u/SendPulse

TL;DR: Meta gives you exactly one automated DM per comment. And the messaging window only opens if the person taps or replies to it. A DM with just a link in it doesn't count, so you can never follow up.

This is the bit that catches everyone out.

You set up comment-to-DM. Someone comments your keyword. The bot sends them the lead magnet. Job done, except now you can't message them again, ever, and you don't know why.

What's actually happening

The 24-hour conversation window doesn't open when you send the DM. It opens when they respond to it. A tap on a quick reply, a button that continues the flow, a typed message.

A link-only button doesn't do it. Neither does a plain message with nothing to press.

So the flow ends there. No follow-up, no qualifying questions, no handoff to a human.

What to put in that first DM instead

• One message, with one thing to tap. "Great, send it 💛" works fine.
• Deliver the actual thing after they tap, not before.
• Don't waste the message on a greeting. You get one.
• One question maximum. Three questions gets you no answer at all.

Once they've tapped, the window is open and you can branch, tag, ask about budget, or hand them to a person.

The other limits worth knowing

• One comment-triggered DM per comment, within 7 days of the comment being posted
• Follow-ups only after they respond, and within 24 hours of that response
• Around 750 API calls an hour for comment-to-DM on posts and Reels
• Live video replies only work during the broadcast itself

Two small things

Use specific keywords. "PRICE" or "LOOKBOOK" beat "info" or "help", which fire on comments that have nothing to do with your offer. And add the common typos, because LOKBOOK won't match an exact-string trigger.

Also: if you serve audiences in California or Germany, you have to tell people upfront they're talking to a bot.

Full setup walkthrough:

https://sendpulse.com/blog/instagram-comment-automation

What keyword are you using? I keep seeing LINK and INFO, and INFO in particular seems like it'd fire on half your comment section.

TL;DR: Don't send to a dormant list all at once. Verify it, then go out in batches of about 10%, and watch bounces. Over 10% bounce in a single campaign and your account can get blocked, temporarily or permanently.

The instinct with a list you haven't mailed in a year is to write something good and send it to everyone. That's the part that goes wrong. It isn't the copy, it's the volume of dead addresses hitting at once.

Order of operations

1. Verify before you segment. Old lists collect addresses that no longer exist. Bounces are what damage your domain reputation, and they're invisible until you send. Run the list through a verifier and strip the invalid ones out first.
2. Segment the inactive contacts into their own group. Conditions like "didn't open recent emails" with a message count, or "didn't open since [date]" for a time window. Keep them separate so you can send to them gradually and watch what happens.
3. Go out in batches, starting at roughly 10%. Send, then stop and look. If bounces stay under 10% and spam complaints under 0.5%, send the next batch. If not, you've just learned something cheaply instead of expensively.
4. Don't lead with a discount. A three-email warm-up works better: remind them who you are and when they signed up, then let them choose what they want to hear about, then offer something. Discount first reads like a stranger asking for money.
5. Make leaving easy on purpose. A clear unsubscribe link, ideally a page where they can drop one topic instead of everything. An unsubscribe costs you a contact. A spam complaint costs you deliverability.
6. Then actually delete the ones who never respond. This is the step people skip. Continuing to mail people who ignore everything is the behaviour that gets you filed as spam. Archive or remove them.

Setup details for each step are in the full guide:

https://sendpulse.com/blog/how-to-create-reengage-inactive-customers

Curious what people's cutoff is. How long does someone have to ignore you before you'd delete them rather than try again?

Short version: from October 1, Meta bills you for every free-form reply your team or chatbot sends on WhatsApp. Including the ones that say nothing.

TL;DR

• Service messages (free-form replies within 24h of a customer writing in) become billable October 1. They've been free since November 2024.
• Utility templates sent inside that same window also become billable.
• API only. The regular WhatsApp app and the free Business app aren't touched.

Quick check whether this is your problem

• WhatsApp Business API, directly or through a provider → yes, this is you.
• Normal WhatsApp app → no.
• Free WhatsApp Business app → no.

What it'll cost

Service messages get priced like utility templates for that country. Today's rates:

• US $0.0064
• Brazil $0.0098
• Mexico $0.0115
• UK $0.0264
• India $0.0024

Meta confirms the real numbers by September 1, so treat these as estimates.

Worth running your own volume through it though. 5,000 conversations a month at six replies each is 30,000 messages. All free right now. From October that's roughly $294 in Brazil, or $792 in the UK.

Some relief: marketing and authentication templates don't change, they were already billed. Messages customers send you are never billed. And chats that start from a Click-to-WhatsApp ad or a Facebook Page CTA keep their 72-hour free window.

Five things worth doing before October

1. Delete the filler. "One moment." "Thanks!" "Let me check that." Billing is per message, not per character, so a message that says nothing costs the same as a real answer.
2. Combine replies. A WhatsApp message holds 4,096 characters. Splitting one answer across three messages now costs 3x.
3. Swap open-text questions for buttons, and use WhatsApp Flows to grab several fields in one go instead of asking one at a time.
4. Cap how often a trigger can re-fire, and kill any catch-all standard reply that answers every inbound message.
5. Set a daily AI reply limit per subscriber if you use AI in your flows. Those replies bill as service messages and eat your AI provider's tokens on top.

Full breakdown here:

https://sendpulse.com/blog/whatsapp-service-message-pricing

Anyone been through their flows for this yet? Curious how much filler people are finding, I suspect it's more than anyone expects.

Segmentation has a quiet failure mode. Nothing breaks. You build the segment, it gives you a number, you send the campaign. Whether that number meant what you thought is a separate question.

Three that catch people:

1. The two layers of logic aren't interchangeable

Conditions of the same type combine with "and" or "or." Conditions of different types combine with "all" or "any." In the interface they look like the same control. They aren't.

Say you want subscribers who opened more than three recent campaigns and also have a four-star rating. Those are two different condition types, so that one runs on "all." Set it up backwards and you get either zero contacts or your entire list, with no warning in either direction.

Cheap habit that saves you: check the contact count against your list size before sending. A segment that comes back with a suspiciously round number is usually this.

2. A saved segment is a photograph, not a rule

Standard segments run once. Your "active subscribers" list from July is a description of July.

The version that keeps itself current sits under Automation → Segmentation. You pick a trigger (a variable updating, a CRM tag getting assigned, a campaign going out) plus a filter, and the segment adds and removes people on its own as they qualify.

Clearest example I've seen: a VIP segment built on the CRM "VIP" tag plus recent email engagement. Someone loses the tag, they drop out of the segment. You never touch it again.

3. Tags and variables do different jobs, and you find out later

• Tags group people. "Interested in discounts." "VIP."
• Variables hold a value. City, job title, birthday, which product color someone picked.

Here's the part that bites. You can drop a variable straight into a subject line or the body of an email. You can't do that with a tag. So if you tagged everyone "London" instead of storing a city variable, you can still target them, but you can't write "delivery in London" into the copy. Unpicking that months later is tedious.

One extra thing while we're on it: anything built on opens is a noisier signal than it used to be, since Apple Mail preloads tracking pixels. Clicks are the safer condition when you have the choice.

Setup steps are here if you want them!

https://sendpulse.com/blog/how-to-segment-subscribers

Semi-serious question. How many tags are sitting in your account right now, and do you still know what all of them mean?