Instagram Story Reply Trigger

The Instagram story reply trigger allows you to initiate an automated conversation in Manychat when a user replies to one of your Instagram stories. When someone responds to your story—whether by sending a message, reacting with an emoji, or interacting in any other way—this trigger activates and starts a predefined messaging flow in Manychat.

This is particularly useful for engaging with your audience in real time, capturing leads, promoting products, or guiding users to a sales funnel directly from their interaction with your Instagram stories. 

By setting up this trigger, you can automatically respond to user engagement, making your Instagram stories an effective tool for building relationships and driving conversions.

How to set up the Instagram story reply trigger

You can add the Instagram story reply trigger to an existing automation or a newly created one by clicking the “+ New trigger” button, as illustrated in the screenshot below:

Choose the trigger from the list to add it to your automation:

When you click on the added trigger, a panel will open on the left where you can configure everything. Let’s explore what each of these settings represents.

First, you can set your Instagram story reply trigger to work with all stories in your account or select a specific one of your choice:

If you set it up to work with a specific story, click on the Select story button and choose one from the list of stories available in your account:

Next, you can either configure the trigger to activate with all user responses and reactions or specify particular keywords or emojis that will trigger the automation when used:

💡 For example, in the setup below, the flow will activate only for the selected story and only if the user responds with the keywords "succulent" or "succulents":

Lastly, you can choose to delay the automation for a short time or start it immediately. You can also decide whether to react to story replies with "❤️" or not:

Once you have successfully set everything up, click Save and then toggle the switch in the bottom left corner to activate it:

Limitations and specifics

• When configuring the Instagram story reply trigger for a specific story, you can only select one story per automation at a time. To use the same automation with a different story, you must change the story linked to the trigger.
• If you do not specify keywords for triggering the automation, any response to the story will activate the automation connected to the Instagram story reply trigger.

• The Instagram story reply trigger will interact with stories in your Instagram highlights only if you select the “All stories” option. It cannot be attached to a specific Instagram highlight story or to close friends stories.

• Once a story expires, the Instagram story reply trigger will still function if the story has been added to your Instagram highlights.

If you encounter any issues with the Instagram story reply trigger, please contact our Support Team.