People usually set the bot up last, after the CRM and the links, which is backwards. The bot is what a cold click actually lands on, and until it exists the tracking link has nowhere deterministic to point. Build it early, even if it only says hello and hands you the conversation.
Decide what it is for before you create it
Three honest answers, and they build differently. A bot that greets a cold click and hands you a qualified human. A bot that answers the same eleven questions your community asks so you stop typing them. A bot that runs the whole path to a purchase and stops for your approval before granting anything.
Start with the first one. It is useful on day one, it cannot embarrass you, and it produces the transcripts of stalling that tell you what the second and third versions need to say.
Create the bot, then connect it
Telegram bots are created by talking to BotFather, which gives you a username and a token. Keep the token like a password: anyone holding it can act as your bot. Give the bot a picture, a name people will recognise as your business and a short description, because that is the screen a stranger from a paid ad reads before pressing start.
Connect it in Scalegram on the Integrations page. Everything in the product is connected there once, at the account level, and every other screen only picks from what is already connected. It is a deliberately dull rule and it is what stops a workspace ending up with two half configured bots and nobody sure which one is live. Pasting a token is also where the platform tests it: a connection that saves without being checked against the real service is a connection that will fail on your first real lead.
If you also want the assistant answering DMs on your personal profile, that is a separate switch inside Telegram itself, covered in business mode. The two coexist, and the same person arriving through both doors stays one contact.
Give it something to say
A flow, not a script. Three blocks is enough to launch: greet and read intent, ask the one or two things you genuinely need to know, hand over or send the link. Write the facts the bot may state, keep them short, and make sure everything in them is currently true, including the price. The block model is described in how flow blocks work.
Set your handover rules while you are there. Which questions mean a human takes over, and what the bot says while you are on the way. And confirm the checkpoint behaviour for anything that grants access, because that should stop and ask you in your own Telegram rather than happening because a conversation went well.
Give it a link, then test it as a stranger
Create a tracking link pointing at the bot so every arriving contact carries the campaign that produced them, using the start parameter path described in tracking links. Put that link in the ad, the bio and the pinned post. Never publish a raw t.me link to the bot for a paid campaign; you are throwing the attribution away at the door.
Then test properly, which means from a second Telegram account that has never spoken to you, on a phone, through the actual link. Check five things: the bot answers within a few seconds, the contact appears in the client list with the campaign attached, the flow moves on when you answer and not before, a rude or off-topic message does not derail it, and a request for something that costs you money produces an approval prompt on your own Telegram instead of a grant.
What to check before the first ad runs
Two more things people skip. Confirm the bot's start message reads like a business and not like a bare command prompt, because a stranger who pressed start from an ad is deciding in that first screen whether this is legitimate. And confirm what happens when somebody sends a photo, a voice note or a sticker, since a flow written entirely for typed sentences meets all three within a day of going live.
Day two, and the week after
Read where people stopped answering. That is the single most useful signal, and it usually points at one block that asks too much too early. Fix that one block. Do not add five more.
Check the language behaviour if you sell across markets, because a bot that answers a Spanish message in English loses the lead in one turn. Check that purchases are landing on the right contact if you have a checkout connected. And keep an eye on what the flow writes to fields, since the conversation itself is never stored and a fact the flow failed to record is a fact nobody has.
Do not point paid traffic at a bot you have not tested from a fresh account. The failure is never dramatic. It is a flow that waits for an answer it already got, and you find out after the budget is spent.
The wider tour of what the bot connects to once it is running, from purchase sync to conversion events, is in the Scalegram overview. Pricing for both Scalegram and the sister product CopySignals is on their own sites, at scalegram.io.
"Test the bot from a phone that has never messaged you, through the real link. Half the broken funnels I have looked at worked perfectly for the owner and nobody else."
— Alex Onta, Executive Director, SINGUARD
Key Takeaways
- Create the bot in BotFather, treat the token as a password, and connect it once on the Integrations page where every other screen picks from what is already connected.
- Launch with three blocks, greet, qualify and hand over, with short facts that are currently true, then split the block that fails rather than adding new ones.
- Point a tracking link at the bot so the start parameter carries the campaign in with the contact, and never publish a raw link for a paid campaign.
- Test from a second account on a phone through the real link, and confirm that anything costing you money produces an approval prompt rather than a grant.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a separate bot for each campaign?
No. One bot handles many campaigns, because the attribution rides on the tracking link and its start parameter rather than on the bot identity. Separate bots make sense for genuinely separate brands or audiences.
Where do I connect the bot token?
On the Integrations page, once, at the account level. Every other screen in the product selects from what is connected there rather than asking for the token again.
What should the bot do when it cannot answer something?
Hand over. Define the questions and keywords that trigger a handover, and have it say plainly that a person will follow up. Anything that grants access or costs you money stops for your approval regardless.
About the Author
Alex Onta is an Executive Director at SINGUARD. He built eTrader, the terminal, the mobile apps, eTrader Broker, Copytrading, Business and Community, along with the worldwide clustered-server infrastructure it all runs on, with his brother Roman Onta helping on the design, and he leads that division today. Together with Roman he builds the Prop Firm CRM, the Broker CRM, Scalegram and CopySignals, and the two of them carry worldwide compliance, payment processing and international business structuring side by side. He lives and works in Dubai for most of the year. Meet the executive duo leading Singuard's five divisions.