Screaming into the void - Cold DM outreach

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Domel4

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I feel like I'm screaming into the void - I'm doing IG Cold DM Outreach in my niche and I barely get any responses, is that normal?

I set up my account as Business one, added a few posts (2/3 a day), I follow all people before I text them then try to engage in their profile so I like a couple of their posts, add a comment, like the story if they have any, then I try 5 or 6 different scripts - sometimes I will start with a question relating to their business or a short message personalized about their profile or more like "ad-type" of DM. I try to rotate every 10/15 messages.

I'm doing 20/30 messages a day to stay under the SPAM/shadowban radar, but the reality is that every 1 out of 35/40 will even see my message and 1 every 80/85 will respond.

What am I doing wrong? I assume I end up in their requests instead of main DM, but no idea if that's a deal breaker.

Is this even working anymore? Maybe I should switch to e-mails?
 
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On Instagram, it’s not really about message quality. Cold DMs from non-followers usually land in the Requests tab no matter what. It’s a platform thing, not a copy issue. That’s likely why you’re not getting replies.
 
Domel4 said:
I feel like I'm screaming into the void - I'm doing IG Cold DM Outreach in my niche and I barely get any responses, is that normal?
Click to expand...
How many Cold DMs you send in a day?
Have you tried different variations of the DMs? Or you just send 1 copy?

Edit - I got the answers for the above but to answer you in general, you get 2-3 replies for every 50-60 DMs sent if the niche, content on the page and script is good, my suggestion is use a tracking sheet for future optimisations and track which DM Script got how many replies.
 
First of all, thank you for your replies!

Well, I must admit that I'm slowly getting discouraged with this whole IG thing.... it's perfect for my niche, to give you more details - I have a product for Interior Designers, and all Interior Designers have an IG profile given it's like a perfect platform for them (visuals first, in opposite to like x.com where I think I wouldn't find anyone from this field).
xGod said:
On Instagram, it’s not really about message quality. Cold DMs from non-followers usually land in the Requests tab no matter what. It’s a platform thing, not a copy issue. That’s likely why you’re not getting replies.
Click to expand...
So should I drop it? Is there any "hack" to get to DMs?

Manual Growth said:
How many Cold DMs you send in a day?
Have you tried different variations of the DMs? Or you just send 1 copy?

Edit - I got the answers for the above but to answer you in general, you get 2-3 replies for every 50-60 DMs sent if the niche, content on the page and script is good, my suggestion is use a tracking sheet for future optimisations and track which DM Script got how many replies.
Click to expand...
I started doing that, but it looks totally random, as an example I would get the response from someone that I haven't interacted with in any way (like no prior likes, comments etc) while I get nothing from people that even liked my comments!

I was reading all these stories about people that created $xxx business using the right niche on IG and I knew most of it was fake, but it seems impossible for me right now...

What do I do? Any tools that can help? Paying for Ads or like agency to do this for me?
 
Domel4 said:
What do I do? Any tools that can help? Paying for Ads or like agency to do this for me?
Click to expand...
What is your niche? Can you DM me your page so I will have a look and suggest you something
 
Manual Growth said:
What is your niche? Can you DM me your page so I will have a look and suggest you something
Click to expand...
Interior Designer & Architects! I'm new to the forum and feel stupid but how the hell do you send a DM here? :D I think it may be some kind of limitation of new users, can you ping me and then maybe I will be able to reply?
 
Cold DMs were stopped and sent to the request folder like a year and a half ago to stop this behaviour, it doesn't work I don't care what anybody says. I tested thousands and the amount seen was less than 1%
 
befiveanati said:
Cold DMs were stopped and sent to the request folder like a year and a half ago to stop this behaviour, it doesn't work I don't care what anybody says. I tested thousands and the amount seen was less than 1%
Click to expand...
It isnt stopped, it goes to requests not inbox. It works if you know how to do it properly, but ofcourse it shouldn't be your primary source to reach out, it should be secondary or optional. How it works depends on your Niche, how presentable your account is and what type of DMs you send.
 
Cold DM is terrible imo. Sure, you can optimize like you can with anything but there are much better alternatives
 
Manual Growth said:
It isnt stopped, it goes to requests not inbox. It works if you know how to do it properly, but ofcourse it shouldn't be your primary source to reach out, it should be secondary or optional. How it works depends on your Niche, how presentable your account is and what type of DMs you send.
Click to expand...

stopped from inbox to requests

nothing to do with "if you know how to do it properly" if you cold DM it goes to requests, there is nothing you can do to change the outcome unless they follow you
 
ratemate said:
Cold DM is terrible imo. Sure, you can optimize like you can with anything but there are much better alternatives
Click to expand...
befiveanati said:
stopped from inbox to requests

nothing to do with "if you know how to do it properly" if you cold DM it goes to requests, there is nothing you can do to change the outcome unless they follow you
Click to expand...

What would you suggest then? I thought it's gonna be a perfect combo for my business tbh. Is cold mailing better? I guess if I go to the same e-mail account all their ask
 
Domel4 said:
I feel like I'm screaming into the void - I'm doing IG Cold DM Outreach in my niche and I barely get any responses, is that normal?

I set up my account as Business one, added a few posts (2/3 a day), I follow all people before I text them then try to engage in their profile so I like a couple of their posts, add a comment, like the story if they have any, then I try 5 or 6 different scripts - sometimes I will start with a question relating to their business or a short message personalized about their profile or more like "ad-type" of DM. I try to rotate every 10/15 messages.

I'm doing 20/30 messages a day to stay under the SPAM/shadowban radar, but the reality is that every 1 out of 35/40 will even see my message and 1 every 80/85 will respond.

What am I doing wrong? I assume I end up in their requests instead of main DM, but no idea if that's a deal breaker.

Is this even working anymore? Maybe I should switch to e-mails?
Click to expand...
Are you doing it in an automation setup, I assume? Are you using just some spintax for it, or do you have some hyper-personalisation built in. Like, taking things from their recent posts, and initiating that DM using some context from that in your automation? Coz without that, people are easily able to catch up on spam. That's why I had built a very specific solution for it, to auto-generate such hyper-personalised outbound DMs, in an automated fashion.
 
duke1921 said:
Are you doing it in an automation setup, I assume? Are you using just some spintax for it, or do you have some hyper-personalisation built in. Like, taking things from their recent posts, and initiating that DM using some context from that in your automation? Coz without that, people are easily able to catch up on spam. That's why I had built a very specific solution for it, to auto-generate such hyper-personalised outbound DMs, in an automated fashion.
Click to expand...
Depending on the scenario as I try multiple dm scripts, but as per the most frequently used by me I'd look through their profile, follow up on their latest work and try to personalize the intro. Doesn't really make any difference to be honest.

Can someone here tell me what's the expected Open Message rate per 1000 messaged? I started diggining and some guy said that per 5k messages he got 17 replies... if that's true the IG is doomed for outreach
 
Domel4 said:
Depending on the scenario as I try multiple dm scripts, but as per the most frequently used by me I'd look through their profile, follow up on their latest work and try to personalize the intro. Doesn't really make any difference to be honest.

Can someone here tell me what's the expected Open Message rate per 1000 messaged? I started diggining and some guy said that per 5k messages he got 17 replies... if that's true the IG is doomed for outreach
Click to expand...

You'll be surprised when you attend some courses/webinars of People who do cold outreach for a living, and run their business around it, and are teaching others. And how much they preach that how much of huge difference does this small tweak brings. I personally read one such book on cold outreach, and It made me modify my whole tool to accommodate this.
 
duke1921 said:
You'll be surprised when you attend some courses/webinars of People who do cold outreach for a living, and run their business around it, and are teaching others. And how much they preach that how much of huge difference does this small tweak brings. I personally read one such book on cold outreach, and It made me modify my whole tool to accommodate this.
Click to expand...

you can change the effectiveness of a message

you cant change the fact that its read by less than 1%, so for it to be effective you would need to send millions
 
befiveanati said:
you can change the effectiveness of a message

you cant change the fact that its read by less than 1%, so for it to be effective you would need to send millions
Click to expand...
Because people don't know how to even put a proper subject line, to get the DM even opened. (Yes, IG DMs also have a subject line, just like emails, which we should create some enticing ones, to even get the DM opened in the 1st place.) For DMs, the 1st line, which is visible, even before opening the DM, is also known as a DM subject line. If you can't craft it enticing enough. Then one can only cry, saying it's a "FACT" "read less than 1%". Coz I literally ran campaigns in the Past, with getting responses over 5-10% of the time.
 
duke1921 said:
Because people don't know how to even put a proper subject line, to get the DM even opened. (Yes, IG DMs also have a subject line, just like emails, which we should create some enticing ones, to even get the DM opened in the 1st place.) For DMs, the 1st line, which is visible, even before opening the DM, is also known as a DM subject line. If you can't craft it enticing enough. Then one can only cry, saying it's a "FACT" "read less than 1%". Coz I literally ran campaigns in the Past, with getting responses over 5-10% of the time.
Click to expand...

yup, sure you did, nobody clicks requests folder because everybody knows its the spam folder, regardless of your subject line, its designed to be hardly clicked
 
befiveanati said:
yup, sure you did, nobody clicks requests folder because everybody knows its the spam folder, regardless of your subject line, its designed to be hardly clicked
Click to expand...

Depends person to person. I personally always check. Those "spam folders" clearly shows up at the top, standing out way too much (with unread message in blue color). Not to mention, it also sends a phone notifcation, like "XYZ whats to send you Message". Which is very clearly visible.
 
It all depends on your niche, content message, quality of your accounts, there's so many factors. Are your messages even getting to requests or hidden folder? Tbh 20/30 dms a day is not much, there's no real way to tell in such small scale.
 
befiveanati said:
stopped from inbox to requests

nothing to do with "if you know how to do it properly" if you cold DM it goes to requests, there is nothing you can do to change the outcome unless they follow you
Click to expand...
Cold DMs never went to inbox. It always went to requests, and ofc you can do nothing to change it, thats how IG works.
 
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