10 Best Instagram DM Drip Campaign Examples, Tips, and Tools

Of all the brand new Instagram growth tools to hit the market in 2021, the latest to be released is by far the most universally loved by marketers. So, are you ready to be one of the very first people to implement an automated Instagram DM drip campaign?

If so, you’ve come to the right place.

Today we’re going to cover six Instagram DM drip campaign examples, as well as four helpful tips and best practices to make the most of those campaigns:

1. Catch all auto-responder
2. Build your contact lists
3. Lead nurturing
4. Onboarding with educational messages
5. Contact list segmentation and retargeting campaigns
6. Upselling customers
7. Welcome new subscribers with a quick win
8. One CTA (call-to-action) maximum
9. Create urgency by setting a deadline
10. Speak to the “Lizard Brain”

Lastly, I’ll show you how to create your own drip campaigns using the world’s first direct message automation platform for Instagram.

Let’s get started with an example Instagram DM drip campaign that you can demo for yourself, right now!

#1. Best Instagram DM Drip Campaign Examples: Catch All Autoresponder

First, I want to demonstrate how an Instagram DM drip campaign works in real-time.

Head over to our Founder, Larry Kim’s Instagram page and click on the “Message” button.

Then, send Larry a direct message using the word “DRIP” to trigger an awesome demo drip campaign!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Larry Kim (@kim_larry)

So, what happens when you send Larry a DM with the word DRIP?

You’ll receive 5 Instagram DMs over the course of 5-minutes.

Included in the demo Instagram DM drip campaign is helpful information on how to create drip campaigns across all of your chat marketing channels. So, in addition to getting started with drip campaigns for your Instagram DMs, you’ll also receive helpful drip campaign tips and tricks for email, Facebook Messenger, SMS, and live chat on your website.

The way this particular Instagram drip campaign works is called a “catch-all auto-responder.” Meaning, every time a new lead enters your contact list, they get put through a welcome email drip campaign.

These campaigns not only provide education about your product or service but also set the stage for what’s coming next.

Welcome message campaigns are also incredibly useful when increasing engagement on Instagram for fresh leads in your funnel. 

According to Entrepreneur, open rates for welcome emails are 86% higher, and click-through rates (CTR) are 196% higher than bulk marketing emails!

Interested in setting up a welcome message Instagram DM drip campaign for your own page?

Skip to the end of this article, here. I’ll show you, step-by-step, how we created this exact drip campaign sequence.

#2. Best Instagram DM Examples: Build your Contact Lists

To capture lead data in one of your Instagram DM drip campaigns, we need to build a chatbot dialogue in Customers.ai.

For example, this could be asking prospects for their contact information. Or, even more specifically, if your business needs to collect information to put together an accurate quote for your services, you could create a dialogue that asks each of the questions you would normally ask to construct a proposal.

In the example below, we’re keeping it simple and just asking for the person’s name, favorite ice cream flavor, and whether you prefer monkeys or unicorns. However, you can just as easily capture emails, phone numbers, addresses, and more.

If you’ve never built a chatbot dialogue in Customers.ai, you may want to take a look at this article, regarding the Customers.ai chatbot builder, for additional context.

Now, to capture your desired lead data, you’ll need to use one of the many Customers.ai chat dialogue widgets where you can capture email and other valuable user attributes. In the image below, I’m using the Quick Question and Form widgets to capture those attributes.

You can find more than a dozen chat dialogue widgets available to you in Customers.ai if you click on the + Add widget button. You’ll find the most commonly used widgets (as in the above screenshot), but you can find all the chat dialogue widgets by then selecting the + More option.

In the screenshot below, I’ve used the Form widget to ask three quick, survey-type questions to capture a visitor’s name, favorite ice cream flavor, and their preference of monkey or unicorn.

Common Attributes such as Email and Phone Number already exist in Customers.ai.

To create a custom Attribute that you’d like to save as lead data (e.g. favorite ice cream flavor), all you need to do is click on + Add new attribute and give your unique Attribute a name (e.g. ICE_CREAM).

Keep in mind that you can use this same Instagram dialogue for web chat on any website page, Facebook Messenger, and SMS text messages using OmniChat® technology from Customers.ai.

#3. Best Instagram DM Drip Campaign Examples: Lead Nurturing 

You need to have a plan for your drip sequences. Think about what the goal of each sequence is and start from there.

You know the value of your business. But sometimes, your prospects need some convincing, or just aren’t ready to make an immediate purchase as soon as they learn about you. 

In fact, 50% of prospects are not ready to buy when you first interact with them. 

Consumers may need some time or education to realize how your business is the right fit for them. 

So, when new prospects, or leads, sign up for your DM list, you can trigger an Instagram drip campaign to nurture or influence them until they’re ready to make a purchase.

Use some of your messages to get people to follow you on your YouTube, TikTok, Facebook Group, Twitter, Email List, Facebook Page, Clubhouse, whatever. 

Drip campaigns are what make this possible, however. Why?

Because you can spread out your “asks” over a few days. This way, you’ll be more likely to get a response than if you send out all of your CTAs at once. Only a huge fan would take the time to follow you on every platform at once, so use drip sequences to nurture your leads down the funnel.

When creating an Instagram DM drip campaign for lead nurture, you should map out the flow of how to best show leads how your business can help them. For example:

1. Provide Value & Be Educational: Your first direct message in the campaign can provide helpful and educational content.
2. Social Proof: The second drip can be a great review from one of your best customers to demonstrate social proof.
3. Send a Promotional Offer: After you’ve caught a prospect’s attention, send a promotional message. For example, a special discount code.

Ultimately, you need to get people to take action. So, think about direct response marketing campaigns where you hit warm leads in your funnel with an offer. Then, work backward to build out the initial messages in your drip sequence.

Drip campaigns can migrate new relationships from leads to customers. And because nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases, sometimes the best things are worth the wait.

Lastly, if a prospect signs up for the thing you’re hoping to get them to sign up for, add them to a “converted” audience and remove them from the “lead nurturing” bucket.

#4. Best Instagram DM Examples: Onboarding with Educational Messages

Another way to keep customers engaged using Instagram DM drip campaigns is to offer them valuable, actionable, and original content related to your business.

Many brands accomplish this with educational content, such as online courses or workshops. This approach makes your business more credible and viewed as an expert in your industry.

Even better, use Customers.ai to allow your prospects to choose their own journey. Here’s an example of a welcome message one client is using on their Instagram page:

At the bottom of the welcome message, there’s a menu of options for the user to choose from. Each option leads the user down a different path in order to direct the user to the best possible landing page.

Using a chat menu is great because Instagram users who send your page a DM can ‘choose their own journey’ by selecting from multiple topics that pique their interest. Then, at the end of each chat menu option, add a link to send Instagram traffic to your website.

The next image is a good example of the dialogue that could follow when the user chooses the “ Personal Training” option:

As you can see, the choice triggers a response with a link to sign-up for a free training webinar.

With the Instagram Page Welcomer from Customers.ai, it’s incredibly easy to nurture people down your funnel, capture email addresses, phone numbers, and other important contact information.

Test it out for yourself on the Customers.ai Instagram page by clicking the Message button, then say ”Hello”.

Focusing on your onboarding has a dramatic effect on your business success.

An onboarding drip campaign is one of the ways that you can deliver a wonderful initial experience that we all wish to deliver.

#5. Best Instagram DM Examples: Contact List Segmentation and Retargeting Campaigns

All of your chat conversations from Instagram (and other messaging channels) can be found in the Customers.ai omnichannel inbox, along with contact data and useful information for marketing, sales, and customer support teams.

Use Customers.ai to capture, store, and build data-rich user profiles with actionable contact data and tools for segmenting your audience, such as tags, custom variables, and attributes.

This makes it easy to run targeted, personalized campaigns, such as retargeting ads across Instagram and Facebook and grow your retargeting audiences.

Additionally, all profile attributes and tags are searchable, including your custom tags.

Customers.ai’s OmniChat® messaging platform makes it easy to connect your Instagram account to Customers.ai and turn the Customers.ai inbox into a trackable, searchable, collaborative central hub for all your Instagram communications. 

From Customers.ai’s inbox, you have many tools at your disposal: 

• See everyone that has interacted with your Instagram bot over time.
• Review all chat dialogues and live agent conversations.
• Build rich-data customer profiles over time to provide great support and offer the right deals at the right time.  

And for those with super high message volume, Customers.ai makes sorting through your conversations and data easy with multiple custom filters.

Here are some tips and insights you can expect to gain from using Customers.ai:

• Product opportunities: Are people asking for things you don’t do? Use tags and add commonly asked for items to your product team lists.
• Missed opportunities: Are people asking about things you clearly offer? It’s possible your website is not communicating this well enough.
• Top 10 FAQs: What are visitors’ most common questions? Think about how you can use your chatbot and/or website to address these questions better.
• Customer support data: How well are your live agents performing? Evaluate sessions or conversations taking place as a result of your chatbot marketing campaigns.

#6. Best Instagram DM Drip Campaign Examples: Upsells 

If someone buys or signs up for something, put them in an audience, then send them a bunch of upsells. 

For example, start the drip sequence with a message like, “Thanks for registering for our course! Check out this [other course] on a [similar topic] offered by our partners next quarter.” 

The probability of selling to a new prospect is only 5 – 20%, while businesses have a 60 – 70% chance of selling to an existing customer.

This is why it’s a good idea to create an Instagram DM drip campaign to cross-sell and up-sell to your existing customers.

Once a customer makes their first purchase, you can create a trigger to add them to a direct message marketing campaign that offers complementary products or an upgrade to their existing one. 

Make sure these direct messages are informational and explain the benefits of adding products to or upgrading. 

This type of drip campaign allows your business the opportunity to grow your existing customers into more profitable long-term buyers.

Instagram DM Drip Campaign Tips & Best Practices

Now that you’re aware of some of the more popular Instagram DM drip campaigns you can run, let’s go over how to win over the hearts and minds of your Instagram followers.

Whether you’re building a drip sequence for email, Facebook Messenger, SMS, or Instagram, there are some best practices everyone should follow.

Here are four quick tips to help you convert drip campaign contacts into paying customers!

#7. Instagram Direct Message Tips: Welcome New Subscribers with a Quick Win

Every marketing and sales professional has been told how important it is to “provide value.”

However, the concept has been overused and often does not come attached with specifics. Of course, we need to provide value, but how? 

With your Instagram direct message marketing campaigns, it’s actually fairly simple.

Prime your Instagram DM subscribers to know that they’ll get value from every message you send.

As soon as someone subscribes to your list, share your best, most actionable tip. Think of something people can get a result from within 5-minutes of implementation.

For example, our audience has reached out to our Founder, Larry Kim, on numerous occasions asking how to get verified on Instagram. So, we could immediately share Larry’s real Instagram verification application in a drip sequence targeted towards Creators and Influencers.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Larry Kim (@kim_larry)

It might seem counterintuitive to give something away immediately for free, but first impressions are everything, right? 

Provide people with a win upfront and you can expect a favorable result in the end.

#8. Instagram Direct Message Tips: One CTA (Call-to-Action) Maximum 

Don’t confuse people or try to get people to take multiple actions at a time.

This is what makes drip campaigns so great in the first place!

Multiple small and useful messages with easily actionable CTAs over time helps to build trust. And ultimately, it increases the probability of converting strangers into advocates of your brand.

#9. Instagram Direct Message Tips: Create Urgency by Setting a Deadline

I’ll start by saying it would be a bad idea to do this for every message in your drip campaign.

However, when it comes to your CTAs, creating a sense of urgency by setting time limits is always going to increase your conversion metrics. 

Couple that sense of urgency with an exclusivity factor and you’re well on your way to boosting your numbers.

For example: “Digital Marketing Agencies Only! Sign-up by end of day today to receive your first 3 months free!“

#10. Instagram Direct Message Tips: Speak to the “Lizard Brain” 

The Lizard Brain is something we all have as a direct result of human evolution. It’s where your ‘fight or flight’ response comes from. 

So, technically you should be applying this technique to all of your marketing communications, but drip campaigns are a great place to remember what we know about human psychology.

The Lizard Brain is where much of our instinct as well as our raw emotion comes from, and there are 6 ways to speak to it when you’re marketing.

• Self-centered:Wants to hear about itself.
• Contrast: Understands things quickly in black and white, right or wrong.
• Tangibility: Impatient and gets to the point fast.
• Beginning and End: The middle doesn’t matter only what’s at the beginning and end.
• Visual stimuli: Bright and shiny objects grab and hold attention most.
• Emotion: Appeal to the emotive responses for the biggest reaction.

We’re all human, folks. Smart marketers learn quickly to take advantage of that.

Instagram DM Tools: How to Create an Instagram Drip Campaign with Customers.ai

Direct message drip campaigns for Instagram are completely new to the Instagram platform and are considered a “game-changer” by some of the world’s top digital marketers, such as Neil Patel and John Lee.

Essentially, every person that sends you a direct message on Instagram, based on what they do or say, can receive an automated drip series of follow-up messages over a specific time period of your choosing.

Note: Before getting started, make sure you connect Customers.ai to Instagram.

OR, if you’re not using Customers.ai, you can get access to cross-channel OmniChat® marketing tools right now.

Create a Free Customers.ai Account!

So, are you ready to build your first Instagram DM drip campaign? Let’s go!

Step #1: Campaigns > Drip Campaigns > Create Drip Campaigns

In Customers.ai, navigate to the Campaigns tab at the top of your dashboard.

From there, select Drip Campaigns from the menu on the left-hand side of the screen.

Then, select the blue + Create Drip Campaigns button in the middle of your screen.

Then, at the top of your newly created drip campaign, give your campaign a name and then specify Instagram as the platform you wish to use by placing a checkmark in the box next to “Instagram”.

As you can see in the screenshot above, I’ve given this drip campaign the name “Instagram Drip Campaign Demo.”

Step #2: Select your Drip Campaign Audience

Next, we need to choose an audience to receive your drip campaign.

For this example, I’ve chosen a custom audience, however, to get started we suggest that you use the “All Contacts” option, which means your drip campaign will be sent to everyone who sends you a private Instagram DM for the first time.

However, it’s important to note that you can create custom audiences and Tags to build as many audience segments as you want. This means you can build drip campaigns that will only be sent to people who meet specific conditions.

For example, you could trigger a drip campaign based on how someone has responded to your Instagram bot‘s question, or you could even trigger a drip campaign by a keyword, such as Larry’s drip campaign example, where if you DM Larry with the word “DRIP”, you’ll receive 5 DM’s from Larry with useful information on how to get started with Instagram DM automation and drip campaigns.

Whenever a contact enters your particular audience, they’ll immediately be entered into your campaign and sent the first message of your drip sequence.

Step #3: Choose the Time Between DM Drips and Create your Dialogue

Next, you need to decide how long in between the time someone entered into your drip campaign it will take for them to receive each of your direct messages on Instagram.

In Customers.ai, you can select from Minutes, Hours, Days, Weeks, or even Months between each message. 

In my example below, I’ve chosen just 5 minutes in order to demo this feature. 

However, most drip campaigns usually last over the course of a week or so, with a couple days in between each message.

You can add as many drip campaign dialogues as you wish by clicking on the + Add another Drip Campaign Dialogue button.

Step #4: Add Conversational Chat Widgets (Optional)

Let’s add a conversation widget to the campaign. There are over a dozen chat widgets to choose from, and you can tell which chat widgets are Instagram compatible by looking for the Instagram logo.

I’m going to use the Quick Question widget in this example.

The Quick Question widget is extremely useful because you can guide chat conversations by providing buttons with multiple choice answers. 

This is called a menu-based chatbot, which is an effective tool to direct Instagram traffic to the best possible landing page on your site.

As you can see, I’ve provided three different answers for the person to choose from. Each answer can then link to its own unique chat dialogue and CTA (call to action).

You can skip this step for now and only use Text widgets if you like, however, it’s important for you to know that these chat widgets are available for you to supercharge your Instagram direct message marketing campaigns.

Step #5: Review and Set your Instagram DM Drip Campaign Live

When your Instagram drip campaign is ready to go, all you have to do is hit the Start button to set it live.

Want to start using Instagram Tools right away? 

To get started with Instagram bot automation tools, check out InstaChamp (Customers.ai for Instagram) and all its features, here.
Then, here are 15 Instagram Auto-DM use cases for you to get started with!

✅ Get early access to Instagram messaging tools for free!