About Twitter Direct Messages in Sprout Social

Twitter offers a feature that enables profiles to opt-in to receiving Direct Messages from anyone. This can be a huge benefit for customer service for brands, removing an obstacle for customers to privately message you sensitive information. This article will detail how to enable this for your own profile, and how to make use of these benefits in Sprout.

First, to opt-in to this feature, you must visit the settings for your Twitter page on the Twitter.com website. Select Security and Privacy and scroll down to the bottom of the page. Enable Receive Direct Messages from anyone.

With this enabled, you will be able to receive Direct Messages to your Twitter profile from users you do not follow. In Sprout, these messages will appear as normal in your Smart Inbox, and you will also be able to respond to those messages even if that person does not follow you back.

It's also possible to create new DMs to users that have this setting enabled, even if they do not follow you. You can tell if this option is available to you if they have an envelope icon in the right corner of their viewing contact page.

Include DM Link

When Receive Direct Messages from anyone is enabled for your Twitter account, Sprout will automatically recognize that setting when you are replying to a Twitter user. From the reply window, you can easily add a link to your reply that will automatically prompt a Twitter user to Direct Message your page.

Clicking the icon to Add DM Link in the reply window will automatically drop your available character count by 25 characters, and the user you reply to will be able to click the included link and start a Direct Message right from that Tweet.

Note: If you just recently enabled Receive Direct Messages from anyone on your Twitter account, it can take up to 2 hours before the Add DM Link option will appear in Sprout Social replies.