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How-to guide

Build an email list from your comments

Turn a lead magnet and one keyword into signups: the automation asks for the address in the DM, or sends them to your form, the moment they ask for it.

About 10 minutes
Table of contents

Before you start

  • An Instagram Business or Creator account
  • Something genuinely worth an email: a guide, checklist, template, or waitlist spot
  • The link you want to deliver, and a signup form on your own email tool if you'd rather the address landed there
  • A post announcing it (or a story with a direct ask)

The steps

Decide where the address should land

There are two ways to run this, and the difference is only where the email ends up.

Ask in the DM. Switch on the email gate and the automation asks for the address in the thread, saves it to that person's contact, then sends your link. Shortest path for them: no tab, no form.

Send them to your form. Leave the gate off and the DM carries a link to a signup page on your own email platform, so the address lands in the tool you actually send campaigns from, and the form can deliver the file on signup without you.

Most creators want the second one for a real mailing list, and the first one for a quick giveaway where the point is speed. You can run both, on different posts. Either way, have the link you're delivering to hand before you start.

If the post you have in mind is a prize draw, the rules Instagram puts on that are their own subject: see how to run an Instagram giveaway with comment automation.

Tip: If you're using a form, have it deliver the file itself, so the whole exchange finishes without you.

Set up the automation

Create a comment automation on your lead-magnet post: keyword (GUIDE, CHECKLIST, WAITLIST), the public reply, and the DM that carries the link. The comment-to-DM guide covers this in detail.

Tip: One keyword per offer, two automations matching the same keyword on one post is the most common way one of them quietly stops.

Paste the URL as the automation's link, and name the button for what it opens, Get the guide, not Open link. Add UTM parameters if you want the signups attributed to this post in your own analytics.

The gates appear once there's a link, under Only if, because a gate with nothing to hold back has nothing to do. Tick They give you their email to ask in the thread. You can tick the follow gate as well: it runs first, then the email ask, then the link.

Tip: Set the link message to say what happens next. If you're sending them to a form, "it'll ask where to send it" removes the surprise of landing on one.

Write the ask in your voice

Default copy ships, but yours is better: "Love that you want this: here's the link, it'll ask where to send it." One sentence, one ask, no mystery about the form.

Preview the full exchange

The live preview shows the whole thread: the comment, the opener, the button tap, any gate you ticked, the link card. Read it as a stranger would. The exchange should feel helpful, never extractive.

Set live, then watch the two numbers that matter

Test from a second account, not your own, automations skip the connected account's own comments, which is the most common way a working setup looks broken.

With the gate on, the automation's own numbers answer this: asked for an email and email captured sit in the funnel on its analytics screen, and the addresses show up on the contacts themselves.

With a form, compare times the automation fired in inDM against signups on your form. inDM can tell you how many people asked; only your email tool can tell you how many finished. A big gap between them is a form problem, not a DM problem.

Tip: If the fired count is low instead, the caption is the thing to change, people never asked in the first place.
What you end up with

A working pipeline: comment → DM → an address on their contact, or a signup on your own form. Either way, every person who asked is saved as a contact in inDM.

Good to know

Questions, answered plainly

Does inDM collect the email inside the DM?

Yes, when the email gate is on. The automation asks in the thread, reads the address out of their reply, and saves it to their contact before sending your link. It is off by default, and it only appears once the automation has a link, because a gate with nothing to hold back has nothing to do. If somebody replies with something we can't read as an address, we ask again, and after four tries the link goes out regardless, so nobody who asked for your guide ends up with nothing.

Do people actually sign up after a DM like this?

We do not publish a rate for this, because we do not have one worth quoting, and the numbers in circulation for DM-to-signup are usually borrowed from email benchmarks. What is structurally true is that the person asked first, by name, seconds earlier, which is a warmer start than a cold landing page gets.

Can I see who opened the form link?

Not from Instagram, but yes from inDM. Meta's API reports no event when someone taps a link in a DM, so inDM delivers your link through its own tracked redirect and records the tap and the country it came from. Those are readable on the Growth plan. UTM parameters on the form URL are still worth adding, because they tell your own analytics what happened after the arrival. The mechanics are at indm.social/blog/track-clicks-on-instagram-dm-links.

How do the addresses get into my email tool?

Through your form, if that's the route you chose: the signup happens on your platform, so the address is already in it, with no import step. The gate is the other trade. It's the shorter path for the person, and the address sits on their contact in inDM, which is the place to read it rather than the place to send campaigns from. If the list is the point, point the link at your form.