Auto Reply to Instagram DM Messages (Simple + AI Method)

In this tutorial, I will break down how you can automatically reply to Instagram DMs. Basically, we will create our own Instagram Auto Reply Bot.

I will show you the easy way, so how to auto-reply to certain words.

And I’ll explain how to auto-reply using AI. We will train it on your data, like your website or documents of your business.

You will get the template for FREE, so you can just copy and paste it.

Let’s dive in!

What is an Instagram DM Bot?

An Instagram DM bot is a program that automatically replies to DMs and comments on Instagram.

Here’s what it can do:

• Automatically send DMs to those who comment on your post
• Answers questions about your business
• Inform followers of new products or deals

Why use an Instagram Auto Reply Bot?

Instagram has 2 billion monthly, and 500 million daily active users.

And let’s face it.

Manually replying to messages in your Instagram DM takes a lot of time, and often feels like it never ends.

Followers are replying to stories, messaging you with questions, want to know more about your products, have partnerships, and so on.

Basically: You are being bombarded by messages.

And within this pile of messages, it’s easy to miss the important ones (such as questions about your products).

If that happens, you can potentially lose customers, which will go directly to your competitors.

That’s where Instagram Auto-Replies come in.

By using an Instagram auto reply bot, you can:

• Reply immediately to messages in your Instagram DM
• Send messages 24/7, even when your business is offline
• Filter between standard questions (which you can auto-reply to) and custom questions (handled by humans)

You can even use the Instagram reply bot for multiple purposes:

• Customer Support > Auto Reply to standard questions
• Marketing > Deliver Free Lead Magnets inside your Instagram DM
• Sales > Run Giveaway Campaigns

And there’s much more that you can do with it.

So let’s see how this Instagram DM bot looks inside Instagram.

Instagram Auto Reply Message Example

Before I show you how you can set this up yourself, I will show you a simple example of an Instagram Auto-Reply message:

If someone types in something related to guides to my Instagram account, they instantly get a message back if they want to get a free ebook.

And if they want to get it, they can get it directly inside my Instagram DM. This chat automation will always reply, even when I’m sleeping and my business is offline.

That’s what an Instagram DM bot can do. If you want to set this up for your own Instagram account, then follow the rest of this tutorial!

How to Create Instagram Auto Reply Bot for Free

Creating an Instagram DM bot is super simple. Here’s how you can do it in 3 steps:

1. Create a Free Manychat Account and connect it to Instagram
2. Set Up the Auto Reply Trigger in Manychat
3. Add the content to the Instagram DM Automation

Step 1: Create a Free Manychat Account and connect it to Instagram

The first step when making an Instagram DM bot is to create your Manychat account, which is one of the best Instagram bot platforms.

I have used Manychat for the last 5 years for almost all of our clients because it is:

• Easy to use, you can get started without any chat automation experience
• 100% Meta-Approved, so you can use them without the risk of getting banned
• Cheap, they offer a free plan and their paid plan already starts at $15/month

So you can just click on the button below to create your free Manychat account (and get my 100% discount code):

Here, you can click on Get Started Free:

Choose Instagram and then log in with your Instagram account:

I have a separate video that explains all the steps you need to take to connect your Instagram account to Manychat. There are some settings you need to check, so I highly recommend looking at this as well:

How To Connect Instagram Account to Manychat

Step 2: Set Up the Auto Reply Trigger in Manychat

Once you are logged in to Manychat and connected your Instagram account, we can create our Instagram automation.

So let’s say, someone asks a question about the return policy of the business. Then we can automatically reply to that message.

To start making your Instagram auto reply bot in Manychat, go to Automation and click on New Automation:

Each Manychat automation starts with a trigger. The trigger is the event that starts the automation.

In our case, we want to start this automation when a user asks a question about the return policy.

To do that, we can click on New Trigger:

Choose Instagram and then click on User sends a message with a Keyword:

Set it to Message contains return and add a Message Condition:

And set the Message Condition to message contains policy, so it looks like this:

Then, click on Create. Now, this automation will start when someone sends a message with both return and policy in it.

Step 3: Add the content to the Instagram DM Automation

After we’ve created the trigger, we can start with creating the contents of the Instagram Automation.

As a first step, you can add an Instagram Message:

Then we can answer the user’s question:

At EcommerceBizz you always have the option of returning your order within 14 days after delivery. Make sure that the products have not been worn and have all tags attached when they are returned.

After you answered the question, you always want to ensure a good customer experience. So you want to verify that you actually answered their question.

We can add a next message and ask: Did I answer your question?

And add two quick replies to that message:

Quick replies on Instagram are buttons that appear below your message where users can click on.

So if someone clicks on the Yes button, we can just thank them.

And if they click on the No button, we can connect them with one of our support agents that can answer the question for them:

Manychat also has a built-in live chat, which is great. You can just forward a conversation to a human agent that can answer any question your customer has.

To forward a conversation to a human agent, we need to add the Actions element to our flow:

Within this Actions element, we need to add three actions.

So you can just click on + Action, select Live Chat and then click on Mark conversation as Open:

In Manychat, you have two conversation types

1. Closed conversations, conversations handled by the chatbot
2. Open conversations, conversations handled by your agents

By setting the conversation as open, it will be handled by your agents.

The next action we will add is called the Assign Conversation. With this action, we can assign the conversation to a specific member or a group of team members.

So you can just add another action, select Live Chat and click on Assign Conversation:

And select the team member you want to assign the conversation to:

And lastly, we will notify the person that is assigned to this conversation.

Just add another action, choose Livechat and click on Notify Assignees:

Now, your final Instagram automation should look like this:

And that’s it. Now you can just hit Set Live in the upper-right corner and your Instagram auto reply bot is working.

How to Auto Reply to Instagram DM using AI

The next step is to set up Instagram AI responses. We will train AI on your data, such as your website or documents of your business. Then, the AI can automatically reply to questions based on that.

And Manychat’s built-in AI tools aren’t that good, so that’s why we will use Chatbase.

Chatbase is an AI tool that you can train on your own data, such as your website and documents.

Just click the button below to create your Free Chatbase account:

Create Free Chatbase Account

In Chatbase, I created a new chatbot. It is trained on a knowledge base of documents about an eCommerce business:

And in the dashboard of Chatbase, I can also ask questions about this document, such as:

• What are your warranty conditions?
• How can I track my order?

So what we need to do now, is that every time someone asks a question in Instagram, we need to send the question to Chatbase.

Then, Chatbase gives the answer and we are going to send back that answer to Manychat.

And to do this, we will use Make. Make is an integration platform you can use to connect two applications without any code. And in this case, we use it to connect Manychat to Chatbase.

Just click on the button below to get 30 days Make Pro for Free:

Get 30 Days Make Pro for Free

And I actually created a step-by-step tutorial on how you can create this integration in another video:

How To Create a Custom AI Chatbot with Manychat (Free Template)

In this tutorial, we will just use this integration, and I will explain it in general.

Let’s create it in Manychat!

In Manychat, you should go to Settings and click on Instagram:

Here, you will find the Default Reply. The Default Reply in Manychat is the automation that will be triggered if no other automation is triggered.

So you need to click on Select Existing and select the Default Reply automation that is part of my free template (that you can download below). This is what it looks like:

There are a few things important in this automation. First of all, you need to set the trigger to Every time, so it will trigger every time a user asks a question:

Also, I skip story replies, because these replies are often not related to customer support.

Next, we are saving the Last Text Input to a custom field in Manychat (that I called “Chatbase – Question”).

And lastly, we are triggering the Make integration, which sends the question from Manychat to Chatbase.

So here’s what that integration in Make looks like:

And it works in 4 simple steps:

1. The scenario starts when we send the data from Manychat
2. Then, we send a request to Chatbase (containing the question from Manychat)
3. Once we get the answer from Make, we update a custom field in Manychat with the answer of Chatbase (called “Chatbase – Answer”)
4. And then we send a Manychat automation, that contains the answer from Chatbase

The Manychat flow that we send is called “Chatbase – Answer” (in my template) and looks like this:

In this automation, we give the answer from Chatbase and ask if it answered the question of the user.

And if it didn’t answer the question, it will send the conversation to a human agent (like we did before).

Now, you only have to click on Set Live for your Default Reply and for the “Chatbase – Answer” flow and it is working!

Free Auto Reply to Instagram DM Template

So that’s how you automatically reply to Instagram Messages with an Instagram auto reply bot!

If you want to get started quickly, just fill in the form below and you will get direct access to my FREE template 👇