Comment-to-DM for agencies: how to sell it as a service

Open almost any client's latest post and scroll the comments. There is a "how much?", a "link?", a "do you have Saturday?", and most of them were answered hours later or not at all. That gap is the easiest pitch an agency will ever make.

Comment-to-DM closes it: the person who comments a keyword gets a useful DM within seconds, and the client gets a list of warm leads. This article covers how to turn that into a service you can sell, run and report on, without overpromising.

In short:

• Sell setup plus monthly management, not "we installed a tool".
• The real value is the strategy: keywords, the first DM, public replies, testing, and switching offers on and off.
• Put in writing who handles complaints, custom questions and sales talks.
• Check your capacity (channels, seats, active contacts) before you sign the client.

Why it fits next to what you already do

Your clients already post, and they already get the same questions under every post. You do not have to convince them comments matter; they can see the unanswered ones themselves.

If you plan their content, you are already deciding what each post asks of the viewer. Adding "comment GUIDE and we'll send it" to that plan, and building what happens next, is a natural extension of the job.

What the client is actually buying

The setup

• Connecting the client's Instagram professional account or Facebook Page through Meta's own login. Nobody, including your team, needs their password.
• Gathering the ten questions they answer most often.
• Choosing a keyword per offer, writing the first DM and four or five public replies in the client's voice.
• Adding tags, so each lead is labelled by what they asked for.
• Testing every flow from a second account before launch.

Monthly management

• New flows for new posts, launches and seasonal offers.
• Pausing or rewriting flows when an offer ends.
• Reworking keywords and DMs that get comments but no replies.
• Checking the shared inbox for conversations that need a decision and passing them to the client.

What you are not selling

Guaranteed sales or reach. The automation gets a good offer in front of interested people faster. It cannot rescue an offer nobody wants, and promising that it will is how agencies lose clients.

Packaging and pricing

Price it like your other services. A simple structure:

1. Setup fee: account connection, the first two or three flows, testing.
2. Monthly management: scaled by the number of campaigns or flows you run each month.
3. Content add-on: if you design the posts too, the keyword goes into the creative from the start.

Keep the tiers simple enough that the client can tell them apart in one sentence each.

Onboarding a new client in six steps

1. Confirm the Instagram account is a business or creator account, or that you are working with a Facebook Page.
2. Connect it through Meta's login together with the client, and show them where access can be removed in their Meta settings. It builds trust on day one. Is Instagram DM automation safe? is a good link to send them beforehand.
3. Collect their most common questions from comments and DMs.
4. Choose one post that already gets one of those questions.
5. Write the keyword, the first DM and the public replies in their voice, and get written approval.
6. Test from a second account, then go live.

Copy-paste setup: a dental clinic campaign

Here is a complete flow you could hand a client for sign-off.

• Caption, line one: "Free whitening consultations in November. Comment SMILE and we'll DM you the dates."
• Trigger: comment keyword SMILE, on this post only.
• First DM: "Hey {{first_name}}, consultations run every Tuesday and Thursday in November and take 20 minutes. Pick a time here: https://clinic-site.com/smile. Is this for you or for someone in your family?"
• Public reply variants: "Sent, check your DMs", "The dates are in your inbox {{username}}", "Just messaged you", "Check your message requests".
• Tag: smile-november.
• Handover rule: any reply about pain, insurance or treatment plans goes to the clinic's front desk the same day.

On Instagram comment DMs the name is not shared, so the greeting reads "Hey there". Note the DM sounds like the clinic, not like an agency: writing in the client's voice is part of what they pay for. For the replies under the comment, see what to write in a public comment reply.

Who answers what

Most agency and client disputes start here, so agree on it before launch and write it on one page:

When a complaint arrives in the DMs on a Saturday, nobody should be guessing whose job it is.

Capacity: how many clients can you take on?

Three numbers decide it: channels, seats and active contacts. A client with Instagram and a Facebook Page uses two channels. Everyone on your team who builds flows or reads the inbox needs a seat. And each person your flows talk to in a month counts as an active contact.

In Chat33, Pro covers 20 channels, 5 seats and 5,000 active contacts a month, with a Business plan above it; the pricing page has the current limits for every plan. There is no white label and no built-in client reporting, so your branding and your reports stay in your own templates. The agencies page covers how teams use it.

What to report each month

One page per client is enough:

• Triggers per keyword flow (how many people commented the word)
• DMs sent
• Link clicks, which Chat33 tracks per flow
• Replies you saw in the inbox
• Bookings or sales the client confirms on their side

Add one line per flow on what you will change next month. How to measure comment-to-DM goes deeper on which numbers matter. If the client runs a CRM, a webhook can pass each lead to it, as shown in sending DM leads to a CRM.

A personal note: getting Chat33 approved as a Meta Tech Provider took me about ten months of App Review. It is worth telling clients that the tool you use went through that, because "is this safe for my account?" is usually their first question.

Instagram comment-to-DM in Chat33

Keyword triggers, rotating public replies, tags, tracked links and one inbox for Instagram and Facebook.

FAQ

Do I need the client's Instagram password?

No. The client logs in through Meta's own screen and grants access, and they can remove it from their Meta settings at any time. If a tool asks for a password, do not use it for client accounts.

Can I white-label Chat33 for clients?

No, Chat33 has no white label or client-facing reports. Agencies run the flows and the inbox, and send their own branded reports built from the per-flow numbers.

How many flows should a new client start with?

Two or three, tied to posts that already get repeated questions. Once those run cleanly, add flows for launches and seasonal offers in the monthly management.

Can the automation follow up with people who did not reply?

No. It answers when someone comments or messages. Following up with people who went quiet is a manual job, so put it in the handover page.