Instagram DM CRM: how to organize DMs into a pipeline with statuses, tags and notes

An Instagram DM CRM is a prospect list where every business carries a status, tags and notes. The status says where the conversation stands, the tags say who the lead is and where it came from, and the note says what you agreed and when you will follow up. With those three fields you see at a glance who to answer, who gets a follow-up and who to invite to a call.

The Instagram inbox and a CRM do different jobs

The Instagram inbox is built around conversations: the ones with recent activity sit at the top. That works well for replying. Selling needs a second view as well: what stage every business on your list has reached, including the ones that have not written back yet.

With a handful of conversations you can keep everything in your head. With a few dozen new prospects a week, the questions start. Has this cafe had a message yet? Who asked to hear back after the holidays? Who has had two follow-ups already? In a CRM the answer to each one is right there on the lead.

Statuses: from New to Converted

A status is one word that tells you what happens next with a lead. Keep the list short, with a clear condition for every move.

1. 1

   New

   On your list, no message yet

2. 2

   Contacted

   The first message went out

3. 3

   Replied

   The prospect wrote back

4. 4

   Converted

   A booked call or a sale

Three rules keep statuses useful:

• One lead, one status. A lead cannot be Replied and Not interested at once. If they are undecided, they stay in Replied and the details go in the note.
• An event changes the status, not a feeling. Replied means a reply arrived, not that the conversation is going well. That way every week is counted the same way and compares with the one before.
• Converted is your goal. For one business it is a booked call, for another an order or a payment. Decide once for the whole list.

In DM Hero the first two moves happen on their own: a lead moves to Contacted when the extension sends the first campaign message, and to Replied when the prospect writes back. A lead moves to Converted on its own when the prospect books through the booking link the AI Setter sends (with a Calendly plan that supports webhooks). A call agreed any other way is one click on Mark booked in the inbox, and an order or a payment is a change of the lead's status.

Tags: niche, source, objection

For DM sales, set up three kinds of tags:

A tag in DM Hero is one word with no spaces: letters, digits, hyphens and underscores. So objection-price rather than "objection: price". In the filters you pick leads with any of the chosen tags, with all of them, or with none. That last filter is a quick way to find leads still waiting for a tag.

Next to your own tags, DM Hero adds its own, including:

• replied when the prospect writes back to a campaign message.
• inbound for people who messaged you first, when the AI Setter is switched on for incoming messages. Such a lead starts in Replied.
• booked when the prospect books a time or you mark the conversation as booked.
• no_reply when 24 hours pass without an answer after the AI Setter's follow-up in auto mode.

Objection tags show you which answers to prepare. When objection-supplier has ten leads under it, that objection deserves a ready-made reply. Replies of that kind are in our post on sales objections and responses in DMs.

Your notes and notes from the conversation

The note holds everything the status and tags do not show. A good note is one or two sentences that answer a single question: what do I need to know before I write again?

What to write down:

• When to follow up. "Back on 16 Dec, busy season until then."
• Who decides. "The owner decides, writes from a personal account."
• What has been said. "Asked about the starter kit, got the price on 5 Nov."
• What you still owe them. "Send 2 examples of our work."

Here is a conversation between a hair care wholesaler and a salon that leaves plenty to note:

Conversation with copperandash.colorbar

1. You: Hi, I saw you started offering ammonia-free colour in November. We supply salons with colour and aftercare for exactly that service, delivered within 48 hours. Can I send you a short list of products?

2. Prospect: We already have a supplier, but how much is your starter kit?

3. You: The starter kit is [amount] before tax. Just curious: is there anything you sometimes miss with your current supplier?

4. Prospect: Deliveries can take a week. But we're slammed until 15 December and won't change anything before then

5. You: Makes sense. I'll get back to you on 16 December with the list and a date for the first delivery. Does that work for you?

6. Prospect: Works for us

After this conversation the lead is in Replied. You add the tags salons, november-list and objection-supplier, and the note reads: "Back on 16 Dec with the list and a delivery date. Current supplier: up to a week for delivery. Has the starter kit price." A month later you know where to pick up without rereading the thread.

DM Hero keeps two kinds of notes. Notes are yours; the AI Setter does not change them. AI notes are written by the AI Setter: after a conversation it records a few sentences about the prospect and updates them as the conversation moves on. Anything that should stay for good belongs in your Notes. The Contact section stores the email and phone number the prospect shared in a message or when booking a meeting, with a label saying where they came from. A contact you type in yourself is never overwritten by a message.

List, cards, board: kanban for one account or several

You can look at the same leads three ways, depending on the job:

• List for working through many leads: sort by date added, last contact or score, select a group and give it a tag or a folder in one go.
• Cards for going through leads one at a time with their status and tags in view.
• Board is the kanban: one column per status, and you move a lead by dragging its card to another column. On the board you see at a glance how many leads sit at each stage.

Folders group leads regardless of status, such as "London" or "Referrals". Deleting a folder keeps its leads; they are simply left without a folder. Filters combine: status, tags, folder, campaign, date added and last contact, for example "Contacted, last contact more than 7 days ago, tag cafes".

The score is a number from 0 to 100 calculated by rules, from inputs such as the status, whether the lead has a niche and notes, and its send history, replies and active campaign.

If you sell from several Instagram accounts, the multi-reps plans (Pro multi-reps or Outbound multi-reps) connect them all in one place, and the leads from every account sit on one list and one board.

Spreadsheet or CRM: five signs

If your prospect list lives in a spreadsheet today, these five signs say it is time to move it into a CRM:

1. You retype the status after every reply. You send and receive messages on Instagram, and update the status by hand in another window.
2. You are not sure who needs a follow-up. Before every message you check the inbox to see who wrote back.
3. The same business appears twice. Two sheets, two accounts, one cafe.
4. Your notes live in three places. Some in the sheet, some on your phone, some in your head.
5. You count your reply rate by hand. Every weekly summary starts with filtering and counting rows. How to count it is in our post on cold DM reply rate.

Moving the list is one file import. DM Hero takes a CSV file with as many as 30,000 rows, separated by commas, semicolons or tabs, and recognises columns such as "username" or "profile url" on its own. The import skips leads whose handle is already on your list, so the same business does not show up twice. Selected columns DM Hero does not know, such as "city" or "latest post", can be saved as custom fields and used inside your message templates. You can export any selection of leads to CSV, for example for a report.

Cheat sheet

• Four main statuses and two end statuses, each with a clear condition.
• Three kinds of tags: niche, source, objection.
• A note of one or two sentences: when to follow up, who decides, what was said, what you still owe them.
• The board for an overview of stages, the list for working on groups.
• Statuses that update on their own instead of retyping them in a sheet.

The whole process, from a prospect list to the first conversation, is in our Instagram cold outreach guide, and what to send leads who have not replied yet is in our post on follow-ups.

In DM Hero you do not retype a status after every send and reply, so your time in the CRM goes to what only you know: the niche, the list a lead came from and when to follow up. Compare plans on the pricing page, and on a demo we will show you how to import your list and set up tags for your first campaign.