It is 11:47 at night. Someone who has never messaged the account before sends three words: "price of the beige one?" The seller is asleep. At 9:15 the next morning she answers with a number and a heart emoji.
Nothing comes back. The customer bought from another account at 11:52 the night before. Five minutes after she asked.
I have watched a lot of seller inboxes, and the pattern is boringly consistent. Most accounts don't have a traffic problem in the DM. They have a sentence problem. They improvise every conversation, and conversations improvised at midnight are bad ones.
So below are the actual messages, by industry, with the parts that quietly kill the sale marked. Steal them, change the nouns, keep the shape.
The four things every DM that sells contains
Strip away the emojis and every conversation that ends in a paid order has the same four parts.
- A direct answer to the thing they actually asked. Not "check our highlights".
- A price with context. The number, plus what it includes, so the number stops being scary.
- One next step, written as a question they can answer with one word.
- A true reason to reply now. Two left in that colour is a reason. "Limited offer!!" on the same product for six weeks is not, and your regulars know it.
Drop the fourth and you get a polite "thanks, I'll think about it". Drop the third and the conversation simply stops, which is worse, because you never learn why. Sizing, shipping and stock are usually the three questions that go unanswered longest, and each one alone is enough to end a chat.
Fashion and apparel: the size question is the sale
Clothing DMs open in three ways. A story reply, a screenshot of a post, or the single word "price?".
Here is the version worth sending:
Them: "price?"
You: "The beige linen shirt is $46, and shipping is free over $60. It runs true to size, so if you are between two, take the bigger one. Do you want M or L?"
Four lines, four jobs done. The price arrives, the sizing objection dies before she raises it, and the closing question has two options instead of an open door. Two options matter more than people think. Ask "what size do you need?" and she leaves to find a measuring tape and never returns.
Second script, the one that decides whether she pays today:
Them: "what if it doesn't fit?"
You: "You can swap it for another size within 7 days and we pay the return postage once. Want me to hold the M for you while you decide?"
Don't paste the full returns policy. Nobody reads eight lines of terms on a phone at night. One sentence of reassurance, then a question.
Don't answer "price?" with only a number either. A bare "$46" reads as annoyed, and half the time the reply is a thumbs up and silence.
Beauty and skincare: sell the routine, never a miracle
Beauty is the category where one wrong sentence costs more than a sale. Promise clear skin in seven days and the refund request arrives on day eight with screenshots.
Them: "is this good for oily skin?"
You: "Yes. It is water-based and non-comedogenic, so it sits light on oily skin instead of sliding off by noon. It is $28 for 50ml, which lasts about two months on morning use. Do you want it on its own, or with the cleanser? The two together are $45."
The bundle offer goes in once, as a question, and never again. Offer it twice and you sound like a checkout page.
Do name the mechanism in plain words. "Water-based, so it does not sit greasy" beats "advanced hydration technology" in every inbox I have seen.
Don't diagnose anything. If the message describes a skin condition, hand it to a human or say plainly that you would not sell into that without a professional opinion. It costs one order and buys a customer who trusts you.
Don't send before-and-after photos of someone else's face without permission. It reads as a red flag now, not proof.
Food and bakery: orders die on logistics, not taste
Food is the one category where price is the second question. The first is always "can you get it to me on the day I need it".
Them: "do you deliver to the east side?"
You: "Yes, we deliver there on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The chocolate cake for 8 people is $34 and we need 24 hours' notice. Which day do you need it for?"
Notice the order of information: area, day, price, cutoff, question. Reverse it and you get a customer who says yes to the price on Friday afternoon for a Friday evening birthday, and now somebody is disappointed and it is your fault.
Do state the cutoff time in the first reply. Every time.
Don't run a "DM for price" post and then reply with only the price. If they had to send a message to learn the number, they are already halfway to buying. Answer, then ask for the day.
Services: the booking is the product
Clinics, studios, tutors, repair shops. The DM is not selling an object, it is selling a slot in a calendar, so the script ends with a time and not a price.
Them: "how much is a session?"
You: "A first consultation is $30 and takes about 40 minutes. This week I have Tuesday at 10:00 or Wednesday at 17:30 open. Which suits you better?"
You may ask exactly one qualifying question before the price. One. "How long has it been bothering you?" is useful. A four-question intake form in a DM is where enquiries go to die.
Don't reply with "please call us". You just turned a warm message into a phone call that most people never make, and phone calls are the one thing your customer opened Instagram to avoid.
Don't quote a range that spans five times the low number without saying what moves it. "$50 to $250" without explanation reads as "we will decide after we see your car".
Follow-ups: three that work, one that doesn't
Most sellers send zero follow-ups, then blame the algorithm. Three is the whole sequence.
- Same evening, about three hours later. "Just so you are not waiting, the M is still here. Should I keep it aside until tonight?" Useful information, one question, no guilt.
- Next day. Send something new, not a reminder. A photo of the item worn, a short clip of the cake being boxed. New information gives them a reason to reopen the chat without losing face.
- Day five to seven, the clean close. "Should I keep this one aside for you, or let it go?" This gets more replies than the other two combined, because you gave them permission to say no. Some of those noes turn into yeses on the spot.
The one that does nothing: "Hi, just following up 🙂". No information, no question, no reason to answer. It is the DM equivalent of standing in the doorway.
Timing matters as much as wording. Answering inside a few minutes rather than the next morning is the single change that moves conversion most, which is why the five-minute window keeps showing up in the data.
The short do-and-don't list
- Do end every message with a question. Every one.
- Do give two options rather than an open choice.
- Do put the price in the DM. Hiding it does not create desire, it creates a screenshot sent to a competitor.
- Don't open with "Hi, how can I help?" when they already told you how.
- Don't use more than two emojis in a reply. Three starts to read as a bot from 2019.
- Don't send voice notes to a first-time buyer. She messaged instead of calling for a reason.
- Don't promise a delivery date you have not checked. One late order costs more than the margin on five.
If you want the longer version of how these fit together from first message to paid order, the DM sales playbook walks the whole path.
Scripts only work when somebody is awake to send them
Here is the uncomfortable part. Everything above assumes a person is holding the phone. At 40 messages a day, on a good week, nobody is holding the phone at 11:47pm, and that is exactly when the beige shirt question arrives.
That is the gap Vardast fills. It answers from your own product information, in your wording, with your prices and your shipping rules, and it passes the conversation to you the moment it stops being routine. The scripts stay yours. They just stop depending on you being awake.
Start with the four industries above. Write your version of each script tonight, keep them somewhere you can copy from, and watch what happens to the conversations that used to end in a thumbs up.