New Feature: Keyword and Emoji Auto-Replies for Faster, Predictable Engagement
December 07, 2025
ReplyFox is built around intelligent, context-aware AI replies — and most of the time, that’s the best way to respond on Instagram. AI can understand nuance, adapt tone, and reply based on brand context, product details, and intent. But there are also situations where you don’t need that level of reasoning. Sometimes the fastest and cleanest solution is a simple, predefined response triggered by something very specific.
To support those cases, ReplyFox now includes two new automation options: keyword-based auto-replies and emoji-only auto-replies. These allow you to set predictable rules that fire instantly when a comment exactly matches the criteria you define.
Keyword automation works by detecting specific words or phrases in a comment. You can decide how strict the matching should be: whether a comment should trigger a reply if it contains at least one of your keywords, all of them, an exact match, or a full phrase match. This flexibility allows broad rules for general engagement as well as highly precise triggers for things like pricing questions, giveaway participation, community phrases, product mentions, or repeated customer inquiries. Once triggered, ReplyFox selects one of your templates and posts the response automatically.
Emoji-only auto-replies work differently. Many Instagram comments contain only emojis, especially on visually appealing posts. These comments are short but meaningful expressions of support, and they often go unanswered simply because replying manually takes time. With emoji auto-replies enabled, ReplyFox detects comments made entirely of emojis and responds with one of your prewritten short templates, selected at random to keep engagement feeling natural. It's a simple addition, but it helps keep your comment section active and personal.
While these new options are helpful, the goal is not to replace the AI system. Instead, they complement it. AI remains the preferred and most capable reply method because it understands context and communicates using your brand’s tone and knowledge base. The rule-based replies are there for cases where the expected reply should always be the same, where the meaning is obvious without interpretation, or where speed and predictability matter more than personalization.
The result is a more flexible engagement system. AI handles the complex situations, while keyword and emoji rules manage the predictable, repetitive ones. Together, they allow you to respond faster, stay consistent, and keep engagement high without increasing manual effort.
These features are now live, and you can enable or configure them directly inside your dashboard.