TTC's audience comments at roughly 15 to 40 times the normal Instagram rate. Those comments currently go nowhere. This is a plan to intercept them, open conversations, fill draws that are already running, and end up with a customer database Instagram cannot take away.
The whole thing in about two minutes.
A normal Instagram account gets 1 to 3 comments per 100 likes. TTC gets 45. Comment-to-DM only works if people comment, and most accounts fail that test before they start. TTC passes it by a wide margin, and nothing about their content has to change.
Someone comments, the comment sits there, and that is the end of the relationship. Each one is a conversation that could have been opened and an email address that could have been captured.
Margin on a draw is ticket revenue minus the prize. The prize cost locks the moment the draw is announced but the revenue does not, so sell-through is the whole game. Every ticket above break-even is close to pure profit. That makes filling a running draw more valuable per head than winning a new follower.
You can only message someone for 24 hours after they contact you. Most brands have no reason for a customer to get back in touch, so the window shuts and stays shut. A comp site has four reasons every week: the draw opens, closes, runs, and a winner is announced.
Palladium Competitions, 500,000 followers. 99.8% of delivered messages opened, 94.4% clicked. Email runs at roughly 25% and 2 to 3%. Even with half the messages blocked, it produced about fifteen times the clicks email would have.
Messages to people who had just commented delivered at 84.6%. The same account broadcasting to its stored list delivered at 49.2%, with a platform warning attached. Build on the cycle, not the list.
A comment converts to a player at roughly 0.4%. An inbound DM question converts at roughly 10%. About 25 times better per interaction. Someone typing "how does this actually work" has already decided they are interested and is looking for a reason to say yes.
One Reel got 21,700 views and 104 comments. Another got 8,000 views and 115 comments. The smaller one captured more people, at three times the rate. Chasing viral reach is the obvious instinct and the wrong one.
The automation should be off-the-shelf software at about £40 a month. The part worth building is the connection pushing every contact and every purchase into TTC's own database. Without it there is no segmentation, so half the plan cannot run at all.
The sample
| Content | Views | Likes | Comments | Comments as % of views | Comments per 100 likes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reel 1 | 11,600 | 265 | 105 | 0.91% | 40 |
| Reel 2 | 8,000 | 163 | 68 | 0.85% | 42 |
| Reel 3 | 21,700 | 275 | 104 | 0.48% | 38 |
| Reel 4 | 8,000 | 170 | 115 | 1.44% | 68 |
| Reels combined | 49,300 | 873 | 392 | 0.80% | 45 |
| Photo post 1 | not supplied | 234 | 19 | n/a | 8 |
| Photo post 2 | not supplied | 253 | 67 | n/a | 27 |
Reel 4 is highlighted because it is the outlier, and understanding it is the highest-value unknown in this document.
Assuming roughly one Reel a day, with photo posts less frequent:
Per-post figures and follower count are real, supplied from the account. Monthly figures are an extrapolation from a four-Reel sample and an assumed daily posting rate, so treat them as an order of magnitude rather than a forecast. Cadence and a 30-day average should be pulled from Instagram Insights before anything is committed to.
From TTC's own public pages: live draws already run on Instagram, entry uses a skill question rather than a free-entry route, instant wins run alongside scheduled draws from £100 up to several thousand, the site is 18+, winners are notified by phone or email within seven days and cash is paid within 24 hours, and there is a separate Facebook community page running free draws. Lifetime prizes stand at around £27,300 across 86 winners.
There is also a second Instagram account, @toptiercomps, styled "TopTier Competitions". Ownership unconfirmed and worth checking.
The single most important number about TTC is 45 comments per 100 likes against a typical 1 to 3.
The reason is obvious once you see it. Competition content asks people to comment: answer the question, name your colour, tag who you would take. The audience is already trained into the exact behaviour this system depends on. Most accounts have to change their content to make this work. TTC does not.
| Views | Comments | Capture rate | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reel 3 | 21,700 | 104 | 0.48% |
| Reel 4 | 8,000 | 115 | 1.44% |
Reel 4 had 2.7 times less reach and captured more people, at three times the rate. The extra 13,700 views on the bigger Reel were almost all passive scrolling.
Do not build the strategy around chasing reach. Build it around the ask. Working out what Reel 4 did differently and repeating it deliberately is worth more than any amount of extra distribution. It also means the pilot is cheap, because no viral hit is required to prove the system works.
28,000 followers, an average Reel reaching 12,300 of them, engagement around 1.1%. That is a lot of people not paying attention.
For a competition site there is a straightforward explanation. Followers acquired through giveaways are low-intent by design. Someone follows to enter one draw, does not win, goes quiet, and never gets round to unfollowing. TTC has been accumulating that population for as long as it has been running.
Those people cannot be reached by email or SMS, because TTC never captured their details. Instagram is the only place they still exist.
Reels run at 45 comments per 100 likes, photo posts at 8 and 27. The automation works identically on both, so the split is about who sees them rather than what the software can do.
| Surface | Who it reaches | Job |
|---|---|---|
| Reels | Followers plus cold traffic via Reels tab and Explore | Volume capture |
| Photo posts | Mostly existing followers | Warm audience, repeat customers |
| Stories | Followers only, but a reaction is the lowest-friction reply available | Reopening the window |
| Lives | Followers plus a push notification | The draw itself |
There is also a compounding effect that only really runs on Reels. Comment volume is a ranking signal, so asking for a keyword comment raises comments, which raises distribution, which brings in more people who comment. On a photo post that loop mostly runs inside the audience they already have.
The margin on a competition is ticket revenue minus the cost of the prize. Illustratively: sell £100 of tickets against a £75 prize and the draw makes £25.
The prize cost is fixed the moment the draw is announced. The revenue is not.
| Sell-through | Ticket revenue | Prize cost | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100% | £100 | £75 | £25 |
| 85% | £85 | £75 | £10 |
| 75% | £75 | £75 | £0 |
| 60% | £60 | £75 | -£15 |
Illustrative ratios only. TTC's real prize-to-ticket ratio is one of the six figures requested in Part twelve.
Two things follow. A draw does not fail gently: it crosses from profitable to loss-making over a narrow band of sell-through, which is why competition sites extend draws or switch to a cash alternative rather than let one land underwater.
And more usefully, every ticket sold above break-even is close to pure margin, because the prize does not get more expensive. Entries are not worth a flat amount each. Those landing late in a draw that is already most of the way to filling are worth several times those landing early.
On a straight reading, the acquisition flow looks most important because it brings new people in. On the economics, the draw-closing flow is the money flow: it pushes incremental entries into draws already running, against a prize already paid for, at the point on the curve where each ticket is worth most.
Acquisition builds the audience. Draw-closing converts it into margin.
Benchmark account
Palladium Competitions, a 500,000-follower UK competition site, on Facebook Messenger. Data window 24 June to 8 July 2025.
| Flow | Sent | Delivered | Opened | Clicked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Broadcast to the whole list Ticket discount offer | 3,405 | 49.2% | 99.8% | 94.4% |
| Triggered by a comment Nightly freebie post | 298 | 84.6% | 100% | 99.6% |
Worked through on the 3,405-message broadcast: roughly 1,675 delivered, and roughly 1,580 of those clicked through. The same 3,405 names contacted by email would have produced somewhere around 100 clicks.
Even with more than half the messages blocked before they arrived, the channel produced roughly fifteen times the clicks email would have from the same list.
The account carried a platform warning stating that 100% of recent messages sent after the 24-hour window were blocked to prevent a policy violation. That is why the broadcast delivered at only 49.2%.
The second flow, same account and same fortnight, delivered at 84.6%. The only difference is that those people had just commented, so their window was open.
Messaging people whose window is open delivers at around 85%. Blasting a stored list delivers at around 49% and earns a policy warning.
Which is why this plan is built around the draw cycle rather than a contact list. A plan built on list size would decay month after month and nobody would understand why.
That last figure matters. Contacts go quiet at a real rate, which is another reason the recurring cycle beats the raw list.
The nightly free draw. Their comment-triggered flow hung off a "tonight's freebie" post. A free draw every night gives people a reason to comment every night, which keeps the messaging window open continuously rather than weekly. It is the cheapest possible engine for this system and TTC do not currently run one.
Themed discount codes rather than discount blasts. Their offer was framed as "you have been chosen", tied to the competition's theme, carrying two bundle prices with named codes (300 tickets at £7.50, 1,000 at £22.50). It reads as something that happened to you rather than a promotion sent to everybody.
This is Facebook Messenger, not Instagram. Mechanics are broadly comparable and the 24-hour rule works the same way, but treat the delivery figures as a comparable rather than a prediction.
That account has 500,000 followers against TTC's 28,000. The rates transfer, the volumes do not. At roughly 1% of followers converted into contacts, the equivalent ceiling for TTC is in the hundreds to low thousands. TTC's far better comment ratio should push that higher, but nobody should be promised a five-figure list.
2,940 comments a month is not 2,940 people. The same engaged core comments on nearly everything, so a few hundred names generate most of that volume.
The contact list will build fast for four to six weeks and then flatten once the active core is harvested. After that, growth depends on reaching the dormant audience and beyond.
Say this at the start and the slowdown is a predicted milestone. Leave it out and month two is a difficult meeting. Report unique contacts and delivery rate, never comment volume.
| Trigger | Works? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Comment on a post or Reel | Reliable | Keyword or any comment. Can target a specific post, any post, or the next one published. |
| Comment during a Live | Yes | Fires while the draw is running |
| Story reply | Yes | |
| Story emoji reaction | Yes | Lowest-friction reopener available |
| Story mention (they tag you) | Yes | |
| Shares your post to their story | Yes | High intent, almost nobody uses it |
| DM keyword | Yes | Any inbound message containing a word |
| Conversation Starters | Yes | Tappable menu for people who have never messaged |
| Default reply (no keyword match) | Yes | The FAQ catch-all |
| New follower | Unreliable | See below |
| Likes on posts, Reels or stories | No | A like creates no permission and no reply path |
| Saves, profile views, story views | No |
"Automatically DM every new follower" gets pitched constantly. It exists, but it is a Meta beta with an account-level eligibility lottery and no published criteria. There is no follow webhook in Meta's publicly subscribable fields. Even when it works it fires once per follower ever, capped at one per user per week, and ManyChat's own forum is full of people reporting silent failures.
Use it if the account happens to have it. Never make it a pillar. The reliable substitute is a pinned welcome post with a comment keyword.
Meta only lets you message someone who has made contact. A comment gives you a public reply path, a message or story reply gives you a direct one. A like gives you neither permission nor anything to reply to.
The useful exception is that a story emoji reaction does fire the trigger, because underneath it is a direct message and lands in the inbox. A like on the story does not. That distinction matters, because "react with a flame" converts far better than "reply to this story" and does the same job.
| Asset | Can you broadcast to it? | Owned by |
|---|---|---|
| DM contact list | Only inside the 24-hour window. Blasting the stored list delivered 49.2% and earned a policy warning. | The software vendor, ultimately Meta |
| Instagram Broadcast Channel | Yes. No window, no send limit. One-way: reactions and polls, no replies. | Meta |
| Email and phone in their own database | Yes, subject to consent | TTC |
"Grow the subscriber base so we can broadcast to them" is the natural way to describe the aim, but the DM list is not a broadcast list in the email sense. It is a conversation list, and it only performs when something keeps giving people a reason to make contact. The assets to grow for broadcast are the Broadcast Channel and the email file. The DM flows are how you recruit into both.
| Aim | How | What it produces |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Win new customers | Reels, comment-to-DM, plus answering inbound questions | New players |
| 2 · Fill draws already running | Draw-closing urgency to an open window | Margin, because the prize is already paid for |
| 3 · Grow the opted-in base | Broadcast Channel plus email into TTC's own database | An owned audience that survives an algorithm change |
| 4 · Deflect repeat questions | Conversation Starters, keywords, default reply | Time back, and new players as a side effect |
Aims one and three are the obvious ones. Aim two carries the money and aim four turned out to have the best conversion rate of anything in the plan. Existing-customer frequency and basket size arrive largely as a by-product of aims one and two, because most people responding to any given flow are already customers.
| # | Trigger | What the software does |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Comment on a Reel or post | Detects keyword, posts a public reply, sends a DM, button opens the window, captures the email |
| 2 | Story emoji reaction | Reaction arrives as a DM, auto-replies with the last-chance link, tags the contact as a closing-responder |
| 3 | Comment during a Live | Fires mid-broadcast, confirms entry, teases the next draw, offers the Broadcast Channel |
| 4 | Inbound DM, Conversation Starters, default reply | Matches the question, answers instantly, escalates to a human only when no match, tags by question type |
| 5 | Share to story | Detects the share, thanks them, asks for a video testimonial |
| X | All of the above | Tags every contact by source, draw and keyword, then pushes to TTC's database by webhook |
Trigger: comment on a Reel
Prize-reveal Reel with a keyword call to action. Public reply plus a DM carrying the entry link, opt-in button, then email capture. The volume flow and the one the pilot tests.
Trigger: story emoji reaction · the money flow
A story saying "react with a flame for the last-chance link". The reaction is user-initiated so it legitimately reopens the window, and it is the lowest-friction action on the platform.
On the economics this is the most valuable flow in the plan. It drives entries into a draw already running against a prize already paid for. A handful of extra entries on a draw sitting near break-even is worth more than a large number of new followers.
Trigger: comment during a Live
TTC already run draws live on Instagram, so the moment exists and is unused. Comments trigger a DM confirming entry and teasing the next competition. It is also the best moment to recruit into the Broadcast Channel, because the whole audience is present at once.
Trigger: DM keyword, Conversation Starters, default reply · best conversion in the plan
Covers what arrives every cycle: where are my tickets, when is the draw, did I win, how do I claim, how does the skill question work, is this legitimate.
Originally filed as a time-saver. On the maths it converts roughly 25 times better per interaction than a comment, which makes it an acquisition channel. Every unanswered question at that conversion rate is a customer lost, so instant and complete answers at 11pm on a Sunday is a sales mechanism, not admin.
Trigger: share to story
When a winner shares their win, an automatic DM thanks them and asks for a short video testimonial. Winner content is the trust engine for a competition site, nobody automates collecting it, and the moment someone has just won is when they are most likely to say yes.
These fire on what someone does or fails to do once they are already in the system. This is where most of the value sits, and none of it is possible without the data connection described in Part nine.
Cheapest improvement in the build
Someone clicks the button and then nothing happens. You have 24 hours and most setups use it once.
| Timing | Message |
|---|---|
| +2 hours | Soft check, did the link work |
| +8 hours | Social proof, last winner, tickets remaining |
| +20 hours | Last call before the window shuts |
Estimated uplift on the flow's conversion: 30% to 60% against a single message. Costs nothing and uses a window you already have.
Convert 1 to 3% per campaign
In the contact list, never bought. The message is trust and mechanics: how the skill question works, is it legitimate, previous winners, what happens if you win.
Convert 15 to 30%
Upsell and frequency. Bundle offers, new draw alerts, their favourite prize category. This is the basket-size and return-rate objective.
Convert 3 to 8%
Win-back, personalised. The "I am feeling friendly today, a few people are getting 10% off to come back" play, aimed at a segment rather than broadcast.
Convert 10 to 25%, the highest of the segments
Clicked through, landed on site, did not complete. Requires the site to fire back into the automation. Almost nobody in this space does it.
Direct margin protection
A competition is underselling, so it gets pushed to a chosen segment before it crosses break-even. "This one is not getting the love it deserves." This is the flow that speaks directly to the economics in Part three.
Cheaper than win-back
The benchmark account lost 2,019 contacts to inactive in a fortnight. A flow that fires before someone lapses costs far less than recovering them afterwards.
Retention starts at purchase one
A first-time buyer gets a short sequence aimed at a second purchase, rather than being left alone until they lapse at month four.
Segments B, C, D and G are by definition people who have not interacted recently, which is exactly the 49.2% case from the benchmark data.
So none of these can be a straight broadcast. The pattern has to be window-opener first, then the segmented message: a story asking for a reaction, or a comment prompt aimed at that segment, and then the real message lands inside an open window at around 85% rather than 49%.
The exception is the Broadcast Channel, which has no window at all. That is where the never-played and lapsed segments are best served, at the cost of it being one-way.
Two further flows were raised and not settled: a referral flow letting opted-in contacts invite a friend, and pre-draw top-up reminders for people who have already entered but might add tickets before it closes. Both are straightforward to build if wanted.
100 comments → about 85 DMs delivered → about 60 opted-in contacts → about 6 plays
So roughly seven in ten commenters become an opted-in contact, and roughly six in a hundred go on to play.
| Route | Interactions per month | New customers | Conversion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Comments | ~2,940 | ~11 | 0.4% |
| Inbound DM questions | ~300 | ~30 | 10% |
A DM question converts roughly 25 times better than a comment. Ten times less volume, three times the customers. Someone commenting "blue" on a giveaway Reel wants a free car. Someone typing "how does this actually work" has already decided they are interested.
| Step | Rate | People |
|---|---|---|
| Comments | n/a | 98 |
| DM delivered | 84.6% (real) | 83 |
| Clicked, opted in | 70% (discounted from 99.6%) | 58 |
| Already customers, then play at 15 to 30% | 40% | 23 → 3 to 7 plays |
| New prospects, then play at 2 to 5% | 60% | 35 → 1 to 2 plays |
| Plays per Reel | about 4 to 9 |
Note the split: most immediate revenue is existing customers buying again.
| Step | Rate | People |
|---|---|---|
| Story views | ~10% of followers | 2,800 |
| Reacts to the ask | 2 to 5% | 56 to 140 |
| DM delivered | ~95%, window fresh | 53 to 133 |
| Clicked | 90%, high intent | 48 to 120 |
| Plays | 20 to 40% | about 10 to 48 |
| Step | Rate | People |
|---|---|---|
| Live viewers | n/a | 200 to 800 |
| Comment during | 20 to 40% | 40 to 320 |
| DM delivered | ~95% | 38 to 304 |
| Clicked | 80% | 30 to 243 |
| Plays, next draw | 10 to 20% | 3 to 49 |
| Joins Broadcast Channel | 20 to 40% | 6 to 97 |
| Step | Rate | People |
|---|---|---|
| Inbound DMs | estimate | ~300 |
| Auto-resolved without a human | 70 to 85% | 210 to 255 |
| Pre-purchase questions | 40% | 120 |
| Plays | 15 to 35% | 18 to 42 |
| Step | Rate | People |
|---|---|---|
| Winners | estimate | 20 to 40 |
| Share to story | 20 to 40% | 4 to 16 |
| Agree to a testimonial | 30 to 50% | 1 to 8 |
| Flow | Events per month | Plays |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Draw opens | 30 Reels | 120 to 270 |
| 2 · Draw closing | 8 to 16 stories | 80 to 770 |
| 3 · Live draws | 4 to 8 lives | 12 to 390 |
| 4 · Questions | ~300 DMs | 18 to 42 |
| Total plays | about 230 to 1,470 | |
| Of which new customers | about 30 to 90 | |
| Contacts added | 400 to 900 a month, flattening after 4 to 6 weeks |
Most of the volume is existing customers playing more. That is not a weakness, it is frequency and basket size arriving fastest because those people already trust the site. But total plays must never be presented as new customers.
Flow 2 carries the money, Flow 4 carries the best conversion, Flow 1 is the recruiter that feeds both. If only two get funded, it is 2 and 4.
Three inputs are missing and each one moves the answer: site conversion rate (moves everything linearly), real inbound DM volume (available from Meta Business Suite today, and the weakest assumption here), and story reach. All three land within a fortnight of the pilot starting. Nothing in this section is a forecast.
Prove it before building anything
Take the next draw-open Reel. Add a keyword call to action. The software replies publicly and sends the entry link by DM. One opt-in button. Capture the email.
Measure five things: comment volume before and after the call to action, delivery rate, open rate, opt-in click rate, and click-through to site. That replaces every assumption in Part eight with real numbers.
Run it on a normal Reel, not a big one. Their own data says the 8,000-view Reel out-captured the 21,700-view one.
Also in the same fortnight: work out what Reel 4 did differently, and pull the real inbound DM volume from Business Suite.
The actual product
Build the five trigger flows around the rhythm the business already has, plus the in-window follow-up sequence, which is the cheapest uplift available.
Three additions in this phase. The nightly free draw copied from the benchmark, turning a weekly reason to make contact into a daily one. The Broadcast Channel, which has no window and no send limit and is the only way to reach people not seeing the Reels. And the data connection, moved forward from phase three because every behavioural flow depends on knowing who has played.
Where the value compounds
With purchase data flowing back, the Layer two flows switch on: never-played, active, lapsed, almost-bought, draw rescue, going-quiet, post-purchase. This is also where personalised messaging becomes possible, because for the first time there is data worth personalising against.
An average Reel reaches 44% of the follower base. Automation harvests whatever the content reaches; it cannot improve the reach itself. Those are two different problems and this plan only solves one. Better said plainly than letting the automation get blamed for a distribution issue.
| Option | Verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Off-the-shelf software (ManyChat) | Phases 1 and 2 | Roughly £15 to £65 a month, and it absorbs every Meta platform change for you |
| Custom data connection | Build this, phase 2 | Small piece of work, and a prerequisite for the entire behavioural layer |
| Fully custom integration | No | App review, ongoing maintenance, and you inherit every platform change Meta ships |
| AI-driven conversational agent | Phase 3, stronger case than expected | Answer quality is the conversion rate on the best-converting route |
At 28,000 followers and roughly 700 commenters a week, a custom Meta integration cannot pay for itself. Off-the-shelf software does the flows perfectly well and someone else maintains it.
What is worth building is the connection pushing every contact and every purchase between the site and the automation: email, phone, which draw, which keyword, which surface, whether they played and when.
It is not simply a nice asset to own. The software only sees Instagram behaviour, so without purchase data flowing back there is no segmentation, and Layer two cannot run at all. That is five trigger flows instead of thirteen.
Any freelancer can set up flows. Almost none set up the data layer, because it lives outside the tool. If the engagement ends, TTC keeps a database either way.
Originally parked as a phase three luxury. The Flow 4 finding strengthens it: the highest-converting route in the system is answering questions, and a keyword tree handles "when is the draw" well but handles "is this actually gambling, how does the skill question work" badly. That second question is exactly what stands between a sceptic and a first purchase, and on that route answer quality is the conversion rate.
Does not exist here. A Messenger-only advertising format that Meta has been retiring, with no Instagram equivalent. Any plan quoting a fraction of a penny per message is describing a channel that is not available.
Not available in the UK. Comment-to-DM is in beta and restricted to Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. That is TikTok's own API restriction rather than any one vendor's, so no tool routes around it. TikTok stays a traffic channel. Worth revisiting in six months.
Not possible. A like creates no messaging permission. This will not change.
Too unreliable. Meta beta, eligibility lottery, silent failures. Use a pinned welcome post instead.
Delivers about 49% and triggers a policy warning. The benchmark account's own data shows it. Broadcasts have a place, but the system is built on the cycle, not the list.
Not credible at this scale. Plans of this type are usually written for accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers and then recycled. The numbers here are TTC's own, and the benchmark is labelled as a benchmark.
Everything else describes how the system behaves. These turn it into money. Without them the plan can only promise activity; with them it can be priced per draw.
| Figure | Their number | What it lets us work out |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per acquisition | The benchmark this is judged against. If a DM-acquired customer costs less than the current CPA, that is the business case in one line. | |
| Average order value | What a click out of a DM is worth, and which ticket bundle the offer should push. | |
| Spend over three months | The value of a recovered dormant customer, which the whole re-engagement side rests on. | |
| Length of retention | Where customers drop off, so the win-back fires before that point rather than after it. | |
| Margin on a competition | What one extra late entry is worth. Turns the draw-closing flow from a good idea into a pound figure. | |
| New customers per month | The base this is measured against, and what a realistic uplift looks like. |
Average order value, three-month spend and retention together price a single recovered customer. Multiply by a conservative recovery rate and the dormant audience stops being "16,000 people not paying attention" and becomes a number. The margin figure does the same for the draw-closing flow. CPA and new customers per month give the before and after.
Run the phase 1 pilot on the next draw. One Reel, one keyword, one opt-in button, five numbers measured. It costs almost nothing, needs no commitment beyond a fortnight, and turns every estimate in this document into a fact.