DM broadcasts: message your group's subscribers directly

1What DM broadcasts are

A DM broadcast sends a private message from your bot to your group's audience — not a post in the group, but a one-to-one direct message to each recipient.

It reaches only members who have started the bot, which means they opted in and can legitimately receive a DM. This is your channel for announcements that deserve more than a chat message — a launch, an event, an important change.

2Who receives it

The audience is members of your group who have started your bot. Telm shows you both numbers: how many members exist, and how many of them are actually reachable by DM (subscribers).

The gap between the two is your growth opportunity — the more members who start the bot, the larger your reachable audience. A welcome flow with bot-DM verification is the natural way to grow that subscriber list, because verifying starts the bot.

3Quota and top-ups

Each plan includes a monthly DM allowance that resets at the start of each month. When you need more, you can top up so a big send never stalls for lack of headroom.

The dashboard shows a live summary: your plan quota, how much you have used this month, and how much headroom remains. If you run out mid-send, the broadcast pauses rather than failing outright, so you can top up and continue exactly where it stopped.

• Pro — 2,500 DMs per month included.
• Business — 10,000 DMs per month included.
• Need more in a busy month? Top up on demand.
• Top-ups are used only after the monthly quota is spent.

4Composing a broadcast

You write the message text and can attach a photo and inline link buttons, just like a scheduled post. A broadcast can be sent right away or scheduled for a later time.

Preview your audience size and remaining quota before sending, so there are no surprises about reach. What you see is exactly how many people the broadcast will attempt and how much of your quota it will use.

5Safe delivery

Telm sends at a controlled pace and handles the realities of DM at scale. If a recipient has blocked the bot, they are marked and skipped on future broadcasts, so you never waste an allowance on dead ends.

Transient failures retry, and every recipient ends in a clear status — sent, blocked, or failed — so you can see exactly how a broadcast landed. The paced sending also keeps you within Telegram's limits, whether you use the main Telm bot or your own white-label bot.

6Statuses, pause and resume

A broadcast moves through clear states: scheduled, running, and then completed — or paused, cancelled, or failed. You can pause a running broadcast yourself, and it pauses automatically when you run out of headroom.

Because progress is tracked per recipient, a resumed or retried broadcast never re-sends to people who already received it. Cancelling stops future sends without undoing those already delivered.

7Best practices

Broadcasts are powerful and easy to overuse. Keep them rare, relevant, and clearly worth a private message, and grow your reachable audience deliberately.

• Grow subscribers with a welcome flow that starts the bot during verification.
• Check audience size and remaining quota before you send.
• Reserve broadcasts for genuinely important announcements — frequent DMs get people to block the bot.
• Add a clear link button so recipients can act in one tap.
• Schedule for a sensible local hour rather than the middle of the night.

8Common mistakes

The two big surprises are reach and headroom: expecting to DM everyone, or running out of quota mid-send without a plan.

• Assuming every member is reachable — only those who started the bot are.
• Sending too often, which drives people to block the bot and shrinks your future reach.
• Not checking remaining quota, then being surprised the broadcast paused partway.
• Forgetting that blocked recipients are skipped, so counts may be lower than total members.