The Problem
Every time someone messages my Instagram, that conversation just sits inside Instagram. If I want that lead in my CRM, or want my team notified in Slack, or want it logged in a spreadsheet for follow up, I used to do all of that by hand. Copy the name, copy what they asked, paste it somewhere else, repeat for every single DM.
Once volume picked up, this became the actual bottleneck, not the conversations themselves, just the busywork of moving that information somewhere useful.
The Solution
Make.com has an Instagram module that can trigger off a new DM and hand that data off to basically any of the 3,000 plus apps sitting in their ecosystem. Google Sheets, Slack, HubSpot, Notion, email, whatever your stack actually is. One trigger, endless places that information can go.
Prerequisites
Before building this, make sure you have:
- An Instagram account set to Business or Creator
- That account connected to a Facebook Page
- A Make.com account, free tier works fine to test this
- The specific app you want to connect already set up with its own Make.com connection, for example your Google account authorized if you’re sending data to Sheets
Step By Step Scenario Breakdown
- Start a new scenario in Make and search for the Instagram module as your trigger. Choose the option that watches for new messages.
- Connect your Instagram Business account when prompted, this uses the same official connection Make maintains through Meta’s API.
- Add a filter right after the trigger if you only want certain messages passed through, for example only messages containing a specific word, rather than logging every single DM.
- Add your second module, whichever app you’re sending the data to. If it’s Google Sheets, choose Add a Row. If it’s Slack, choose Send a Message.
- Map the fields from the Instagram trigger, sender name, message text, timestamp, into the corresponding fields on your destination app.
- Turn the scenario on and send yourself a test DM to confirm the row appears, or the Slack message lands, before trusting it with real conversations.
Visual Proof
Screenshot below shows my actual scenario, Instagram trigger on the left feeding straight into a Google Sheets module, with the mapped fields visible in the panel. Every new DM that matches my filter shows up as a new row within a few seconds of sending.
A Quick Note on the Reply Side
This scenario handles getting DM data out to other apps. If you’re also looking to automate the replies themselves, not just log them, I run InstantDM for that part on my own accounts, since it’s built specifically for Instagram and handles the reply automation natively. The two aren’t competing with each other, Make is what connects Instagram to everything else, and the reply automation is a separate piece entirely.
Over to You
Anyone else piping Instagram DMs into other tools like this? Curious what you’re all connecting it to, CRMs, spreadsheets, something else entirely. Drop your setup below, always curious to see how other people are wiring this.