DTC skincare brand, 40K Instagram followers, 4-person social team
The Challenge
The brand's IG following had ballooned to 2,800 over four years from event giveaways, influencer collabs, and reciprocal follows. Engagement rate had dropped from 4.2% to 1.6%. The team needed to clean the following list down to a curated 300-500 without losing 47 active brand partner accounts mixed in.
The Approach
Built a brand-partner whitelist from the team's HubSpot deal records (47 active partners + 18 PR contacts). Used IG Unfollow Pro's bio keyword filter to identify accounts with 'skincare', 'beauty editor', 'dermatologist' in bio (kept). Ran bulk unfollow on remaining accounts with 6+ month inactivity in 300-action batches across one weekend.
The Outcome
Following count went from 2,800 → 412. All 47 brand partners protected via whitelist. Engagement rate recovered from 1.6% → 3.8% over 30 days. Team time investment: 2 hours setup + 8 hours of weekend bulk processing.