Manychat Features To Grow Your Following & Your Email List (Fast + Easy)

OMG you guys – Manychat recently released THREE new features that will make growing your social media following so much easier. Honestly, these are the ultimate social cheatcodes…

In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how these features work and how to set them up for yourself so you can automate your social growth and list-building…

And free up MORE of your time to do the things that really matter in 2025, like building your personal brand and connecting with your dream clients.

Hey, Posse! What’s up? It’s Alex. 

Now, if you’ve been around here for a while, then you already know how much I’m obsessed with Manychat. 

Manychat was one of the very FIRST automation tools I incorporated into my business several years ago. I mean, they helped me initiate 114,000 DM conversations with you, my Posse, in 2024 ALONE! ⁠

And I’m never going back!

So when they reached out to sponsor this I was like — yup!!! I love you guys AND they are going to give anyone from the Posse a full 30 days to try out Manychat PRO for FREE…

All you gotta do is click this link and use my code  “ALEX” to sign up.

Now listen, before I first started using Manychat, I would send people to my “link in bio” to get a free resource, which was clunky and confusing and let’s be honest… soooo 2016.

So, I’m not kidding, I’d resort to manually DMing people links and resources every day because it was just such a better experience for my followers.

But as my account started to grow, that became virtually impossible to do, not to mention that people would end up having to WAIT for a response from me.

Manychat helped me automate this process so that I could deliver EXACTLY what my followers needed, EXACTLY when they asked for it…

I even named my Manychat automation “Benny The Bot,” and let me tell you, people LOVEEEE Benny lol. He gets a lot of love.

Over time, I slowly started incorporating more complex Manychat automations and building what they call a “flow”, which looks like this:

This allowed me to do WAY more with the tool. In addition to automatically DMing people the links they wanted at lightspeed…

I could also follow up with them a few days later to see if they loved it, send reminders, ask if they had any questions – stuff like that. 

This not only saved SO much time and manual work for my team and me. 

But also helped us to engage with our most active followers and customers. 

Now, while I absolutely LOVE our fancy Manychat flows, I’ll be the first to admit that setting them up was a little clunky, and I definitely needed to get my team to help me.

But I have such good news for my fellow Manychat lovers, or for those of you who WANT to try out Manychat but don’t have a techy bone in your body. (Hello, it’s me…)

Manychat has now solved this “complexity” issue with 3 AMAZING new features so that just about ANYONE can easily set up automations – literally in 10 minutes or less!

I’m going to walk you through these features RIGHT NOW step-by-step, but first, if you want to follow along with me using your own Manychat account.

Hit the link here to sign up using my code “ALEX” to get a FREE 30-day trial of Manychat Pro.

Alright, now let me show you how these new features work… 

Manychat Feature #1: Quick Automations

This is so gooooood. Manychat rolled out a brand-new visual builder so you can set up quick automations FROM your desktop or your phone – without the complexity of the full Flow Builder. 

This new interface is called Quick Automations and it’s PERFECT for setting up—you got it—quick automations.

Specifically, you can use it to set up automatic DMs in response to user comments on IG, FB and even WhatsApp – which is great for boosting engagement. 

Even if you have ZERO experience with this tool, it’s so easy to use. Here’s what you do:

1. Once you login to your new Manychat Pro account, on the home dashboard, right below where it says “start here” you want to select “auto-DM links from comments”…

2. Then you’re going to select either “a specific post or reel” or “any post or reel”.

Now just keep in mind if you select ANY post or reel, then ANYTIME a person comments the keyword on ANY post on your account… they are going to receive your automatic reply. 

If you do it for JUST a specific post or reel, then only when the keyword is commented on THAT POST will this automation be triggered. 

I like to do that because then you can customize the experience for different types of content and calls to action.

Then hit “NEXT”…

3. Now, it’s going to ask you to set your keyword. This is what you’ll ask people to COMMENT on this specific post in order to get an automatic DM. 

Or, you can select “any word” and this DM will get sent to ANYONE who comments anything.

For this post, we used “RESULTS” as the keyword. So I’m going to type that into the keyword box. And you can see what it will look like on your feed right away – I love that!

Now one more cool feature is that you can add additional keywords here, you’re not limited to just one. 

This is great if there are any common mispellings of the word, or any other variations or words you think would be important to include here.

Then hit “NEXT” again…

4. Alright now, you have TWO OPTIONS for how you deliver the link.

You can just straight-up send them the link right away. All you do is type out a short message, paste in the link, and customize the button text, and you’re all set…

But the downside here is that once you send them the link, you can’t continue the conversation, follow up with them, or do any of the other things I’m going to talk about in this video – like ask them to follow you or add them to your email list.

And that’s because there are strict rules around messaging automation at Meta, which is a great thing to protect users from spammers.

But, of course, it’s highly likely that your followers would LOVE to hear from you again and have a two-way conversation with you.

So if you select “an opening DM” this allows you to first initiate the conversation by asking them directly if they’d like you to send them the link.

You can see this adds a message BEFORE sending the link. 

Here we’ve said “Heyyyyy! Want a FREE copy of my Subject Line Split-Test Report? Just click below and I’ll send you the link right away”  

Once they click the button, they’ve now initiated a two-way conversation with me.

And NOW I can follow up with them and send them additional DMs – including asking for a follow or for them to join my email list! 

So I personally always go with this “opening DM” option because I think starting conversations is REALLY important for creating trust and building long-term relationships with your followers – but the choice is totally yours. 

It just depends on your goals. 

Either way, remember to customize the text to fit your voice and keep it simple! No one wants a novel in their DMs!

Hit “next” again…

5. Then Manychat is going to ask if you want to automate anything else.

You can add auto replies to your comments – which I love to do! Again, just customize this text to fit your voice! 

You can also set up an automation to follow up with them later if they don’t click the link you previously sent.

ANDDDD, this leads me to the second new awesome Manychat feature…

Manychat Feature #2: ⁠Follow Me First 

⁠Okay, so this is the most EPIC cheatcode for social growth…

As you probably know, people who comment on your posts for a link aren’t necessarily already following you.

You know, maybe they just happened to stumble across your post on the discovery page. Or someone they know shared it on their stories…

I can speak from personal experience that when I come across a post this way, I almost NEVER follow them after getting the goods I came for. Not because I don’t want to, but I just didn’t think about it…

Plus, it takes a bit of work, first you have to leave the post, click on their profile, hit “follow”, then go back to your DMs to dig into whatever you asked for… 

Yeah, I just don’t do that.  And neither do most people. So that’s why THIS is so cool!

After you start the DM conversation, this automation automatically verifies whether they are already following you. 

If they are, great. They’ll get their link right away.

If they are NOT following you, they will get a message asking them to FOLLOW you first in order to access the thing they asked for…

Then, once they hit the “follow” button, the automation sends them the link!

HOW COOL IS THAT? But we’re not done yet…

You also have the option to collect their email address… 

Manychat Feature #3: Collect Emails Instantly

I can’t even tell you how big of a deal it is that you can get email addresses directly in your DMs without having to send your audience off the app to sign up on a website or landing page.

I mean, the whole POINT of social media is to attract new leads for your business – right?

But even if you get the follow, the percentage of your followers who actually SEE your posts is frustratingly small, which is exactly why you want to BUILD YOUR EMAIL LIST. And THIS is the best way to do that with social media.

Listen, you already know this because I’m constantly talking about the power of email marketing.

Now only does email have a higher view rate than organic social media, but it also has a higher click through rate and conversion rate. And a WAYYYYYY higher ROI.

So use social media to attract NEW qualified leads to your business, then get them on your email list – and Manychat helps you do BOTH. 

Win-win!!! Okay, so…. How do you set it up?

Well, we come back to this part of our automation and select “ask for emails in DMs”.

Then you can type in your customized message…

Here, we said: “Link is headed your way! FYI – I send exclusive content like this (but better 😉 ) to my email list every single week. Want in on the action? Type in your email address to be automatically added.”

Simple. You don’t need anything too long or wordy, but make sure to give a reason WHY they should join your list. 

If they don’t enter their email address, they will still receive their link.

And if they DO enter their email address, it will be passed into Manychat which you can easily integrate with your email sender by going to settings and scrolling down to integrations…

You can either integrate your email sender directly within Manychat OR add the list to a spreadsheet, which you can manually upload!

I have my Manychat and Convert Kit accounts integrated so it’s completely seamless lead generation.

BUT WE’RE NOT DONE YET…

Very Important Last Step (DON’T SKIP!)

Whether you are JUST sending the link or implementing ALL of these amazing features

Once you’re finished setting up your automation, make sure to click the “GO LIVE” button in the top right corner.

And voila! You just spent less than 10 minutes setting up a simple and easy automation through Manychat that won’t only help you boost engagement…

But can also grow your following AND your email list. 

Give me a comment below if you found this helpful!

And if you want to test these features out for yourself, don’t forget to use code “ALEX”  to try out Manychat PRO for FREE for 30 whole days!

And if you want to learn more marketing tips to grow your online business, make sure to check out this blog where I explain my exact marketing strategy using both organic social and email. 

Until next time, I’m Alex. Ciao for now!

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