Results as of March 20, 2023
This system has gotten replies from 1551 retailers around the world
See what types of stores are replying, where they’re located, and what type of success rate you should expect. This data is aggregated over several brands.
What types of stores reply?
The types of stores are wide-ranging, including:
- Cafes, coffee shops, gift shops, Juice shops, Pubs, cocktail bars, bakeries, gyms, boutiques, cocktail bars, restaurants, and more.
Where are these stores?
These stores are located across the US, UK, and Canada.
The map shows replies from independent retailers that this system has initiated conversations with automatically. A conversation is defined as a human replying back to an automated IG DM this system has sent.
What do customers say?
"We love Jon's Instagram outreach algorithm! As a small business, we had been noticing that engagement and outreach through Instagram was one of our most effective tools. Unfortunately this can be incredibly time consuming. Jon's model made everything so fast and easy! We were able to reach out to so many new customers with seemingly, just the click of a button. Jon was so kind and helpful to work with, he explained how the algorithm worked very clearly and was also available when any questions came up. We are super happy with the results from Jons algorithm. We are excited to continue using it to help grow our business and connect with new customers!"
"This system allowed us to find and contact more retailers than ever before. Jon and the entire help team are very efficient and are always ready to help with any questions/problems that arise"
"We started closing cafes and coffee shops fully automatic. Every day we were getting replies and sample requests from cafes"
"This automation really works and is unique compared to what else is out there. It's helped us find and contact relevant leads automatically, and has freed up lots of valuable sales team time that can now be used for other things, would highly recommend."
What success will I have?
Some food-for-thought based on previous brands’ successes.
What kind of reply rates should I expect?
The average reply rate hovers around 10%, with the best performers being around 15%, and the lower performers around 6-7%.
There are also outliers. The best performing brand so far has a reply rate of 25%. The worst performing brand has a reply of 3-4%.
Your reply rate depends on what types of stores you’re targeting, your messaging, and of course, your product.
When will leads reply?
Most locations reply in the first few days of the first DM, with a long-tail of leads replying much later. The distribution below is typical for most brands.
However, be aware that even though leads reply in the first few days, it takes much longer to turn them into a customer. Typically, sales cycles for getting stocked in independent retailers are measured in weeks or months.
How effective are follow-ups?
~70% of leads reply from the first DM. ~30% of leads reply from the follow-up.
How many DMs do brands send per day?
~10-20 DMs per day per account. However, many brands also use secondary accounts (i.e. not the main brand account, but a personal account).
How effective is using secondary Instagram accounts?
There does not appear to be a difference in reply rates between the brand account and secondary accounts.
The bar chart below shoes reply rates for a real brand. The red colour is the main brand account. The other colours are secondary accounts (e.g. Instagram accounts of sales reps). As you can see, there does not appear to be a difference in reply rates.
Tentatively, I think personal accounts may actually perform better than the main brand account in the long-run. This is because the location is more likely to pay attention to the DM because they think it’s a customer.
When is this unsuitable?
This system does many things well, but there are some things it’s not designed to do.
When is this system unsuitable for me?
- If you’re trying to use this to contact large chains, like Whole Foods, Sainsbury’s, etc.
These large chains have specialized buyers for new products and Instagram is not the point of contact. This system is for targeting smaller mom-and-pop shops.
However, this system can be very effective for building a strong case to get into these large chains. For example, if you use it to get stocked in many independent retailers, you can provide evidence to larger wholesalers that your product has high demand. This helps your case to get into/ expand your stock in wholesalers.
- If your bottom-of-funnel sales processes have problems
This system is intended to help you start conversations with independent retailers at scale. This is only helpful if you can close retailers via efficient follow-ups and good products.
- If you want to spam blast locations
This system is not intended to send hundreds or thousands of DMs per day from one Instagram account. It’s intended to automate repetitive messaging to locations who have a genuine interest in stocking your product. Consistent automation over a long-period of time always works better than sending too many messages at once.