What you need before your first DM

Use accounts you own or are authorized to manage. Most people use fresh "throwaway" accounts dedicated to outreach, not their personal brand — because automation always carries some ban risk.

• Aged accounts convert best. An account with a profile photo, a few posts, and some history looks human. You can buy aged accounts from account marketplaces, or grow your own over a few weeks.
• Have the login ready: username, password, and the 2FA key (the base32 "setup key", not the 6-digit code) if 2FA is on.
• Fastest add: paste login:password:2FAkey into the copilot (bottom-right in the app) and it onboards the account for you.
• Keep spares. Always have a warmed backup account or two ready, so a restriction is a quick swap instead of a standstill. Never run your only account — see Account safety below.

A proxy gives each account a stable, separate IP address so Instagram sees a consistent location — the way a real phone would. Sharing one IP across many accounts is the fastest way to get them all blocked.

• Get a "sticky residential" or "mobile" proxy — residential/mobile IPs look like real homes/phones. Avoid datacenter proxies; Instagram flags them.
• "Sticky" means the IP stays the same for that account (not rotating). Buy one proxy per Instagram account.
• Providers sell these as host:port:user:pass. Add it under Proxy in the app, then bind it to the account.

These are the Instagram handles you want to reach — people who don't follow you yet but fit your ideal customer.

• Where to find them: followers of competitor or complementary accounts, people using a niche hashtag, or engagers on relevant posts.
• How to add them: in a campaign, paste handles one per line (or comma-separated). Start with a few hundred — quality beats volume.
• Tighter targeting = higher reply rates. A relevant list of 200 outperforms a random list of 2,000.

Connect Calendly or Cal.com and the loop closes itself: when a prospect books, the lead moves to booked and its remaining follow-ups stop. Skip this and everything else still works — you just mark bookings by hand.

• Paste your booking link into Settings, or into a specific reply agent if each client has their own calendar. The AI shares it when a prospect is ready, not before.
• Copy your webhook URL from Settings → Booking calendar. In Calendly add it under Integrations → Webhooks for invitee.created and invitee.canceled; in Cal.com under Settings → Developer → Webhooks for booking created and cancelled.
• Paste the signing secret back into the same panel. Without it we cannot prove a booking really came from your calendar, so do not skip this step.