What are the pros and cons of using Manychat on your Instagram account?

Implement Manychat on your account and you’ll be able to use your posts, reels, lives, stories, story mentions, emoji reactions, direct DMs and the Reveal sticker as triggers for your automations. That’s a lot right?!

When you get comments on your Instagram content (engagement), and the chat flows are triggered, that interaction sends positive signals to the algorithm (more reach).

Instagram wants on-platform engagement – and Manychat amplifies this. Boom!

How much time are you spending in the DMs? Maybe you’re thanking customers for tagging your product in their unboxing video. Or maybe you’re knee-deep answering questions that get asked time and time again.

Or maybe, quelle horreur, you get so many DMs that you just ignore most of them…eek!

Set up simple automations, such as the Story Mention reply, or a FAQ flow and Manychat will do the heavy lifting for you – overwhelm be gone!

Best way to build rapport in the DMs? Use the flow to ask the user their name.

Even if you’re only using Manychat to send people from a post/reel to a website link (beginner level 101) use the first couple of message nodes to ask their name. (FYI there’s a template for this simple flow in my Chat Funnels Starter Kit, which you can grab for free here).

This can then be saved in the system field and the chat flow (and future automations) can continue on a much more personalised level. No more ‘Hi there’, or ‘hey, you’!

Ooft… link in bio. Now there’s an outdated tactic that adds huge friction to the customer journey and just doesn’t convert.

Just think how much work a user needs to do to actually get to your link in bio, find the right link AND take action on it. It’s a LOT. And we don’t like to work hard. 

So, Manychat makes it easy. Commenting one word, on a story, post, reel or via DM, for example, is sooo much easier AND keeping the conversation on-platform also means… (see point 5)

FYI: You could also use the chatflow to actually register the user for your guide / checklist / webinar too. Slightly more indepth to set up, but has a higher conversion rate than just sending them to a link.

When you send people to a website landing page, and they don’t take your intended action (normally to sign up for something) for whatever reason, invariably you can’t get them to return to that landing page unless you serve them a Facebook ad, or they remember to return themselves. 

With Manychat, you have 24hrs to send them more messages. So if they get interrupted during the chat flow, or they click away, you can send them further messages at pre-timed intervals to encourage and remind them to sign up. Average conversion rates for chat flows are about 60% (mine are nearer 80%, on average) – I’m thinking this is likely to be higher than your average landing page conversion rate – ammiriight??

But what if they really don’t want to sign up for your masterclass, or they’ve changed their mind about booking a call with you?

Don’t just end the conversation there – pivot them to something else. Another lead magnet maybe, or a masterclass with a different theme? Or a sweet little discount code for a new product range?

With Manychat the ability to pivot that conversation is super powerful – invariably you’ll still get their email address to build your list, and they’ll still get ‘something’ from you, even if it’s not the original ‘thing’ they thought they wanted.

Bots, chatbots – sadly this word has been unfairly stigmatised as being ‘bad’ – synonymous with annoying, spammy behaviour that plagues our social channels. For this very reason, I tend to refer to my builds as chat flows or chat funnels instead. And Manychat isn’t spammy. Because it can’t be.

You see, when you implement Manychat on your account, you’re bound by Meta compliance – as is anything that runs on Meta’s platforms or through its API. 

Your chat flows will only be triggered when a user comments your keyword, or has an interaction with your account. By taking these actions they are giving you ‘permission’ to make contact with them.

Bots, chatbots – sadly this word has been unfairly stigmatised as being ‘bad’ – synonymous with annoying, spammy behaviour that plagues our social channels. For this very reason, I tend to refer to my builds as chat flows or chat funnels instead. And Manychat isn’t spammy. Because it can’t be.

You see, when you implement Manychat on your account, you’re bound by Meta compliance – as is anything that runs on Meta’s platforms or through its API. 

Your chat flows will only be triggered when a user comments your keyword, or has an interaction with your account. By taking these actions they are giving you ‘permission’ to make contact with them.

Ok, so this one needs its own section – the middle ground if you like. And whether you see it as a pro or a con, is a matter of your own opinion!

For me.. This sits predominantly in the Pro section, but let’s explore a little further.

What is it exactly? This is Meta compliance – you know those rules that we are bound by when connecting into the Meta API? Yep – that.

In short, it means that once a user has opted into your chat flow, you have 24 hours in which to send them as many automated messages as you like.

Should you bombard them with every automation you’ve got going? Nope. Bad move. A huge turn-off that will make your users run for the hills – and not exactly strategic marketing either.

But a follow-up message to see if they have any questions after downloading your lead magnet, or a re-engagement message to bring them back into the flow to take your intended action (see point 5 above) yep, these are all totally strategic and viable within that 24-hour window.

So what happens once 24 hours has passed and that window of opportunity has ended? Well, you can’t send them any automated messages unless they opt in again ie, they interact with your account via a keyword or action (permission-based marketing, see point 7 above).

So why is this also a con?

I frequently get asked ‘what’s the point of paying for my Manychat contacts if I can’t contact them beyond 24 hours?’

And it’s a valid question. Here’s my answer:

The primary objective of using chat funnels is to personalise, entertain – and build your email list. Your email list is where you should continue to nurture them.

The 24-hour rule exists to protect the user – and it’s up to the brand to build flows that are strategic and timely. If it didn’t exist there would be some more ‘unscrupulous’ accounts that would send out blanket automations to all their users – and this would be spammy. This is what Meta doesn’t want – it’s a poor user experience.

You can set rules to unsubscribe users after a certain amount of time – and it’s always good practice to clean down your Manychat users once in a while to ensure you’re not paying for customers you can’t message. Just in the same way that you clean your email list.

(If you’re a longer-term Manychat user on IG, you may have access to the IG DM List function, in which case, use your flows to get people to opt-in to a DM list which then enables you to send one message every 24hrs – but use it strategically! If you’re new to Manychat on IG, this feature is currently on hold with Meta. It is expected to return.)

So what are the other ‘cons’? In my opinion there are only two.

There’s no doubt that to use Manychat strategically, you need to know how to build chat flows that deliver strategic sales messages, gather names and emails and ping that information over to your CRM. It’s a learning curve and not one to be rushed. Winging it is not advised!

By far the easiest way to get started is by testing the waters with a simple flow that’s triggered by a comment on a post/reel that then delivers a website link in the DMs. Beginner level 101 (Don’t forget to grab your FREE access to the IG Chat Funnels Starter Kit for the template). 

BUT as you’re then sending people off-platform, this isn’t the most strategic. The more you can keep them on-platform the better – and this means learning how to build – or outsourcing that build (both of which I can help you with!). Shimmy on over here to find out more.