367: How To Use Instagram DM Automation To Grow Your Sales With Natasha Takahashi

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You’re listening to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and dig deep into what strategies they use to grow their businesses. Today, I have my friend, Takahashi, back on the show. And if you don’t remember her, she is the founder of the School of Bots. She was a speaker at Seller Summit 2020, and last time she was on, we discussed Facebook Messenger bots. Well, today, we’re talking about something that is even more interesting, Instagram DM automation. In fact,

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Instagram automation is one of the main reasons that I’m building up my Instagram account in the first place. She’s also giving a free five day Instagram automation challenge next week. I’ll include a link in the show notes where you can sign up for free. But before I begin, I want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode. Super excited to talk about Klaviyo because they’re the email marketing platform that I personally use for my e-commerce store, and it depends on them for over 30 % of my revenue. Now you’re probably wondering why Klaviyo and not another provider.

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Well, Klaviyo is the only email platform out there that is specifically built for e-commerce stores, and here’s why it’s so powerful. Klaviyo can track every single customer who has shopped in your store and exactly what they bought. So let’s say I want to send out an email to everyone who purchased a red handkerchief in the last week. Easy. Let’s say I want to set up a special autoresponder sequence to my customers depending on what they bought, piece of cake, and there’s full revenue tracking on every email sent. Klaviyo is the most powerful email platform that I’ve ever used, and you can try them for free over at klaviyo.com slash mywife.

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That’s KLAVIO.com slash my wife. I also want to thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode. If you run an e-commerce business of any kind, you know how important it is to own your own customer contact list. And this is why I focus a significant amount of my efforts on SMS marketing. SMS or text message marketing is already a top five revenue source for my e-commerce store. And I couldn’t have done it without Postscript, which is my text message provider. Now, why did I choose Postscript? It’s because they specialize in e-commerce stores and e-commerce is their primary focus.

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Not only is it easy to use, but you can quickly segment your audience based on your exact sales data and implement automated flows like an abandoned cart at the push of a button. Not only that, but it’s price well too and SMS is the perfect way to engage with your customers. So head on over to postscript.io slash Steve and try it for free. That’s P-O-S-T-S-C-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. And then finally, I wanted to mention a new podcast that I recently released with my partner, Tony. And unlike this podcast where I interview successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce,

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the profitable audience podcast covers all things related to content creation and building an audience. No topic is off the table and we tell it like how it is in a raw and entertaining way. So be sure to check out the profitable audience podcast on your favorite podcast app. Now onto the show.

02:42
Welcome to the My Wife Quarter Job podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have Natasha Takahashi back on the show. Natasha is someone who I met at social media marketing world a while back and she is my go-to when it comes to bots and automation. She is the chief marketing officer and founder of the School of Bots and she’s spoken at lots of industry events like social media marketing world and traffic and conversions. Anyway, today we are gonna talk about something really exciting, Instagram bots, which is pretty new. And with that, welcome to show Natasha, how you doing?

03:10
Thank you so much for that awesome intro as always. It’s always a pleasure catching up and talking marketing with you. So I’m excited for us to dive into this because like you said, it’s something brand new that I would imagine a lot of the people listening, this might be the first time they’re hearing about this and what’s possible with it. So I’m excited to dive into Instagram DM automation chatbots. Yeah. So last time you were here, I remember taking away your Asian membership card, but you’ve been killing it for the past couple of years. I’m back to you right now.

03:40
So what have been working on lately that’s been super exciting? Yeah, I love it. I always love doing Asian jokes with you. know, feel like there’s no other Asians that I really speak with in the marketing space. I love it. It’s because they’re all doctors and engineers and true. Yeah, true that. Or the outcasts. But anyways, right now what I have been working on is outside of messenger bot strategy for ourselves and our clients.

04:02
We have been testing Instagram DM automation as well as WhatsApp, is a separate conversation, but I just wanted to mention it because it’s all kind of a part of the same ecosystem. Instagram DM automation, we’ve been testing for the last few months. So let’s say since like February or March of 2021. And it’s going to start gradually rolling out to all accounts on Instagram coming up here for the rest of the year. But the things that we have found to be really interesting with this channel is that

04:29
people receive businesses, influencers, business owners, right? Personal brands receive so many DMs that they get overwhelmed with on Instagram compared to pretty much any other channel at the moment, just because Instagram combines the social network aspect with all the organic traffic, right? Like stories with DMs so seamlessly that people just get inundated. Someone’s replying to your story or they want to know more about your products. And Instagram itself is such a buyer’s platform where according to them, 81 % of people who

04:59
go to Instagram on a regular basis or searching for products and services. So it’s pretty massive. Did you say 81 %? Yes, 81%. So yeah, it’s definitely massive to where I can even recognize that in my own consumer behavior, like I’ll go to Instagram and want to look up, you know, something for home decor or certain apparel that I might be looking for. So it’s a lot based around I would say tangible ecom though, when it comes to products and services, because Instagram has, I think,

05:26
Like it hasn’t evolved yet for our world of like info commerce and that kind of thing. But long story short, results have been way higher than I would have honestly expected. Like right off the bat, it’s very easy to gain ROI with this channel. So we can dive into all the nuances, you know, in specifics, but I’m overall really stoked on this because I think it’s an easier way for marketers and businesses, even influencers on their own to start to build automation in a place where they’re feeling the pain of DMs the most.

05:54
and then actually be able to drive even more DMs because they now have automation set up. So it’s a nice entry point into like the chat bot marketing and automation space, I think. Do you us to share some numbers? You said the ROI is really high. Do you have any examples? Yeah. So overall, let’s say the difference between sending someone on a story to a swipe up link and then actually telling them in a story to DM you, let’s say a certain word, like, you know, for this podcast, let’s say that you were creating a story and then in the story said swipe up to listen to the podcast.

06:24
The difference between that number and you saying instead in the story, Hey, DME, the word podcast, you know, and I’ll send you our latest episode in DMS that difference in terms of leads generated or any number that you’re looking at for an important action for somebody to take is on average 500 to 800 % higher for us with every test that we’ve run so far, pretty much since the beginning. sorry. Can you repeat that again? just having someone type in a word in DMS versus what, is it competing against? Like the click through.

06:52
Right. So, so the click through to a call to action that you make on a swipe up story. something like, you know, podcasts, listen, let’s say it’s a, you know, a product that you’re recommending, whatever it might be, the difference between that number of leads generated or even clicks is 500, 800 % less than when we tell people to DM in the conversation then. So imagine, you know, you’re DMing a word.

07:18
on the story, because you’ve got that bar at the bottom of Instagram stories, right? So maybe you DM the word podcast, that user will automatically get a response back the same way it works with messenger where they’ve triggered automation. And then from there, we always have people interact in that first message to confirm they want to get whatever it is that you were offering, right? So maybe it’s the podcast, maybe it’s a discount code or some offer. And then from there in the second message at minimum, we’ll then share a link or, know, if

07:44
Let’s say in another example, not to divert too much, but just to let people know what’s possible. Let’s say you want to actually capture emails and that’s the purpose. So in that step that people are going to engage, either they click to a link to get some offer or they’re giving you information that step there has generated 500 to 800 % more leads on average compared to sending people to like a website page with a swipe up and then trying to get people to opt in or something of the like there. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah.

08:13
I would think that typing in a word would have more friction than just clicking on a link though, but I guess that’s not the case. Yeah. The interesting thing right now is that, uh, without considering another feature that we can talk about in a moment, which is that there is a way to send a DM to people who comment on your posts without considering that feature right now, 50 % of DM conversations on Instagram from people to businesses start through stories.

08:39
So it’s a pretty big engagement channel when it comes to actually starting a conversation. And that’s why it’s been really interesting to see how many people start a conversation and then that friction point of actually getting people to engage initially with the conversation. People are kind of striving for that. Like they want to feel, you know, that relationship or connection and DMS are very easy to reply to. So it’s, it’s surprising, but it’s also not when it comes to the behavior that people have in Instagram DMS. Okay. So.

09:08
Actually, before we get into like the depths of Instagram DMs, can we just do a quick comparison? Last time I had you on here, we talked about Facebook Messenger. What are the primary differences between Messenger and Instagram DMs? So there are four main differences that I would look at. And whether you are newer to Messenger or you’ve already tested some things out there, I imagine that this will all make sense when it comes to visualizing that difference. So the first thing would be the message formats that are available.

09:35
If you’ve ever interacted with a messenger bot, maybe one of Steve’s bots, right, you can see that there are ways to add images and these card gallery style things. You can add gifts. There’s different types of media essentially that you can send through a messenger bot. And the engagement interaction options are also a little bit different. So for example, there are buttons. There are also these little bubbles that are called quick replies on the backend. And people can also type in, you know, to engage with a conversation on a messenger bot.

10:04
With Instagram, there are only the little quick replies that are available. So you can still share like pre-filled options. So for example, you’re like, Hey, are you a marketer or a business owner inside of Instagram DM? And the user could see two buttons that says marketer or business owner. So you can use those button options, essentially. I’ll just call them buttons from here on out, but truly they’re called quick replies on the backend. And so you can use that as well as open user input. And that’s really the extent of the message format.

10:33
You can also send images and gifts, but you can’t send any other type of media or use, for example, integrations with like shop, which you can do with messenger. So that would be the first main difference. Any questions on that? it’s much less functionality at this point is what you’re saying. Correct. And I actually think that this is really beneficial for businesses because a, it simplifies things and two, it narrows the scope of

10:56
of how you would accomplish like your specific use cases. So while it doesn’t like put a damper on the results you can generate, it makes things more simple when it comes to designing the conversation. Can you use keyword automations? Yes, you can. Okay. So are those keyword automations general to the entire bot or are they specific to a certain question that you might ask? So if you use, for example, a tool like ManyChat, where you are designing a conversation and you want to capture somebody’s input,

11:23
at a certain point in the conversation, that’s when you can either share a button or tell them to type in something. But when it comes to keywords that are more general that you wanna have people opt in with, like on stories, for example, like we were talking about, then that would apply to the entire pod. But there’s more back-end conditions and logic that you can add to. Maybe it’s only valid for a certain date or something of the like. Okay, okay. Yeah. So basically it’s…

11:49
It’s a messenger bot where you just have quick replies and then the standard inputs and then the GIFs and the images, which I guess in my experience is what how a lot of people are just using it in the first place, right? Without the integrations to other services. Yeah. And I think that, that the fact that they’ve made it more simple is pretty much mimicking the, peer to peer experience or like the experience without automation, like you said. So

12:13
I think that’s a smart move on their side, given that messenger started to be viewed as very complex with so many different possibilities that people kind of got caught up in that and didn’t feel like they knew where to start, right? Or that there’s way too many options, you know, what do they do first? And then how do they expand upon that? So I think this is a good move from their side when it comes to message formatting. There are a few other differences. Do you want me to highlight those or? Okay, cool. I’ll just go through those quickly. Second is the way that people can opt in. So as.

12:42
maybe some people have noted in the past, you have a messenger bot that actually has its unique link that’s tied to your Facebook page, right? So while you can go to a page to message it, you could also go to messenger.com. And when you message a page there, there’s a specific link that you get that’s like an identifier for that chat. And actually the same thing happens on the mobile app. It’s just that you’re viewing it in that chat, in that app.

13:05
So long story short, the difference is that Instagram DMs themselves are not their own platform where you can send someone directly to the conversation with a link. You have to send people to your Instagram profile and then tell them to DM you from there. So the way that people can opt in is not quite the same where Messenger has like over eight different ways that you could opt people in. Instagram has a lot of those, but one of the main differences is that link. However, things like someone comments on your post and they can get a DM on Instagram is also possible.

13:34
then people can send you keywords and that kind of thing. But the way they started is a little bit different. Interesting. Okay. So basically what you’re saying is that link no longer exists. You actually have to tell them to physically DM you something. Correct. Okay. Yep. With ads, there’s a little bit more of a prompt. Like you can create an ad that tells people to DM you and it like takes you to DM. So that can happen in the Instagram feed. But let’s say you wanted to tell people in an email, like, Hey, go and check out our Instagram automation. They would have to go to your Instagram profile and then message you from there. So it just adds another step if you will. Right.

14:04
Actually, know, arguably that’s better because I don’t know if you’ve been seeing this with your clients, but sometimes when people click on that link, it ends up with a blank messenger. Yes, if they have been or well, it of depends on how it’s set up, right? Are you saying like a ref URL that you’re sending people to and for new or existing subscribers or both? For a new subscriber. Gotcha. I have not seen completely blank. There should always be that opt in button, right? The one that either says get started or something that’s customized.

14:33
get started, after they click get started, like the rest of the automation doesn’t happen. I’ve had that happen on a number of cases. Yeah. with the European policies, can just address that super quick because there were some changes that happened in November and December, not just for European pages, but primarily for them that changed the way that ref URL opt-ins worked. over the last few months, like the beginning of 2021 first quarter,

14:56
Definitely there were a lot of issues with rough URLs, but I believe most of that has been resolved now. So I personally haven’t seen any issues recently, but I that was an issue like this past year. So in terms of what we’re talking about today and applying to Europe, is it going to be a lot more limited for the EU folks? It’s actually not. The only thing that EU folks can’t do is send media so they won’t be able to send images and gifts. So that might be a downside for some people.

15:21
I think they’re working on figuring out a way to enable that. It really just comes down to, think, Facebook and Instagram’s code and the way that they were doing it. So I imagine that will hopefully be something that they restore in the next few weeks or the next few months. And so then that way EU folks can still do everything else that we’ve been talking about so far. It’s just the images, GIFs, videos, that kind of thing that they won’t be able to send. OK, in that respect, this is much better than Messenger, right? Because there was a lot of limitations on Messenger that they introduced to the EU folks.

15:50
When compared to this, it’s honestly the same. The difference with the EU folks was some of the features that they could use to drive people in. So, and we can totally talk about this as well if you think this would be beneficial for your audience, but things around like sponsored messages, for example, that aren’t available, the way that people opt into ads or even the messenger data that you can leverage for ads, I would say that was the biggest impact. And then when you follow up with people, which is another one of the major differences I can talk about in a moment, like,

16:19
how you can actually follow up with that 24 hour window or other methods. That’s actually where Instagram is more limited than messenger. You folks are not because there’s no other way to reach out to people. There’s no sponsored messages. There’s no, you know, one time notification or message tags. So you just have that 24 hour window to message people. I see. I see. Okay. So it’s a little bit less flexible is what you’re saying with IG, right? Right. And, and I think that that’ll change up given that Facebook’s

16:47
overall mission is to bring WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram DM all together, not to turn them into one platform, but their initiative that they call interoperability is to create the same messaging experience on all those three platforms. So I imagine we’re going to see everything start to adjust because the experience is a little bit different on each platform right now, but we see Instagram and Messenger starting to align, especially with this chat pod automation. So I think within the next year, for example, we’ll see Messenger and Instagram DM have

17:16
pretty much the same experience. All right. So let’s talk now about like the power. So what are cool things that you can do in Instagram that didn’t work as well in messenger? That didn’t work as well in messenger. Good question. I think the organic traffic is a big one when it comes to like actually getting leads in.

17:38
I will say that Facebook stories often time get more viewership, but Instagram stories get more engagement. So that would just be a subtle difference that I’ve been noticing. But when it comes to use cases.

17:51
I guess honestly, to answer your question just straightforward, there’s not really anything that didn’t work in Messenger that would work better in Instagram. It’s actually one of the best things that you can do is if you already have Messenger tests, experiments, live campaigns that are running, then I would recommend that you replicate that in Instagram to see if you can get the same results. Because if your audience is somewhat similar on both platforms, then you likely will. There will be some behaviors and things that are different, but everything from

18:19
quizzes to customer support experiences to giving discount codes, anything like that is all pretty much the same when it comes to Instagram use cases that you’re like driving traffic to, if that makes sense. Yeah, you know, for some reason though, for me at least, and I’m obviously not the representative Instagram user, but for me, getting a message in my IG seems almost less intrusive than getting one in Messenger. That’s totally fair.

18:45
I think given that we like the average user does get spammed a bit with Instagram DM, which I think is one thing to note. then secondly, like you said, I agree. think Instagram is less intrusive for whatever reason, because of the way that we all look at the platform. think that DMs are maybe like, because it’s one of the only ways that people can really engage with you there. I think it does provide a more like wide net where you’re okay with someone sending you an Instagram DM. But like you said, Messenger seems to feel a lot more personal.

19:16
Let me ask you this, you just mentioned that if you already have Messenger flows in place that you should just try them on Instagram. Presumably you’ve done this with a number of clients. I know it’s kind of early since this just got released earlier this year, but when you compare the two head to head, what have you been seeing? We’ve actually been seeing very similar results when it comes to the click rates going all the way through, know, retention. And then with the results of somebody actually taking action on what you’re offering them. So let’s say they went through a quiz or you’re trying to capture an email.

19:45
and then eventually get somebody to either buy something or to download something from you, like a lead magnet, right? To be frank, those numbers have actually been pretty similar across the board. What has been different is the amount of organic traffic we’re able to drive with stories specifically, and then posts now too. So I guess when it comes to volume, if you haven’t done a lot of paid traffic with Messenger, or you’re just looking to raise your organic efforts and get a ton of free leads, warm traffic, presumably, given that stories.

20:13
will be seen by that audience. That’s where I think Instagram shines because it creates this re-engagement channel where people are watching stories all day, every day, like even more than they’re on their feet at this point. And so when it comes to getting people back into a DM conversation with stories, I think that’s where Instagram shines. And we’ll see how that changes with, know, posts now being available too, but that’s been the main differentiator. So when it comes to the actual conversation though, and converting people there for whatever your use cases, it’s actually been pretty similar.

20:43
But because this is newer also, I imagine that the Instagram numbers might be a little bit higher at some points, especially if we’ve like exhausted a campaign on Messenger or for whatever reason, the Instagram audience is like more attracted to that offer, let’s say, than maybe the audience was on Messenger. I can see that. in fact, you could probably re like if you have a pretty decent IG account, you can pretty easily re-engage with these people without having to pay for ads. Whereas with Messenger. Right.

21:11
at least from what I’ve seen, a lot of these pages aren’t getting the same organic reach. so Instagram, like the stories, seems to always reach people pretty well. Right, exactly. And maybe even with posts, you know, people notice that your Instagram posts just get more reach organically than Facebook. And it makes sense because it’s a numbers game. At the end of the day, Instagram has about like half a billion, I think, less followers or actually, I think it’s about one billion, actually.

21:37
less not followers, but users than Facebook. So naturally Instagram is a smaller platform, which means you’re going to get more organic reach as it grows. That’ll probably change. But I think that’s one of the biggest differences. Like you said, is that there’s a lot you can do with the free traffic that you already get and getting more, whether it’s leads or ROI sales out of the efforts you’re already putting out on Instagram, but redirecting the CTA to a conversation rather than to just like a link. Can you

22:05
I don’t if you know these numbers offhand, but can you just kind of comment on like the growth direction of Instagram versus just Facebook in general? Yeah, so Instagram in specific, they reached actually a billion users this year in 2021. So Instagram itself is the fastest growing social network right now. Facebook, as we all know, does have quite a bit of fake accounts also. So that’s just something to consider. And with Instagram, I don’t know which one has more given Instagram has always been focused on

22:35
you know, these bot accounts that everyone sees that are like liking and commenting and following, unfollowing, right? So just a factor to consider there. But when it comes to the growth that Instagram themselves track, their forecast is that they’ve been at a billion now since the start of this year, and they’re looking at about 1.2 billion in 2023. I know that sounds like a little, but we have to remember it’s in the billions. So

22:59
When it comes to the countries, Instagram is the biggest in the US. So that’s also something to consider. Whereas Facebook and even like WhatsApp, for example, if we’re looking at the Facebook ecosystem, these platforms are actually bigger sometimes in other countries. Whereas Instagram is pretty focused on US, India is actually pretty massive. Brazil, Indonesia and Russia are the top five countries. So that’s a little bit of the growth forecast that I have been able to get numbers on and know about. But okay.

23:27
Yeah, with automation, we’ll see how that affects things as well.

23:32
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24:00
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24:30
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24:40
So can you just walk me through like a hypothetical example of how maybe like an e-commerce store has used IG bots? Absolutely. So let’s go along the same thread that I was mentioning earlier when it comes to let’s say using a story or a post as an opt-in point. So for example, Mother’s Day happened recently, at least at the time that we’re recording this. And so if you ran a, let’s say promotion for Mother’s Day where you’re doing, let’s say 15 % off.

25:08
This is a really easy use case to implement. You’re already creating content and materials around this. So what that user journey could have looked like is in your stories, you’re saying, hey, it’s Mother’s Day. Do you not know what to get your mom yet? Maybe you do like a multi-story quiz. So if you’ve ever seen e-com stores, actually right now, like this or that is pretty hot, right? Where people like, vote on this or that, right? And it’s just like a poll that you’re saying. So in the same way, Instagram has said that stories with at least three,

25:38
So sorry sequences with at least three stories get the most engagement. And they also in a sense, put your user in the right frame of mind to take advantage of your offer. So if you, for example, had three stories that ask a question about the user’s pain point or challenge or their goals, and you had three of those following each other, then on the last story, so let’s say you have four stories in total you’ve created, you tell people, cool, well, it sounds like you’re still looking for a Mother’s Day gift. So whatever the questions were, they kind of lead to that conclusion.

26:06
And then you say, well, we’re doing 15 % off, DM us the word mom15, and you’ll get a unique discount code or something that’s good for the day of Mother’s Day. So that would be an example of how the opt-in works. So then from there, user DMs you that word or whatever word you choose that’s going to be easy for the person, usually less than seven letters or numbers. And then they DM, that word is triggered through a keyword. As you had mentioned, that’s a feature on ManyChat, for example, or any of these platforms where

26:35
You can trigger a flow now or an automation that starts at that point. And then let’s say with a discount code because you want the user to convert and let’s say that the product purchase might be like less than 50 bucks. At this point, you don’t need to do like a whole lot of crazy nurturing. Instead, you can just say, you know, share your email with me so I can make sure you get the coupon code there as well. Or if you don’t want to, it’s okay. Like go ahead and you know, move on and I’ll share the coupon code with you.

26:59
That way you can get somewhere between 50 to 80 % of the emails of the leads that you’re getting through Instagram. But then you also don’t want to like deter people from being like, well, I just want the discount code. Like, so you can go ahead and let everybody go through, but give them that like optional barrier, if you will. Now compare this option to like a story where. Like you use to send them directly to like the product page with the coupon code already applied.

27:25
Yes. So one of the differences here is that with Instagram DM, instead of sending somebody to the website page, right, where you technically don’t have a way to follow up with them, you can retarget them with ads and content. But when you send someone to the conversation, the biggest difference there is capturing that lost traffic that is going to visit the page and then exit out, especially inside of Instagram, right? Where they’re not like in their mobile browser. So it’s super easy to close out that like web view that pops up. So the difference between sending someone to that

27:54
website page, right? Already apply discount code, like you said, and having them check out and buy. Uh, instead, when you send them through the conversation, adding that friction point, which means that you’re going to convert most, more of those people naturally because they are committing more through each step, Committing these micro commitments. And then from there, you can follow up, let’s say after somebody has clicked on the link, let’s say in 30 minutes or maybe even 10 minutes and be like, Hey, did you find something that you liked? Or like, did you have a chance to check out?

28:20
And then if you’ve got their email, you could even cross-reference that with like your e-comm shop data, for example, and maybe not send that to people who have already bought, but maybe instead say, Hey, thanks for, checking out and getting something cool for your mom, whatever it might be, you know, and then from there, maybe have a few other follow-ups, send people to a blog, do something else. Okay. The other thing that I can apply right. 24 hour rule for, for IG as well. Correct. Yes. From the last interaction. Okay.

28:49
Sorry, I interrupted you. You’re about to say, it’s all good. No worries. No, I was just going to say that when it comes to e-comm shops, one of the most powerful tools you can build is a quiz because then you can add the quiz on the front end or the backend of any campaigns you’re running. So when it comes to like, let’s say a product recommendation quiz in your followups, if somebody’s like, yeah, I didn’t get a chance to check out yet, or I don’t know what to buy. Then that’s an opportunity for you to send people through a quiz, but

29:13
What we’ve found to be effective is if once a week you can create this frequency of putting out a story that drives people into essentially the same product quiz every time, but ideally it should be new traffic coming in, then that’s a really easy way as well to get people to engage, micro commit, and then get a discount code. You can add a cart abandonment sequence, and that’s one of the easiest ways to gain ROI quickly through DM automation for Econ. Can you give me an example of a quiz? So do you like this item or this item, that sort of quiz or?

29:40
Yeah, so the way that we would position quizzes, so let’s say for e-comm specifically, we’re usually looking at a product recommendation quiz so that if you have ideally more than one product, then, or even if you only have one product, although then that’s a little bit shady, right? And you can maybe design the quiz a little bit differently, like can we help you kind of thing? But if you have more than let’s say one to two products, so ideally let’s say five to 10 where you could point people to different things.

30:05
The goal of the quiz is to find out more about the user’s pain points, their challenges, but it’s all multiple choice. So it’s not like a open feedback kind of quiz. Instead, you’re saying, okay, tell me like what you struggle with here. Maybe it’s something around like gym apparel, you know, and you’re digging into their pain points or, know, what their goals are. And you’re going to recommend, you know, the best, let’s say gym pants or something for them at the end of the quiz. So that’s how I would recommend that.

30:31
e-comm shops that have multiple products where people might not be sure what to get from you, or they might want to buy everything from you, but they can’t. So what’s the number one purchase they should make. But when it comes to something like info commerce or sometimes for e-commerce supplies, if you have a membership product or a personalized product, for example, something like Curology, where if you’re familiar with that brand, they put together a custom skincare formula for you. There’s a lot of e-comm brands that are coming out doing something similar where it’s a personalized solution.

31:01
So in those cases, oftentimes they already use quizzes on their websites. So it’s easy to create that same thing so that then they can get that personalized result at the end. So it’s never like a true or false kind of quiz for e-comm shops oftentimes because that won’t convert as high as actually giving somebody a recommendation. But those are good for like engagement and for testing things out to see what your audience wants to get from you. When it comes to having them interact, as soon as they interact with your bot, they become a subscriber, right? Yes.

31:31
Is that combined with your current messenger subscribers or is it completely separate right now? So right now inside of a platform like many chat, both of those types of subscribers, any of the channels are using will all show up in that platform. However, right now there’s not a connection that happens between let’s say the same person with an Instagram profile and a messenger profile. I imagine over the next few months, definitely before the end of 2021, there will be a way to merge those contacts so that

31:59
One contact profile has somebody’s Instagram information, Messenger, Facebook, et cetera. But right now they are separate lists in a sense, even if you have the same person who just has an Instagram profile, but also a Messenger profile with you. Okay. So I can see the value in bringing people back through stories, posts. Does this work for Reels by any chance also? Right now there’s not a direct connection with Reels where, as I mentioned, if you have an Instagram post where somebody comments on it and then you want to send them a DM, that’s doable there.

32:29
That connection doesn’t exist yet for reels or for IGTV for that matter. But with reels, something that we’re testing right now, which is actually doing pretty well is telling people in the real caption or even at the end of the real, like actually put text into the video that says like DME, whatever the keyword is to get access to something like this. So then that way we can gain, we can also gauge like what the actual ROI of some of our reels are given that we know that people with this specific keyword came from that.

32:58
All right. Yeah, that totally makes sense. And so once I have these subs, let’s say I want to get ahold of them with a sponsored message. Does that process work the same way? Right now, Instagram DM does not have sponsored messages. Okay. Which is why getting somebody’s contact information at the start or somewhere along the interaction is beneficial if you want to leverage those leads to the best of your ability. So ideally getting an email in some cases, if you have an SMS strategy, getting their phone number.

33:27
but that would be the best thing to do at the moment. As they start to evolve the platform though, because right now they’re only, I believe at like 10 to 20 % of the features that are gonna be available. So they’re gonna continue to add features as they get more and more data internally. And I imagine sponsored messages will be one of those that will come maybe even before the end of this year. Okay, so, but for now, like the concept of even having a subscriber on IG isn’t really a factor because there’s no way to reach them outside of.

33:54
Correct. That’s not so much a success metric right now because yeah, as you said, it’s not like an email list where now you can say, okay, for each subscriber on my list, I’m gonna make an average of like two bucks or five bucks or something like that. Okay. So in terms of what you see, like obviously this just rolled out, right? So there’s gonna be limited features. What do you see actually happening? Maybe I’ll have you back on in like six months or so. Do you happen to know the roadmap of when these other features are gonna come online?

34:22
They haven’t released any specific announcements around other features, but everything I’ve mentioned so far is already available to accounts that have access. And then what they’re going to be doing over the next few months is rolling this out to certain accounts based on certain factors that I can’t necessarily specify right now, but long story short, everyone will gradually get access. And so when it comes to the new features that they’ll have, I honestly don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like, but because we know their bigger picture is making this

34:52
almost the same experience as Messenger, whether they decrease stuff on Messenger to have it match on Instagram, or they bring more features to Instagram, which I imagine that would be the case. I imagine that Instagram can be a good place for us to look, or I’m sorry, Messenger can be a good place to look to say, okay, Messenger has all of this, so what would that look like on Instagram? That would be kind of the main thing that we can look at. But to answer your question of how this will roll out, all those features will be available. Right now it’s on an application basis, but it’s gonna start to roll out to all accounts.

35:21
And then when it comes to building DM automation for your Instagram profile, I would recommend using ManyChat, especially if you already have a messenger bot there. There are other platforms available and I everyone always wants to know, know, why should I use this platform over this platform or what’s the best? To be honest, the marketing analytics and the automation that you can build in ManyChat is the best. So not that I’m biased or have any sort of agreement with them. It’s really more of us finding what’s the best tool that we can generate results on and happens to be them.

35:49
So I would recommend getting on, they have an Instagram beta wait list, but soon that’ll just be a way for you to like add Instagram to the account you already have. So those would be a few starting steps. Do you absolutely need a tool to use this? You do. You cannot build this to my knowledge, just like on your own. Okay. Next question I have is a lot of people are selling on Instagram physical products right now where they take a photo of their product and then each one of those products they can like tag with the link that goes to the product.

36:18
Is there some sort of automation or some way that you can combine this somehow with that aspect of shopping? Yeah, what I would see this. So right now, no, there is no sort of trigger. can create our automation that happens when somebody clicks into a product, for example, but that’s an example of something that I think will become a feature that Instagram builds because their number one focus right now is commerce.

36:42
And so anything that can, they can do, in fact, they’re giving away like two grand of ad credit to anybody who sets up an Instagram shop at the time of recording this. So, and really it’s a Facebook shop, but it’s on Instagram. So let’s call it an Instagram shop, but, uh, long story short, those features around anybody interacting with your shop. So like you said, whether they click on a product or, uh, there’s a way to trigger, you know, something when somebody is looking or browsing at your shore at your store, I was going to say shop in store at the same time. So, uh, with a shop.

37:11
I imagine that’s going to be the next batch of features that they’re going to be building because this is a huge priority for everybody with e-comm and is also where I think e-comm shops are going to be making most of their ROI is with these shop style triggers. Right. Okay. So let me just see if I can just summarize our conversation and you can tell me whether you agree or disagree with me right now, the way it’s set up and with the features that are currently there, the primary value of Instagram bots right now is to

37:40
try to grab a lead or try to get some engagements so that you can contact them again or do some cool automations after the fact and upsell them other products, right? It’s not as valuable right now for getting them as a subscriber because there’s no way to, for example, pay to get engagement to them. But one thing that I’ve noticed from running my store is if I can get someone on like a DM or on Messenger where I’m actually chatting with them, like a human, I can almost always close the sale right off the bat.

38:09
So would you agree with me on what I said so far? Yes. And to your last point, that’s exactly right. And with e-comm, depending on your price point, really, as soon as you have somebody inside of a conversation, the chances of closing them are very high, or at minimum, getting them as a lead or getting them to even buy like your lowest product, right? And then upselling them from there. So I think for e-comm specifically,

38:32
There’s a lot of upfront ROI that you can generate just by getting them into a conversation and actually being able to manage that with automation instead of having like a full blown sales team having to manage those DMS. And then when it comes to something like info commerce, I think that the same rule applies, but it just depends on your price point. And then like what the next step looks like, maybe it’s a sales appointment or maybe it is a discount code or just getting somebody’s contact info. given that you’re generating all these conversations and sometimes a human has to step in.

39:00
How do you personally manage all of that? So we’ve actually built the same system that we build for Messenger bots into Instagram using many chats platform because what we do is we have an automated customer support system that can answer as many questions as possible. We’re constantly adding to that library of keywords, but also actual AI that can detect what someone is saying and then ideally send them the correct response.

39:26
And then we check, hey, did we answer your question or not right after that? So let’s say somebody is like, Hey, like how has COVID affected shipping or something? So then the bot maybe responds based on some keywords that that user said, like COVID and shipping. And then from there, we would ask them, did we answer your question or did we help you get to the next step to find your solution? And if they say no, this is one place where now we’re going to send them over to live chat. So inside of many chat, have a system where.

39:53
This can get even more specific, like around, you know, what hours, for example, your team is online and that kind of thing. But in the same way that a customer support team or a sales team would go into like Zendesk or Intercom to actually reply to each inquiry coming in, we designed the same system inside of ManyChat so that anybody who needs human help would show up as like an open conversation. And then usually we’ll send like a notification to Slack, for example, where the support team will see that someone from there will get onto ManyChat, answer their question.

40:22
And then once that inquiry is resolved, so the user is happy, or maybe they haven’t heard back in like a day or two, then they go ahead and close that inquiry. And now that user will be on the backend, handed back to the bot. So the handoff is like bot to human temporarily, and then back to the bot. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. So I know like the many chat keyword automation is pretty limited in that you can just detect like certain keywords or phrases. mentioned the word AI.

40:51
Are you using any more advanced AI tools to kind of parse human speech or questions? Yes. So to preface Facebook and actually it’s technically not Facebook, but there’s a company called OpenAI and they are building AI that integrates really beautifully with Facebook’s platform overall. This is for ads, for apps and other things on the Facebook platform. So long-term, I imagine that that will be the AI we actually leverage. However,

41:19
AI is a very complex and deep topic. So when it comes to the tools that we use right now, some of our bots don’t require AI, but I would say for the majority of them, we at least start to train in AI. So it’s listening to all the conversations and then we tell it how to reply using a tool called Dialogflow. And that tool is owned by Google. So the way that we integrate it is many chat and Dialogflow can integrate. And so we essentially have

41:46
some responses built in Dialogflow and then some responses built in ManyChat so that to the user, they feel like they’re just talking to the same bot, you know, or they’re just talking to your page. But on the backend, when a answer or a message is triggered, it may come from ManyChat or it may come from Dialogflow. What is the distinction? What does Dialogflow do? Yeah, so Dialogflow essentially learns to understand what your users are saying and how to reply to that. So maybe, for example,

42:14
I don’t love restaurant pizza examples, but I feel like it’s one of the easiest things to understand, right? You’re ordering a pizza. And so you might say, hey, I want to order a pizza. And ManyChat catches that. But maybe you say, hey, I’m looking to buy a pizza and I want pepperoni, et cetera on it. And I want it to be delivered at 5 PM. ManyChat may not understand that second inquiry, but Dialogflow can learn to, over a pretty short period of time, learn that that is asking essentially the same question and then confirm with the user that that’s what they’re looking for. So that message of confirmation or like,

42:43
really to the user, just the response that they get would come from Dialogflow. And then Dialogflow can say, okay, we have that function in ManyChat, so I’m gonna hand it back to ManyChat to help them order their pizza. So given that Dialogflow is a lot more powerful than ManyChat’s keyword solution, why not just send everything over there? Yeah, so Dialogflow isn’t built like a marketing platform. So if you plan to use chatbots for marketing campaigns or anything having to do with marketing and sales, that is not just answering customer support inquiries,

43:12
then using ManyChat as your base makes a lot more sense with adding Dialogflow on top. Also, Dialogflow doesn’t have a CRM or some of these other elements like content management that ManyChat has. So ManyChat in a sense for SMBs and mid-tier businesses, even some enterprise, it’s the all-in-one solution where it houses all of your chatbot content, it houses your subscribers, and it houses any automation you would want to run.

43:36
But then dialogue flow, when you’re looking at it from this perspective, then it’s just a layer that you can add on top to enhance the responses that it adds. But it can’t like do things or, you know, it can’t end the best way possible, especially for non-technical or no code marketers and business owners design the same types of experiences that many chat can. Okay. Uh, last question here is as soon as someone exceeds the 24 hour window for like an Instagram message right now.

44:06
the only way to do it is to get them re-engage through some organic way. Is that correct? That is correct. And yeah, I mean, really that’s the case at the moment. Another way that you can engage people actually would be through paid traffic on either stories or Instagram feed posts. So you can actually run a post on the feed. So, okay, an Instagram ad, but it’s on the feed. And then when somebody clicks in to that ad, into that post,

44:36
then they would see an option to DM. So they would need to like click, you know, I want to DM. And then from there, they would get taken into the conversation. So that is a way to reengage people past that 24 hour window. And then also you can run paid traffic to your stories. So literally just replicate, you know, that organic story you had or run a specific campaign. And then when people respond to that, then they’ll come into the DMS as well. So there is a combination of organic and paid options.

45:02
Can you target, can you create a custom audience of just your IG subscribers or people who’ve interacted with you on DM? Yes, you should be able to and a tool like ManyChat makes it really easy because every time someone becomes a subscriber on your ManyChat list, you can also add them to a custom audience. Okay. So in that case, really technically there is a sponsored message then for Instagram DMs,

45:24
That’s fair. Yeah. It’s, it’s a little bit more of an outbound method where you’re like, Hey, you know, DM us instead of being able to just send them a DM directly. But yes, there is a way to reengage, you know, people who have responded to in the past. like you said, it’s not the same. And to be honest, I feel like this model is probably not going to survive past the email channel as more and more messaging channels become available. But the idea that like your subscribers are free and that you’re paying for, messages to be sent out, if that makes sense.

45:53
So just, think the model of how you reach your list is shifting pretty drastically. Now that these messaging channels are available and they have to do like, you what makes sense for them, plus what makes sense for businesses to leverage their lists. Sure. And there’s no broadcast option to your IGDMs, right? Even if it’s for some of the rules with Messenger. Correct. There is no, so with Messenger, there are message tags, for example, which are just certain types of messages that you might send out. That Messenger lets you send outside of the 24 hour window.

46:22
Let’s say for example, you’re hosting a webinar. And so I imagine you’ve probably done this too, right? Is that there’s a tag called the confirmed event update tag. And so you can say, hey messenger, I wanna send this message to 500 people. It’s been maybe a few days since some people have interacted, but it’s a reminder about my upcoming webinar that they all confirmed they’re gonna be going to, or have said, they wanna get reminders about. So you can mark that message that you send out, that broadcast as a confirmed event update. And then from there, when people engage with that message,

46:51
or just click into a website, for example, from that message, then they will now be inside of the 24 hour window again. So there’s not those message tags right now on Instagram, but again, because they’re trying to blend the experience, I imagine that will be also one of the features that they add in the near future. cool. I know you have some cool announcements regarding IGDMs. Let us know what they are. Yeah, so with Instagram DM,

47:18
You know, we’re internally really excited about this because we’ve been waiting like five years for this. So, you know, we’ve had, we’ve had plans in the book for a while, but now it’s actually happening. So we do have a free training that can walk you through exactly how this all works, how some of the top IG accounts are using these features and really how you can generate revenue very quickly with this. uh, Steve, what I was thinking to do is I’ll share a URL that can be just for your audience.

47:44
and they can check out the free training there. We also have a paid course if you’re looking for just advanced training and to dive right in. But this is designed for not only let’s say marketers, but also business owners, influencers, even social media managers. Anybody who is managing an Instagram account can build with IGDM automation. I would say more easily than with Messenger because again, it’s a little bit simpler. So if you are any of those or just wanna create automation for your account, then I would highly recommend that you check out our trainings.

48:12
I can make that like school of bots.co forward slash my wife quit her job. that works to make it easy. Awesome. So yeah, go ahead and check that out. And you know, you’re always welcome to reach out to me as well. You can DM me on Instagram if you want, know, with any questions and I’m happy to point you to, know, helpful resource or an answer to your question. I will say that at least in the physical products realm, like Instagram is where it’s at. And there’s a bunch of students in the class that are getting most of their sales off of just organic Instagram.

48:40
And then just adding this will be a great way to just get contacts and even more sales through the platform. A hundred percent. Yes. So, well, Natasha, thanks a lot for coming on and I’m sure a lot of things are going to change in the next six months too. So I’m eager to hear, you know, all the cool things that are going to be going on.

48:57
Yeah, definitely. Like you said, I am happy to jump back on in six months and be like, woo, look at that. Everything that just happened. Like, let’s talk about it. You know, what does this really mean? What do you need to know? Because I imagine things are going to evolve and move very quickly. Uh, because again, I think that the value is more clear. Maybe the value proposition of DMing or DMing automating your DMS on Instagram versus maybe messenger where you have to drive more traffic. So would love to do that, but thank you so much for having me. Thanks everybody for tuning in. I hope this was insightful for you and.

49:27
you whether you’re going to act on this, which I would recommend immediately, or, you know, just know that this is going on. think this podcast actually did a great job of just giving an overview. thanks as always for being an awesome host, Steve. Appreciate it. mean, I think this is going to work a lot better than just the old messenger of marketing, to be honest with you, especially in the physical products realm. Yeah, I completely agree.

49:48
Hope you enjoy that episode. Now, as I mentioned earlier, if you are interested in DM automation, then go to the show notes for this episode and sign up for Natasha’s five day Instagram DM challenge that is happening next week. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequarterjob.com slash episode 367. And once again, I wanna thank Postscript, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base.

50:14
SMS is the next big own marketing platform and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash Steve. That’s P O S T S C R I P T dot I O slash Steve. I also want to thank Clavio, which is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandon card sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign. Basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifequitterjob.com slash K L A V I Y O.

50:40
Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash KLA V I Y O. Now I talk about how I these tools on my blog, and if you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.