Thinking of Automating your Instagram DMs? Read this first

Sales teams are going all-in with automation.

Why wouldn’t they? It’s been known to improve sales productivity by 14.5% and reduce marketing costs by up to 12.2%. What’s not to like?

Businesses are taking their marketing game up a notch by increasing their social media presence ASAP. Clearly, Instagram, with a billion active users, is a strong contender that offers businesses a robust visual platform to engage their target audience.

Instagram users don’t play around though. If you’ve got authentic followers, you need to commit to retaining them. Fortunately, brands can lean on Instagram automation to put their engagement strategies on auto mode.

Instagram DM automation is one of the finest features on Instagram for marketers. Wonder why? In this article, we’ll walk you through what Instagram DM automation is and why it could benefit you.

What is Instagram DM Automation?

It’s exactly what it sounds like. Instagram DM automation allows you to give quick and personalized responses to DMs and comments so you don’t have to do it manually. But it’s much more potent than a run-of-the-mill bot that gives automated responses.

Marketers are excited about exploring its potential, and how they can cover as much as possible of the fresh playing field Instagram automation offers.

You can use a sophisticated level 3 AI chat assistant like Limechat to engage your audience with immersive conversations that can guide your audience through a process, or help them learn more about your product.

Immersive conversations are the heart and soul of automated Instagram DMs, but there’s more to it.

You can also harness a substantial volume of data using a chat assistant. For instance, you can auto-populate the information from your DMs into your CRM where you can get a consolidated view of the audience that interacts with your business through Instagram DMs.

Why Should You Automate Instagram DM Queries?

We’ve got the basics ironed out, let’s now talk about why you may want to automate Instagram DM queries.

Real-time responses

Real-time responses are the new pinnacle of quality customer service in the digital world. Your audience doesn’t want to spend time looking for an email on your Instagram page. They want to be able to get a response within seconds through DMs.

90% of customers express that an immediate response is very important to them when they have a customer service question.

This is because most customers first try to resolve queries by themselves through a knowledge base or FAQs section. If they can’t resolve a query by themselves, they’ll want some instant assistance.

They probably won’t be motivated enough to browse through your page and draft an email, unless they’re trying to send a strongly worded email about a bad experience with your brand.

Automated DM queries can swoop in here and cut out the communication lag. They give your audience a no-fuss medium to get in touch with you for an immediate resolution of their query.

This is why automated DMs come with a whole basket of benefits—increased engagement, happy customers, and improved brand image.

Say goodbye to mundane tasks

This one’s a biggie. If you want to make it big on Instagram, you’ll probably need to spend a good amount of time and effort strategizing your Instagram marketing game.

Before you even begin any interaction with your audience, you’ll need to put in a couple of hours upfront to come up with things like your content strategy. You can’t automate these tasks so you don’t really have a choice here.

It only makes sense to do the best you can with tasks that can be automated—including Instagram DM queries.

Automation tools can carry some of that weight for you so you don’t have to pull your hair starting your day with the same repetitive task. Thanks to automation, you can focus on other tasks where you can work your magic.

Automated tools come at a cost, and some owners feel that pinch. But don’t forget to factor in the time and resources it will save you. As many as 40% of workers surveyed by Smartsheet revealed that they spent at least a quarter of their work week on repetitive tasks—tell us that’s not expensive.

A simple cost-benefit will tell you that you’re coming out the other side ROI positive when you deploy automation tools.

Accelerate your growth

This is hardly a surprise. If you’re a marketer, you know that the most effective way to organically grow your Instagram follower count is through interacting with your audience.

Consistent engagement snowballs over time and gives you that big follower count you’ve been striving for.

Engaging conversations alone can’t get you too far though. If you believe you can spend time making pancakes once you’ve deployed a chat assistant for your DMs, you’re in for a surprise.

Press the accelerator on your growth with other strategies that will simultaneously work alongside your Instagram DMs.

Instagram DMs can be a gold mine of data that you can use to create campaigns. For instance, retargeting ads for Facebook or other social media channels where you’re trying to grow.

Speaking of data…

Audience insights

You need to gel with your audience over social media. Meet your audience where they hang out and eventually, invite them over.

It’s sad that you can’t look into a crystal ball to see where your audience spends time online. The good thing is, chat assistants are equipped with the ability to collect granular data.

Data truly is the new oil—it’s the single most important resource that can give you all the information you need to make your marketing laser-focused.

From learning more about what your buyer personas like, down to the hashtags they’re engaging with, data breaks everything down for you so you can optimize your broader marketing strategy.

Scale your responses

Automation isn’t just about cost-cutting; it’s about preparing yourself for what’s coming your way as you grow.

You’d be surprised how many businesses overwhelm themselves with customer queries as they start to scale. Automating your DM queries will become more of a necessity as you grow unless you can skim through and respond to about a thousand+ queries a day.

As the volume of queries builds up from a hundred to a thousand, and then to ten thousand, automated responses will allow you to keep your audience happy with quick and personalized responses.

Remember, these could be potential customers who are reaching out to ask about your product or service. They could be hot leads and an immersive conversation can make a huge difference.

A chat assistant that aces these conversations can help you convert leads at scale. Its impact will show up directly in your top line.

Instagram DM Automation Best Practices

We’ve covered a lot of ground on why you should automate Instagram DM queries. Before you get your automation set up, here are a few best practices to be mindful of so your efforts are optimized for success.

Get the best chat assistant

There are a ton of chatbots available, but only a few are worth your time.

Before you choose a chat assistant, realize that it’s a customer-facing tool. It’s your brand’s embodiment for the customers that it interacts with.

When a tool is directly interacting with your prospects—you don’t want to mess it up.

Get yourself equipped with a chat assistant that uses cutting-edge technology so you can stay a step ahead of the competition.

Sure, all chatbots need AI, but level 2 AI was so last year. A level 3 AI chat assistant like Limechat can give you the tech you need to give your customers a fluid experience.

Be proactive

Again, you need to bring your prospects to yourself instead of expecting they’ll stumble upon your page and go nuts about your product.

You need to create campaigns that make a prospect stop and read what you’ve got to say. For instance, automating DM queries is a great tool for lead gen, which can contribute considerably to improving your ROI.

Think about it. You put a story on your Instagram and make a poll with a question that asks about a problem your prospects face, to which your product or service is the solution. The question puts your prospect in the right mindset for a product you’re about to discuss.

The story sequence ends with a CTA where you ask a user to DM you with a certain trigger word. For instance, if your solution is a beard oil for men who want to grow fuller beards, ask them to DM you with the word “grow” which will entitle them to a 10% discount.

Use links

Instagram makes it notoriously difficult to add links. “Link in bio” is generously visible as you scroll through your Instagram feed, because that’s just how things work on Instagram.

You can fix this with automated DM queries. You don’t need to get someone to visit your bio just to invite them to your landing page.

All the user needs to do is trigger the automated DM and your chat assistant will deliver the link right into their DM. Now that you have some wiggle room with sharing links, you can capitalize on your fancy conversion-optimized landing pages to generate leads.

Put Your Growth on Auto Mode

Automating Instagram DM queries with a level 3 AI chat assistant can offer a myriad of benefits over time. We’re not just talking a few dollars in savings; we’re talking growth that will unlock the value in your business through AI, improved brand image, and a greater customer retention ratio.

If you’re looking to learn more on how you can automate DM queries on your Instagram, get in touch with us and we’ll help you get set up.