Social performance and sales performance were two different conversations. A post would do well, the comments would fill up with people asking where to buy, and the trail ended there. Every one of those comments was somebody raising their hand in public, and the only follow-up available was replying to each one by hand.
The setup
What is running today
Live channels: Instagram, WhatsApp, Client portal. The figures at the top of this page are read directly from the account rather than estimated, and describe the setup rather than a claimed outcome.
The problem
Social performance and sales performance were two different conversations. A post would do well, the comments would fill up with people asking where to buy, and the trail ended there. Every one of those comments was somebody raising their hand in public, and the only follow-up available was replying to each one by hand.
What changed
The rollout
Stage one
Capture the comment
Comment triggers on product posts open a DM with what the person asked for. The public comment gets a reply too, which tells everyone else scrolling that the mechanism works.
Stage two
Move the thread to WhatsApp
Instagram is where the attention is; WhatsApp is where a buying conversation can carry a catalogue, an order status and a follow-up. The DM offers the move rather than forcing it.
Stage three
Build out the journeys behind it
With traffic arriving, the flows behind it grew: product enquiries, availability, order questions, each as its own journey rather than one long menu.
What is live
- Comment and story-reply triggers on Instagram
- DM delivery that leads with what the person asked for
- A route from Instagram into WhatsApp for anything that needs a longer conversation
- A client portal alongside the messaging channels
Why not keep the whole conversation on Instagram
Instagram is superb at attention and poor at continuity. A buying conversation that spans a day, an order and a delivery question needs a channel a customer will return to, and one where the history is still there when they do.
Questions this raises
Only when it over-sends. One DM that delivers what was asked for, one public reply, and then silence until the person responds. The failure mode is the follow-up sequence, not the first message.
Sends are queued and paced. A flow that tries to DM everyone at once gets throttled, and the people at the back of the queue get their answer an hour late, which is the same as not getting it.
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