Instagram Story Reply Trigger

The Instagram Story reply trigger lets you automatically start a conversation in Manychat when someone replies to your story.

Whenever a user responds to your Story,  whether by sending a message or reacting with an emoji, the trigger activates and launches the messaging flow you’ve set up.

This makes it easy to engage with your audience in real time, capture leads, share offers, or guide users into a sales funnel right from your stories. Instead of manually replying to every reaction, you can respond instantly and keep the conversation going automatically.

With this trigger in place, your Instagram Stories become more than just content; they become a powerful tool for building relationships and driving results.

Set up the Instagram Story reply trigger

1. Open your Manychat workspace and click the Automation tab in the sidebar.
2. Click the + New Automation button.
3. Click + Start From Scratch. 
4. Select the Start with a blank option.
5. Once the Flow Builder opens, click the +New Trigger button.
6. Select the User replies to your Story trigger from the Instagram tab.
7. The panel will open where you can configure the trigger’s settings.
8. First, you can set if you want your Instagram story reply trigger to work with all stories in your account, or select a specific one.
9. 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 (posted within the last 24 hours). Note that you can only select one story per trigger at a time. To use the same automation with a different story, you must add an additional trigger with another story selected.
10. Next, select if you want any message or reaction to trigger the automation, or only the specific ones. Note that the Story Reply trigger works only for direct replies or reactions to a Story. It does not trigger for Story likes or comments.
11. Optional: Add a delay for your message. You can wait up to 10 minutes before sending the first message in the automation to make the conversation feel more natural.
12. As a last step, you can select to react to story replies with ❤️.
13. Click Save to add the trigger to your automation.

Set up an automated private reply in Direct Messages

The Story Reply trigger is just the starting point. To turn a story reaction or reply into a real conversation, you need to send a private reply in DMs.

That’s why the next step is to add at least one Instagram message to your flow. This message is what activates the automation and allows you to publish and run it successfully.

1. Go back to the automation containing your Instagram Story Reply trigger.
2. Add a next step: select Instagram to add a Send Message node to your automation.
3. Make sure that the Send within 24 hours option is selected. Since the user already opted in to receive messages from you, you have to communicate with them within the allowed 24-hour period. 
4. You can select to simply reply with a text message, or add a button, Quick Reply, link, or any other available content block.
5. After configuring the first reply, you can continue building the rest of your automation as needed.
6. To see how it works, you can click the Preview button at the top of the Flow Builder. 
7. You can choose to preview the automation either in Manychat or directly on Instagram. 
8. The second option lets you see everything exactly as your audience will experience it. Click the arrow icon next to the Preview to select the preview mode. 
9. Once you’ve finished setting up the automation, click the Set Live button if you’re creating a new automation or Update if you’re making changes to the existing one.