When someone comments on your posts or reels, you can automatically send them a DM in an Automation Scenario. However, this comes with limitations:
You must send this Private DM reply in the 7 days after the comment was made (24 hours for comments on Live videos)
You can only send 1 DM (or any type of message: videos, audios, conversion link, etc.) and then you have to wait for the contact to accept your request or reply to your DM before sending more.
These limitations were created by Instagram to prevent spamming which would lead to lower open rates and engagement rates overall. However, they can be handled with some automation features.
How we handle these limitations
If you create an Automation Scenario with a Comment trigger and you try sending multiple messages, we send the first one normally and also try sending the second one.
This is because contacts that you already interacted with before of who follow you can receive multiple messages automatically.
However, if the second message is blocked by Instagram, we mark the contact as Requested and automatically retry after a few hours. We do this several times for a period of 24 hours after which the contact is marked as Inactive.
If at any point, the contact replies or the second message goes through, they are marked as Active.
You can learn more about the different contact statuses in this article.
How you can increase open rates
The best way for contacts to accept more messages is for them to reply to your initial message.
This is why we strongly encourage you to start your Automation Scenarios with a question. E.g. can I send you more information?.
You can use the Ask a question action or a combination or Message + Wait for reply to make sure you wait until the contact replies to send them the rest of your messages.
This is also a great way to make your automations more engaging and interactive and it leads to better user engagement!