Double Your Sales Without Ads Using Instagram DM Automation

Everybody has something to share online and wants an audience to hear it.

They want to share their best recipes, lifestyle hacks, and whatever whacky adventures their cat got into that day.

The hardest part is finding that audience, keeping them interested, and coming back for more.

Many influencers have cracked the code and seen their follower count go up.

And they're happy where they are.

But they don't know they're sitting on an untapped gold mine, that others (sometimes even SMALLER creators) are already cashing in on it by implementing automated responses through their direct messages.

Yeah, you heard me right.

Pay attention if you're an influencer selling your products or courses (or your brand is working with one).

There’s a new way to increase your total Shopify revenue by up to 67% in 90 days without spending a single cent on ads, and the secret lies in using Instagram DM automation.

I'll show you exactly how to tap into that gold mine with the help of chatbots on your social media platforms, and I'll walk you through the exact strategy my team and I implemented for one of our most successful fitness clients.

And don't worry, it doesn't stop there!

You'll also see how, after her organic success, she is now scaling the DM system we built for her, with paid ads, which are currently running at an 8.52x ROAS, have a 73% lower CPA, and keep on scaling (and how you can do it too). 

What Instagram Direct Messages Will Help You Achieve

Let me introduce myself. If we haven’t met, I’m Liz, and since 2019, I’ve been running a DFY AI chatbot agency on a mission to change how online brands monetize their Instagram and Facebook channels, one conversation at a time.

And if you're working in eCom, I'm sure you've tried different software and other agencies that didn't work, so don't take my word for it!

I'll show you how we keep getting incredible results for our clients who, like you, have been burned before and are achieving massive success with us.

Ok, picture this: a fitness influencer that has 600k Instagram followers she has never monetized before.

She has four goals.

She wants to use DM automation to:

1. Move her followers from a rented audience (so, from Instagram and Facebook, owned by Zuck) to an audience SHE could own (email).
2. Drive sales in her DMs without the help of customer support.
3. Increase her organic reach and drive traffic.
4. Crack the secret to chatbot ads instead of regular ads to increase sales.

Seems like a huge mountain to climb, doesn't it?

Not if you follow the guidelines my team and I used that led her to that 8.52x ROAS we were talking about earlier.

Instagram Automation Step-By-Step

We did this in two phases:

• In phase one (the first 90 days), we focused on driving as much additional revenue organically as possible.

• In phase two, given the organic success, we focused on chatbot ads.

Now, buckle up because we're about to hit the gas as we break down each phase.

Phase 1 was done in two steps. In step one, we built our sales DM system in the backend of her DMs to optimize her Instagram and Facebook channels' email acquisition and increase sales.

This direct message system sent automated messages to everyone who commented on her feed posts:

Or replied to her Instagram stories:

For example, if someone commented, they got an automated response.

The chatbot captured their email and funneled them into our sales DM system, which presented them with an offer.

The software swiftly turns random Instagram users scrolling on their phone, casually looking at your post, to a potential customer whose email you've collected and will be able to retarget for months to come.

Pretty crazy, right? (And 110% Meta-compliant, BTW)

Now, you can do everything I have shown you so far using a tool like Manychat.

However, our customers always require precise tracking of their stats and progress, so we had to build it ourselves.

This is where my revenue software comes into play, driving sales and tracking the customer's journey, something that cannot be done using only Manychat.

Tracking how people buy from us is great, but the most important aspect my systems let you know is why folks are not buying?

Answering this question to tweak your funnel can and will turn hundreds of "just browsed" into "just bought," and yes, automated direct messages are the key to this transition.

Ready for Step 2?

Time to answer how we 10xed the number of DMs she was getting daily.

We do that using a specific type of content that started hundreds of DM conversations daily and got 6x the reach of her other content.

We sat down with her, looked at her marketing calendar, and incorporated everything she had coming up into our content strategy: new product launches, giveaways, and flash sales.

We filled in the rest with educational and entertaining content.

All this content had one purpose only: to get people to comment on it, auto-DM them, and let our sales DM system do the rest.

Our style of Instagram posts going up three times/week for three months increased her overall Instagram account reach by 65% in 90 days.

As we changed gears in her content structure, we achieved one critical thing, which is PRICELESS:

Yes, it captured emails at 91%, yes, it drove sales at 17.11% CVR, and yes, it got 6x the reach of her other content, BUT the critical thing was: she gained TRUST.

Think about it, let’s say you have 10k followers, 100k, or 600k followers like she does.

Someone checks out your Instagram before buying, and you only get 2–5 comments/post.

Then they check out your competitor’s Instagram, who might be doing what I just walked you through, and they’re getting 500, 2000, or 5000 comments/post.

Who do you think they’ll trust more to buy from?

Building trust is the oil that will keep the motor running smoothly toward Checkout Road.

Now that we've broken down Phase 1, time for Phase 2.

In month 4 of working together, her DM system was fully optimized organically, and she said she’d love to try out chatbot ads. 

These are the same Meta ads, but when clicked, an automated DM conversation starts in either Facebook Messenger or Instagram DM. 

So, we trained her media buyer on properly setting up chatbot ads and optimizing them for conversions, which is the most important piece since Meta by default doesn't prompt you to do this. 

We took care of the backend (meaning the chatbot) and tested out different opt-in messages optimizing for a higher purchase rate.

We also advised her media buyer on scaling strategies and what we see working best with chatbot ads for our other clients right now.

Thanks to this, her chatbot ads have the highest ROAS in her entire ad account, 8.52, and the lowest CPA (73% lower than her regular ads)

The traffic coming from paid ads has a 99% email capture rate.

All of this is crazy exciting, right?

Yeah, we're not finished: she is also building Meta-compliant DM lists.

Think of your email list, but in your DMs, allowing you to send out free promotional push notifications.

Imagine hitting Black Friday with 100,000 people on your DM list.

This is what having thousands of conversations simultaneously looks like.

In the last four years, we’ve built DM lists like these for hundreds of brands we’ve worked with, including Instagram DM lists, which have been in closed beta with Meta for the last 18 months.

WHY does this work so well? 

Meta WANTS businesses to keep people on their platform instead of constantly telling them to “click the link in my BIO” or running ads that take people off their platform too soon. 

This means that by keeping users inside of Facebook and Instagram, Meta will reward you by pushing your content to a wider audience.

The Unbreakable Bond of Personalization and Automation

Let me be clear about something that always comes up.

The offer people get on their DMs is ALWAYS personalized to each user based on their previous history interacting with your brand.

So every potential client gets exactly what they need, whether they've purchased on your store hundreds of times or are just getting to know you and your products.

Our chatbot takes into account factors like:

• Were they on your VIP email list?
• Are they new to the brand?
• Have they placed any orders in your Shopify store?
• What exactly had they bought before?

This approach makes the experience highly relevant and customized to each user.

Now that we know their history, our next steps vary depending on each brand.

We could auto-reply to a new user and offer a coupon that expired 24 hours after it was unlocked in the conversation, which added an element of scarcity and urgency.

We could offer suggestions and answer frequently asked questions to a user who consistently opened our messages and hasn't converted.

There are always varied avenues we can go traversing about, this is the beauty of marrying automated Instagram DMs with personalization.

Now that we know the power couple that chatbot automation and personalization are, let’s see how this client's chatbot converted 17.11% of everyone who started a chat into buyers in an average time of 13 days, 13 hours, and 43 minutes, slowly but surely getting into that pristine gold mine.

Playing The Long Game

We've chosen a path for a potential customer, Discount Blvd.

People have their 20% off, they can go and buy, right?

Wrong.

This is the same as if you were to send people to your website with a banner saying 20% off.

Do 17% of them buy?

Probably not.

Maybe 5% will.

For the rest, get ready for a wild chase around the internet with retargeting ads and no guarantee of getting them back to your website.

Why chase a customer through the pricy Advertising Ave. when you can let your chatbot "GPS" lead them toward the Checkout Road?

In this scenario, we are driving towards Checkout Road since we have a direct line of communication with them, which is where our DM system steps into place.

This rainbow road is why 17% of them bought over the following two months.

The chatbot waits for a purchase and accompanies the potential customer, taking them on a scenic drive leading down Automation Lane.

It learns what makes them buy and why they don’t buy, and using this data, it leads each user faster to checkout through personalized conversations.

Let's say an order doesn’t come through.

The chatbot will offer different paths in the shape of conversations: educating, showcasing before-and-afters, offering to design personalized recommendations, and answering FAQs.

You can get as creative as you want with an automated message, but the most important thing is to keep them 80% value-driven (discounts, informative PDFs) and use only 20% to try out different offers (upselling the product). 

Once they purchase, the chatbot will continue to nurture and assist them, checking in to see how they are enjoying the product and, if they are, offering upsells.

The Victory Lap

If you can interiorize any part of this blog, let it be this: when you and your business can engage people in 1-1 conversations, you build relationships and trust.

A DM funnel inside Facebook or Instagram DMs can build the same relationships it might take a customer support team weeks to build with email and retargeting ads, but our system does it in days or even hours.

This doesn't mean entirely replacing your customer support team; it means keeping that team small and giving them tools that will allow them to be much more effective than larger teams without automation.

Chatbots and automated Instagram DMs will take you towards those trust-based relationships with your clients faster than a Red Bull car at an F1 race.

With a quality product, a specific type of content, and a top-tier chatbot on your side, your new problem will be finding out what to do with so much money!

If you liked this blog, check out my video here to learn nine secret hacks to make money on Instagram. Check us out on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. 

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