new way to connect more on a personal level with Instagrammers with messenger marketing just like Facebook did when they first released messenger to its platform.

IG automation will provide you more followers, more IG subscribers, more leads that will eventually turn into more sales and customer support too.

Messenger marketing is the future of advertising and engaging on a more personal level with your audience.