If you’re running a business on Instagram and you have massive followers, you definitely know how tiresome it is to reply to every message in the DM manually.
Your potential customers don’t like waiting when they send messages in the DM, this means if you’re not replying to messages fast, you’re losing prospects that could have become your customers.
The best solution to this problem is sending auto-replies; this allows you to send automated messages to your Instagram followers, it could be sending welcome messages to your new followers or replying to some of their questions.
In this post, we’ll take a look at setting up auto-replies on Instagram DM so that you take advantage of it and improve your business.
Benefits Of Auto Replies On Instagram DM
Speed up replies
A lot of users are complaining about businesses not responding to their queries on time, setting up the auto-replies will help speed up the process.
The majority of your prospects will end up asking the same questions and there is a way to configure the questions in a way that users get automated replies once their question is detected.
There are some automated tools out there that can detect words and send automatic replies to the DM. Not only in the DM, but it’s also possible to set up auto comment replies as well and the main benefit is speeding up the time of reply which is more effective than replying to them manually.
Save time
Even if you manage to reply to all your prospects, you’ll realize that a lot of time is required. It’s not easy as a business owner to spend hours or even days replying to prospects and at the same time servicing your business. If it happens that you have a customer support team, it will not be easy with them as well. When you set up an auto DM on Instagram you can save yourself time and also for your customer support team so that you can both attend to other important aspects of your business.
Save money
If you hire people to handle customer queries, it means you’re spending a lot of money paying them and the more time they spend, the more money you’re going to pay them. Once you set up the auto dm replies, you’ll be able to hire fewer people managing queries from customers and prospects, which means more money is saved for your business.
Attend to customers if you’re offline
Replying to messages using the traditional ways requires that you’re always online in order to message your prospects. But when the automated DMs are set up on Instagram, no need to be online. The automated system will take care of itself to respond to queries while you’re away, this means that your business will provide better customer care than your competitors and it’s a huge advantage to your business.
When To Use Auto Replies On Instagram?
You might be wondering whether your business needs auto DMs or not? Well, every business needs to set up auto DMs on Instagram and if you’re still not convinced, here are situations where you’ll definitely need to set up the auto DMs;
Introductions
This is one of the ways any business can benefit from Instagram auto DMs; Whenever you have a new follower on your profile, you can send automated DMs explaining what your business is all about and how you can service them. Not only businesses but even individual freelancers and professionals can also take advantage of auto DMs by sending introductions. You’ll be able to thank them and share your deals, pricing info or any other aspect that concerns your business or profession.
Provide Contact Details
Instagram DM has a lot of limitations and it’s better to get your prospects off the platform if you want to communicate effectively. Instagram limits the number of messages you can send on a daily and hourly basis. It’s good to initiate communication on the platform but you need to make sure that prospects can contact outside the platform.
You can end up losing your Instagram account and all your followers will be lost. Since your contact details are the same, you don’t have to spend a lot of time sending them manually, Instagram Auto DM can send automated messages that have your contact details to all your new followers.
Payment And Shipment Details
This is for those who are into eCommerce, you definitely want to send payment details to prospects and you want to receive their shipment details in order to forward the products ordered. With the Instagram auto DMs, you’re able to automate sending your payment details and also telling your customers how to send shipment details.
Answer Common Questions
You’ll receive repetitive questions on Instagram and it’s boring to keep answering the same question over and over again. Instagram auto DMs allow businesses and individuals to automate sending answers to common questions by their prospects. This is where you can save a lot of time especially if you have a list of all the common questions asked by prospects. You just need to set up the questions and answers appropriately and everything will be taken care of on autopilot.
Run Instagram Giveaways On Autopilot
If you have been following the trends, you know how effective giveaways are, sending giveaways manually isn’t a way to do it. Giveaways like discount codes or digital products can be automated with Instagram auto DMs. It’s a set-and-forget process that will help you attract more prospects and also more followers to your Instagram account.
More Engagement
Instagram do consider accounts that exchange messages as having a close relationship, such accounts are considered as family. In most cases, when you initiate the conversation by sending automated messages, you’ll find that a lot of the users that receive such messages will reply back. The point is, if you’re exchanging messages with users, your posts and stories will always be displayed on top of their feed and that means more exposure for your business.
Promote your business
Instagram doesn’t like it promoting your business and services in the DM, but you can still do things right. You can take advantage of the Instagram auto DMs to promote your offers and you will be able to get more conversions. Most of your followers don’t know about your offers or they have seen it but forgotten. Promoting your business and services using the auto DM setup will remind them what you have for them.
These are some of the situations where you’ll find yourself needing to set up Instagram auto DMs and I believe every business out there wants to achieve some of them for their business.
Can You Set Up Auto Replies On Instagram?
Instagram allows sending auto-replies using the “Quick Replies” option that’s only available to “Instagram Business Accounts” if you’re using a normal personal account, you have to upgrade to business in order to access the “Quick Replies” feature. This feature, however, has a lot of limitations, if you want advanced features for sending auto-replies on Instagram, you have to use third-apps and other services.
If you’re looking for basic functionalities, the Instagram “quick replies” should be enough. In most cases, it’s used to answer common questions asked by your followers and everything can be set up using the Instagram DMs. You can provide working hours, directions, rates for your services, contact information and even links to websites. Anyone in any field can take advantage of the Instagram quick replies, it can be medical professions, legal, and local businesses.
How To Set Up Instagram Quick Replies
Upgrade your Instagram account to a business account
It has been mentioned above that the “Quick Replies” is only available to business accounts and if you don’t have a business profile, that’s what you need to do first. Here is how to upgrade your Instagram account to business;
- Launch the Instagram app and login.
- Click on your profile picture which is at the button right of the screen.
- Then you tap on the three horizontal lines from the top right corner.
- Tap on “Settings” and select “Account”.
- You then tap either “Switch to Professional Account” or “Switch to Business Account”. You select any of these options that are displayed for you, you’ll be asked to choose between “Creator” and “Business”, you should select “Business”.
- Click next and you’ll be required to connect your Facebook page and all the info on the FB page will be displayed on your Instagram profile. If you don’t have a Facebook page, you’ll be prompted to create a new page and you’ll be directed to do so.
- Tap “Done” when finished and you have now upgraded to Instagram business. You’ll enjoy a lot of benefits after switching to Instagram business, these include having full access to Instagram Analytics, auto-publishing single-image posts, tagging people and adding locations, managing Instagram comments effectively, and also using the “Quick Replies” feature to set up auto DMs.
Since your Instagram business account is ready, you can now access the quick replies feature we’re talking about.
Using Instagram Quick Replies
- Login to your Instagram account and go to your business profile.
- Tap on the three lines placed at the right corner of your screen.
- Select “Settings” from the menu options.
- Then you select “Business” in the list of options.
- Next, you can see the “Quick Replies” option shown on the screen.
- Since you’re using quick replies for the first, the next screen displayed to you will be blank and you will be given the option to create new replies by tapping on the + sign which is at the top right corner. If you have previously set up quick replies, you can see them all on this screen.
- Once you tap on the + sign, you can see a message that says “Add quick reply” and there are fields below where you can compose your quick reply message.
- There is a message field that says “Write the full message you want to send to customers” you need to add the full message there. It can be anything; let’s say you want to add working hours, your message could read “opening hours are Wednesday to Sunday from 8:00 am to 9:00 pm” or you can add contact details that will include contact email, phone number, website or street address.
- The next field is named “Shortcut” this is where you specify when to send the quick reply for the message you have composed. You should use common words and phrases that are mostly asked by your prospects. Instagram will send the auto-reply when it detects the user type such word as their first word. You need to do some testing here to ensure that you’re sending the auto-replies to the right users.
Creating Instagram Quick Replies From Existing Message
You can create Instagram quick replies from existing messages you have in the DM, you can use this option to save time. Here are the steps to do that;
- Go to your DM and locate the message you want to use in Quick replies.
- Long tap the message you want to use.
- A menu will pop up on the screen with three options, you should tap the last option that says “Save Quick Reply”.
- The message will be automatically transferred to the quick reply manager and the new screen will open.
- When the “Add quick reply” screen opens you can edit the message to remove unwanted text and words.
- You should also fill the “Shortcut” field where you can specify the type of query that should send the automated DM.
- Once you’re done, save your changes and it should start working immediately.
These are the simple steps for sending quick replies using the official Instagram feature, but as mentioned earlier, this option has a lot of limitations because it only works in the DM. This means that users must contact you through the DM before they can receive quick replies. The quick reply can’t reply to comments nor send a DM when they detect a user’s comments. You can’t use the Instagram quick replies feature to send a dm for every new follower you get nor reply to users that leave a comment on your posts.