Connecting your Instagram account is the hard part, and you have already done it. What follows is five automations, in the order to build them, with the keyword and the message text for each. The first one takes about ten minutes. All five take an afternoon, and they cover the questions your comments already ask.
Most accounts stall right here. The connection works, the dashboard is open, and nothing gets built because there is no obvious first move.
This is the first move. Build number one today and leave the other four for the week.
Key Takeaways
- Build in this order. Link delivery first, because it is the easiest to get right and the fastest to show a result.
- One keyword per automation. A single short word. Not a phrase, not a hashtag, not a sentence.
- Write the DM like a person. Answer the question they asked, give the link, stop.
- Test from a second account. An automation cannot message the account that owns it.
- Five is enough for a month. Do not build twelve. Build five, watch which one gets used, and expand that one.
- Expect the first result in days, not hours. These fire on your next post, not on the ones already published.
Before You Start: Two Rules That Save an Hour
Build the automation before you post. A comment triggers a reply inside a set window, and that window starts when the comment arrives. If you post first and build second, the early comments can fall outside it. Build, then post.
Test from a different Instagram account. An automation will never DM the account that owns it. If you comment your own keyword on your own post, nothing arrives, and it looks exactly like a broken setup. Use a second account, a friend’s phone, or your personal account. Why testing from your own account fails covers this in full, and it is the single most common thing new users hit on day one.
Automation 1: Send the Link People Keep Asking For
Start here. Sending a link is the job that works most reliably and the one that pays off fastest, because your comments are already full of people asking for it.
Pick the one link you get asked for most. Your shop, your latest product, your booking page, your newsletter, whatever it is.
Keyword: LINK
The message:
Here it is.
[name of the thing] is right here, and it takes about a minute to look at.
[Open it]
That is the whole automation. No greeting, no “thanks so much for commenting”, no paragraph about your journey. The person asked for a link. Give them the link.
What to expect: this one fires on your next post that mentions the thing. Put “comment LINK” in the caption’s first line, above the fold, so people see it without tapping more.
If you sell through a store or a digital product platform, selling digital products on Instagram covers how to structure the destination page so the click turns into something.
Automation 2: The Free Thing That Collects an Email
Second, because it is where the money is and it takes fifteen minutes longer than the first one.
Pick something you can give away that takes you no ongoing work: a checklist, a template, a short guide, a video, a swipe file. Put it behind a keyword, and turn on the Email Gate so the person types their email address in the DM before the link arrives.
Keyword: GUIDE
The message:
Happy to send it.
Drop your email below and the [name of the thing] comes straight back to you.
Then the link sends once they answer.
What to expect: a lower click rate than automation one, and a list you own. That trade is the point. Instagram decides who sees your posts. Nobody decides who sees your email. Collecting emails from Instagram DMs covers the Email Gate setup, and what to send those emails afterwards covers the part most people skip.
If you are unsure whether asking for the email costs you clicks, that question has an honest answer.
Automation 3: The Answer to Your Most Repeated Question
Look at your DMs from the last month. There is one question you have typed the answer to more than ten times. Price, shipping, whether you take clients, what camera you use, where the jacket is from.
That question is an automation.
Keyword: the noun in the question. PRICE. SIZING. CAMERA. BOOKING.
The message: the answer you already type, cleaned up once and reused forever.
Good question.
[The answer, in two sentences.]
[Link to the full details]
What to expect: this is the one that gives you your evening back. It will not go viral and it will not feel impressive. It removes twenty messages a week from your phone.
Automation 4: The Story Reply
Stories get replies that comments never do, because replying to a story is private and low-effort. Most creators let those sit unanswered for a day.
Set a keyword that matches how people actually reply to your stories. If you run polls or ask questions, people answer with a word. Catch that word.
Keyword: whatever word you asked for in the story. YES. ME. SEND.
The message:
Perfect, here you go.
[The thing]
[Open it]
What to expect: a shorter reply window than comments. A story reply gives you 24 hours, so this one has to be live before the story goes up, not after. Story reply automation covers the setup, and the reply windows covers the timing.
Automation 5: The One That Sends People Somewhere Specific
By now you have four automations that all send people to the same two or three places. The fifth one is for a single post or a single offer.
This is the launch pattern. One post, one keyword unique to it, one message that only makes sense for that post.
Keyword: the name of the thing. Short. WORKSHOP. AUGUST. RESTOCK.
The message: written for that offer, with the deadline in it if there is one.
This is the one from the post.
[What it is, one line. What it costs, one line. When it closes, one line.]
[Take a look]
What to expect: the highest response rate of the five, because the intent is specific. This is also the pattern you will reuse for every launch, every seasonal campaign and every restock from now on. The Instagram product launch playbook is the long version.
The Five, in One Table
| # | Keyword | What it sends | Build time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | LINK | Your main link | 10 minutes |
| 2 | GUIDE | A free thing, behind an email | 25 minutes |
| 3 | The question noun | The answer you keep typing | 15 minutes |
| 4 | Story word | Whatever the story offered | 15 minutes |
| 5 | Offer name | One specific offer | 20 minutes |
Picking Keywords That Do Not Miss
The keyword is where most first automations fail, and the failure is silent. The automation is live, the comment arrives, and nothing sends, because the word did not match.
Four rules:
- One word. People type on phones. “send me the link please” is not a keyword.
- No punctuation. No emoji, no exclamation marks, no hyphens.
- Not a word you use in normal captions. If you say “link in bio” every week, LINK will fire on conversations you did not mean to catch.
- Put it in the caption’s first line. People do not tap more. If the instruction is in line six, most readers never see it.
Keywords that convert has the longer list, and when a keyword matches the wrong comment covers the opposite problem.
What Instagram DM Automation Setup Looks Like in Week One
Day one, you build automation number one and post something that uses it. Day two or three, the first DMs go out and you see whether the message reads well on a phone, which is the only place it matters.
By day five you will know which of the five keywords people actually use. It is usually not the one you expected. Keep that one, rewrite the message for it, and let the other four run quietly.
Do not build twelve automations in week one. Twelve keywords on one account means twelve chances for the wrong one to fire, and no way to tell which is working. Five is enough to cover a month of posting.
When you are ready to expand, twelve ways to use CreatorFlow is the full menu, and DM campaign playbooks covers the multi-post patterns. For ready-made message text, DM automation templates and keyword trigger templates save you writing from blank.
FAQ
Which automation should I build first?
The link one. It takes ten minutes, it answers a question your comments already ask, and it gives you a result on your next post. Building the complicated one first is how people end up with nothing live.
How many automations should I have running?
Five is a good month one. Most accounts settle at three that do real work and a few that fire occasionally. More automations does not mean more results, it means more keywords competing for the same comments.
Do these fire on posts I published before I built them?
They fire on comments that arrive inside the reply window, which is seven days for a comment on a post or reel. Comments older than that are outside it. If you have a recent post full of missed comments, Rewind goes back through the previous seven days and sends to the people who were skipped.
Why did my test not send anything?
Almost certainly because you tested from the account that owns the automation. An automation cannot DM its own owner. Test from a second Instagram account and the same setup will work.
Can two automations use the same keyword?
Avoid it. If two live automations both watch for LINK, the result is unpredictable and you will not be able to tell which one sent what. Give each automation its own word.
What should the message actually say?
Answer the question that the comment asked, give the link, stop. The most common mistake is writing a paragraph of warmth before the thing the person wanted. They asked for a link at 11pm on a phone. Lead with it.
How long until I see a result?
Days. These fire on your next post, so the timeline is your posting schedule, not the tool. An account that posts three times a week will have a clear read inside a fortnight.
Product behaviour verified against CreatorFlow on 30 August 2026. Instagram reply windows reflect Meta’s Instagram Platform documentation as of August 2026: seven days for a private reply to a comment on a post or reel, 24 hours for story replies and message-triggered DMs.
