How to: Grow your email list on autopilot
We've said it before and we'll say it again….and again. You don’t own your Instagram followers. Instagram does.
One algorithm change, one account issue, one bad day for Meta or god forbid you get hacked and the audience you've spent years building can disappear overnight.
Your email list though? That's yours and no one can take it from you.
If you run an ecommerce brand and you're putting serious effort into growing your Instagram but not doing anything to move those followers onto your email list, you're missing a serious trick.
Want some good news? There's a dead simple way to fix this and once it's set up, it runs on autopilot.
TL;DR
ManyChat now lets you auto DM every new Instagram follower the moment they hit follow.
Depending on the country you operate in, you can offer them a discount, capture their email inside the DM and send them straight to your welcome flow.
Setup takes less than five mins. Then it runs 24/7 without you lifting a finger.
Most eComm brands are doing nothing with their Instagram attention
We chat to a lot of 7 and 8 figure ecomm brands and this topic comes up constantly.
They've put real time, effort and money into growing their socials and fair enough, the followings are impressive. But, when we look at what's actually happening with that attention? Not much.
More followers is great. More owned contacts? The ultimate goal.
List growth is one of the biggest factors in how much revenue your email channel actually generates. More subscribers means more people entering your welcome flow, more people receiving campaigns and more people you can retarget when you've got something to sell.
If your list isn't growing, your email revenue has a ceiling.
When someone follows your brand on Instagram, that's high intent. They've seen something they liked enough to stop scrolling and hit follow.
So how does this actually work?
The tech stack here is ManyChat + Klaviyo.
ManyChat handles the Instagram DM automation and Klaviyo handles your list and welcome flow. Connect the two, build a short DM sequence and you're all set.
This is what that experience looks like from the customer side.
- Someone follows your IG account
- Thirty seconds later they get a DM
- The DM offers something worth acting on (a discount, freebie, early access etc)
- They engage, drop their email in the chat and get automatically added to your Klaviyo list
It really is that simple. No links, no landing pages. Just an email captured inside a conversation they're already in.
The automation is only as good as the message
Having this automation set up is great but sending a robotic, generic, obvious AI opening DM? You can bet your message will get ghosted.
The DM needs to feel like a welcome sent by an actual human, easy to respond to and actually worth their time.
Get that right and this becomes one of the most consistent list growth tools available to ecomm brands right now.
Be human, write in your brand’s TOV and make the offer worth acting on. That’s genuinely all it takes.
Growing on Instagram and not growing your list? We need to talk
We work with ecomm brands every day who’re sitting on a goldmine of Instagram attention and not converting any of it into ther own owned audience.
That's exactly what we're here for.
Whether you need help setting this ManyChat flow up, want us to audit your entire email and list growth strategy or you're not sure where to start, we'll tell you what's working, what isn't and what to do about it.