You write follow up emails to don’t get replies? Your follow-up email is ignored?
E-mail is one of the quickest ways to get in touch with prospects. Unfortunately, cold emailing has been overused and decision makers mailboxes are now saturated with prospecting emails.
Your emails are ignored, and you send follow-up emails that also get ignored, further increasing the problem!
Prospects receive an average of 35 emails / day but it can be way higher for key decision makers.
The solution is quite simple, you need to STAND OUT by having an original approach and a relevant message, but also follow-up to unreplied emails.
Why you should send follow-up emails?
When doing email outreach, 87% of replies require 2 to 4 follow-ups and never give up following-up until you get a reply.
Don’t get discouraged and keep in mind this simple principle :
A prospect who did not reply has not confirmed he is not interested and you should always follow-up to get an answer, even if negative
Sales engagement is a daily fight for your prospects’ attention. In a crowded space it is not rare that you emails don’t get replies.
Here are the 3 most important reasons why you should follow-up :
- 🙀 Your prospect is not interested by you email, therefor he deletes it
- 👀 Your prospect has seen your email but has no time to reply right now and just forgets about it
- ⛔️ Your prospect did not receive your email in his inbox and you are probably in the Spam box or Promotion tab
Rules for follow-up emails
Follow-up emails must arouse curiosity
It is very important to five your prospect the feeling he is a unique recipient of your follow-up emails.
The first most important thing for that is the subject line, because it should be good enough for your contact to open your email. The subject line must be very short, and never tell the whole story of the content of your email. Most of the time, email subject lines are too long or too descriptive, and you feel they were written by a marketer. This is what you don’t want.
These emails should be very short (2 or 3 sentences), in the text format without using HTML email template or images in most cases (this will improve your delivrability). Here’s an email structure that works most of the time to write good email copy:
- Reminder of the context of your solicitation
- A Call to Action (CTA) that is very clear and engaging in form of a question
Follow-up emails should be personalized
The second gold rule is personnalizing follow-up emails is key. Keep in mind your e-mail must be written in a personalized way to maximize your reply rate. Copywriting is very important and you should care about every word in your email, but using personalization if as important.
Follow-up emails must be spread over time
Keep in mind that timing is crucial to execute your follow-ups!
✅ Send between 3 to 5 follow-up emails over a period of 30 to 45 days
✅ Follow-ups should not be too spread (10 days maximum) or you will get forgotten
✅ Don’t focus on emails only. You can also follow up with phone calls or social network messages
The Ultimate Follow up Email that works every time : Puss in Boots
Here’s a conventional follow-up email sent 4 days after a first cold email :
Hi #{first_name},
Have you seen my previous email? I just wanted to know if you were available #{day} at #{hour} to participate in our event?
Thanks for your answer!
PS Should I also invite #{collegue_1}?
best
… Or here’s another example of a follow-up email for content marketing sent 10 days after the first cold email :
Hi #{first_name},
I just wanted to know what you though of our article #{article subject} ?
#{your product/service value} seems to be one of your current concerns. Would you have some time to discuss this?
These are very classical emails that are personalized but could get ignored because they are not very original.
“Puss in Boots”: the emotional follow-up email
Here’s our secret technique to stand. We call it the Puss in Boots technique and you should use it when all previous follow-up emails did not get reply.
If you could not convince your prospects to reply with a logical trigger, you should really try to touch then at an emotional level : Make them smile !
I know you don’t have time… but I am not loosing hope to get an answer from you so here’s my cutest face :
This kind of follow-up email will get your prospect’s attention, and you will get noticed. Of course, this is just a follow-up email example, but any time of image or gif that aims at making the prospect’s laugh is okay!
Here’s another example that has a similar effect
I decided to stay at the office until you reply to my previous email :
Your prospects will always remember you with this type of emotional emails, and even if they don’t have a need for your product or service right now, you will surely be the first person they think about if it becomes the case.
Now that you now how to write good follow-up email copy, did you now you could automate follow-up emails with Datananas ?
Our customers use Datananas to personalize emails with variables and schedule follow-up emails that are sent only if their prospects did not reply !
