The Only Instagram DM Strategy You Need To Double Your Email List

For the past five years, e-commerce businesses have focused on having massive social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook.

After all, showcasing your product online is one of the most efficient marketing strategies.

However, many businesses don't realize that owning their audience is the key to real e-commerce success.

Sure, having a "K" or an "M" next to your follower count breeds trust, but your follower count on social platforms can be volatile and disappear instantly.

Let me tell you the tale that businesses have heard over and over.

Business owners create a social media page for their product and spend thousands of dollars through old-school marketing techniques, which leads to low ROI and high stress.

With the technology available nowadays, that marketing strategy is as old as the 1st Gen iPod, and while revolutionary at its time, you won’t be popping that bad boy out at your next Equinox visit.

So, if the iPod is a thing of the past, what's the next step in the evolution of marketing campaigns that will get you to leap to the newest model?

I'm here to break it down for you, so keep scrolling.

If you're a business owner with a rented audience on social media platforms and are seeing satisfactory ROI, that's great.

What you don't know is that you're still standing on the top of a cash iceberg, just seeing the very tip of it.

And there's a clear path ahead to get to the bottom of that bonanza that's just waiting to be taken.

The secret is in building email lists through Instagram DM automation.

This isn’t just coming from me; take it from the Head of Instagram, who’s shown how direct messages are the ultimate path to organic sales.

Intrigued? Let's get to it then.

The Unpopular Friendship Between Direct Messages and Email Lists

If we haven’t met, hi, I’m Liz.

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. 

In the last four years, I have sent over 50,000,000+ Facebook and Instagram DMs for creator and e-commerce brands making between $50k/mo to $10M/mo, with some of their Instagram accounts having up to 9M followers.

I’m sharing with you today the exact strategy I've repeatedly deployed to help my clients double their email lists on Instagram.

My system increased their sales without spending a single cent to acquire these emails, all fully automated (AND Meta-compliant)

If you, like many business owners, have tried one marketing campaign after another with little success, or you're killing it with your current campaigns but know you could be doing a lot more, stick around for the steps to succeed with IG DM Automation.

This DM marketing strategy is a two-for-one deal that marries DM automation and email marketing to increase your engagement.

It also gives you newfound control over crucial assets, such as taking your rented audience and making it your full ownership.

How is this possible?

Let me tell you a secret: most brands I work with generate between 10% and 50% of their total monthly sales from emails.  

So, how do we increase those lists and, by default, bring in extra revenue?

We'll first have to get those email addresses, and the fastest and most efficient way to cross that bridge is through Instagram and Facebook direct messaging.

So imagine what your business would look like if you doubled your list by moving your Instagram and Facebook followers from a rented audience—owned by Zuck, which can disappear overnight—to an OWNED audience, owned by you: your email list.

Keep reading to learn my three-step DM marketing strategy for capturing over 90%+ of your social media followers on your email list.

The Step-by-Step Guide to Direct Message Marketing Campaigns

Step 1:

Change your content structure.

Keep your audience engaged by asking yourself, "What's in it for them?"

"What can my business offer them in this instance?"

You can easily do this by posting content such as Instagram stories and posts that educate your audience about your brand’s mission and products and offering a free resource in the DMs when they comment on the post.

This free resource can be anything from a free ebook to a how-to guide.

You may be wondering, why DMs?

Your DMs are a goldmine of organic sales, and who better to confirm it than Adam Mosseri, the Head of Instagram?

Just like working out to keep those muscles, consistency is key, so posting this type of content 2-3 times a week is crucial.

We've done the math: This type of content gets up to 50,000% more comments and FIVE times the reach of regular posts.

Not only does this build brand loyalty, but you also get to tap into new audiences organically.

Step 2:

Set up a simple automation using a tool like Manychat that sends automated messages to everyone who comments on your posts.

This automation will handle all your messages, capture the user’s email, and sync it to your email service provider.

It then instantly gives the user the free value they opted in for without having to leave their DMs.

The IG algorithm rewards this by increasing your reach in future posts.

I should also point out that the automation isn't limited to capturing emails.

You can also easily collect phone numbers and use them for different retargeting methods.

Step 3:

We’re all about innovation around here, so we're taking it a step further with our DM marketing offers.

You can launch a soft sale, in which our software analyzes the chat history between a user and your brand to learn about their interests and send personalized messages.

Once we get their email and add it to our list, they are offered a time-sensitive discount if they want to shop today.

You’ll be surprised at how well this type of approach works.

Our sales strategy involves our custom-built chatbots being connected to the brand’s website and email service provider, which pulls real-time insights into where users are in their buying journey.

Based on these insights, it starts new conversations to educate, answer FAQs, and ultimately lead the user to checkout.

These conversations can go on for weeks or months.

And don’t worry about these conversations feeling “spammy.”

You can choose the rate at which the messages go out, and potential customers can opt-out at any time.

Real-Time Results

I want to share one particular client’s wins.

Thanks to my chatbot software, the client was able to get a 96.67% email capture rate, and 20.83% of people ended up buying in an average time to purchase of 33 days, 7 hours, and 4 minutes.

We were able to gather all of this data thanks to the proprietary systems I developed that sit in the backend of our software.

All of these wonderful results were thanks to the symbiotic relationship that takes the user from an Instagram story or post to the DMs, where we collect their email, own that email address, and follow their journey to retarget as needed to lead them to the checkout button.

You’ve Dipped Your Toes, Ready to Take the Full Plunge?

Think of DM automation as the big blue ocean right now, where 1-1 conversations are the wind in your sails that allow you to go anywhere.

It allows you to connect with your audience on a personal level, build relationships, and give people WHAT they want, HOW they want it WHEN they want it.

The takeaway is: CONNECT with your audience.

DO NOT make the mistake of sending them to your link in BIO or link stickers in your stories (UNLESS you hate sales).

Connecting with them in the DMs and being intentional about the value you’re offering free of cost will gently nudge them into giving you their email and phone numbers [mentioned earlier] in the DMs, which will eventually lead to a purchase and have them coming back for more.

And I get it; while enticing, this may sound extremely time-consuming, and as a business owner, there aren’t enough hours in the day to finish your mile-long list of to-dos.

My Done-For-You system can take care of all the tedious work while you take that long-overdue vacay to Cabo you’ve been meaning to take.

So, if you’re interested, click this link to schedule a call with my team.

We’ll show you how we can build this custom end-to-end AI chat system on your Facebook and Instagram in the next 10 days.

If you’re not ready for that, check out this video I made here on how to double your sales without ads.

Don't forget to check us out on Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube.