One well placed DM can change your life.

One message can land you a dream client, a new job, or even your future spouse. If you're an ambitious person, DMs are a way to maximize your chances of success.

So we built a product that will help you max out your shots on goal.

DMs are a proven formula. They are also a numbers game. While we can't help you have a good product or offering, our goal is to help you make your distribution easier so you can spend more time on the important things.

If you've ever sent DMs manually before, it is exciting at first. However, the novelty wears off quick. After doing this manually for weeks, you start to feel the burnout creep in. So we built a tool that takes all the manual work out of your outreach.

This article is geared towards how to set-up, and implement your first DM campaign.

Step one: Find the right target

Who you are targeting is one of the most important keys. You can have the perfect message and offer, but if it's landing in the wrong inboxes then it's all for nothing.

You can scrape lists from:

• Your followers

• Followers of your competitors

• Commenters on a post

• List members

• List followers

• Community members

• Keyword posters

If you want to convert warm traffic, target your followers. If you want to take your competitors marketshare, target theirs. If you see a relevant post that has a ton of engagement that is relevant to your offer, you can pull everyone from that post.

The possibilities are endless.

My favorite feature is to DM people who comments on a specific post. All you have to do is copy the URL and we will pull everyone who posted on that thread. This is great for responding to your own content, or of relevant threads under your market.

I recommend running several options and analyzing the results. When you're happy with your results select (or deselect) users. This will queue up who you are going to do a send to.

Crafting the perfect message

After you select who you want to message, now we have to come up with the perfect thing to say. Every good outreach has a good hook and clear value without coming off as too salesy.

Let's look at an example of a message I've seen work.

Hey [Name], thanks for following me, I have a free newsletter that you might love, sign-up for free here (link)"

It's simple, straight forward and is geared towards value not extraction.

Let's look at a message we've used to onboard users into Growth Terminal (maybe this message is why you're here!)

Hey {{name}} I saw you comment the post about X growth and wanted to reach out! I'd love to see if @growthterminal can be useful for helping you grow on here. We scrape trending topics to help you create posts in your voice, help you source the right posts to reply to and DM anyone (all your followers, people who post a keyword, etc). If this sounds interesting I'd love to send you a code

Both are examples of crafting context for why we're reaching out, then gets directly into value. The key is to experiment. See what works and doesn't for your brand and adapt.

In-depth messaging customization

In our editor you will see that you can add slight AI variations. Some people say this helps them not to get marked as spam, however we've never seen that as an issue, but it's for those who want to be super safe. It will basically do slight word changes like using "Hi" instead of "Hey." Your core message however will remain the same.

For the smart follow up, we have the option to not DM people who you've DMed before. If you want to message people who you have in the past, we recommend utilizing our AI follow-up. It will read the context of your conversation and take that into account when sending the message. This ensures there are no awkward messages that don't fit he flow of the natural conversation.

Managing campaigns and replies

Manage all of your replies directly in your X inbox. We don't currently do inbox management because the best place to do this is in your actual inbox (unless we get enough feature requests hehe.) The key is to pay attention to what lists are responding to your messages and what message style is getting the most responses. As you figure this out each DM you send will become more and more effective.

In the "Live" tab you can see what campaigns are currently sending. From here you can pause, restart, and cancel campaigns. You can also look day by day and see how the sending success is going.

Implementing your first campaign

Now that we know the mechanics of how to set-up a campaign, let's create our first. I recommend targeting a follower list of someone in your industry. Create a simple message like:

Hey, I see you follow Gary so you must be into brand building. I built a tool that helps founders create content if you want to check it out growthterminal.ai

Do something that feels natural for you and your offer. No need to overcomplicate it.

Make sure to exclude people you've DMed before.

Press queue and your campaign will go live. Check on it every couple days to start to make sure it's sending out, and keep an eye on your inbox for replies. It's important to reply quickly if you want to keep the lead hot, if not people are busy and often forgetful.

Best practices for DMs

• Personalization is still key: Automation helps the scale, but messages that feel generic will under-perform.

• Ensure your offer or call-to-action is clear: What are you asking? Newsletter signup? Demo? Link? Make it obvious.

• Don’t neglect replies: Once someone replies, it’s your job to follow up. Automation gets you in the door, but human follow-through seals the deal.

• Keep your message short and friendly: I recommend 1-3 sentences for first message.

• Use it ethically: Avoid spammy language, irrelevant outreach, or high-volume scattershot messaging. Target thoughtfully.

• Align with your brand voice: Since Growth Terminal already analyses your brand voice and style, make sure your DM messaging matches that tone so your outreach feels coherent with your content.

When to start

The best time to start was yesterday, the second best time is right now. We limit sends to 50 a day from each account. So to send to 10,000 people it'll take awhile…

If you’re already following the best practices of posting content every day and replying to posts, you’re building visibility. Adding the DM channel multiplies your results because you’re reaching out proactively rather than waiting for someone to discover you.

Let's get sending

Let's take action. If you're already a hyper growth member, then you have access to this feature. If you're on a basic or pro plan you need to upgrade before beginning to send. If you have a specific ROI, this will pay for itself very quickly. If you have any questions please let us know!