6 follow up email samples to use after you get no response
This article was originally published August 2, 2018 on our blog.
So you’ve built a list of prospects (hopefully with LeadGibbon’s help!) and started sending out your cold emails. Some of them immediately return a reply, and some of them don’t.
The road to a successful cold email campaign is hard. One of the trickiest obstacles to overcome is deciding on your approach to follow up emails.
How to approach writing a follow up that doesn’t suck?
Be fun or professional?
Should you follow up on your emails at all?
Let’s state the obvious first: yep, you should send a follow up message
Prospects often don’t reply to the first message you send them, but that doesn’t make them a case closed.
It can happen for a variety of reasons. Maybe they were too busy for email on that day. Maybe they saw your message but forgot to reply. Maybe they were out of office (and didn’t set up an out of office message). Maybe the pile of their unanswered emails got so out of hand that the single thought of opening Gmail makes them tremble with existential dread.
And maybe they are just not interested in your product — but even then you can turn naysayers around with a great follow up.
Some recent studies have shown that if your first email remains unanswered, there’s still a 1-in-4 chance that a prospect replies to a follow up. However, more than 70% of cold email campaigns stop after the first email.
Which means that if you’re not following up, you’re losing a sizable chunk of your business.
Still not convinced?
In 2014, Jason Zook of IWearYourShirt fame took a long hard look on over 2,000 deals he made via email and realized that more than 75% of them were made during some kind of a follow up.
Let’s go over this again: there’s already a decent chance people will reply to your follow ups, there’s an even better chance to close a deal after they reply, and most of your competition doesn’t do it.
The need to follow up on cold emails is indisputable.
But the proper way to do it? Not so much.
36 chambers of writing a great follow up
References to semi-obscure kung fu movies aside, writing a proper follow up basically requires utilizing the same tactics that you should use when writing an initial email.
Your follow up should be:
- Short
- Personal
- Fun
- Offer something of value
Sound easy? You won’t believe how many people still get it wrong.
For example, here’s a follow up that I’ve received a couple of months back.
Would you care to answer it?
Probably not. I certainly didn’t. This message is cold, it shames your prospect for being too busy with their own life and it doesn’t include their name or the name of the company that they are working for (which means that it’s probably a template).
This kind of a follow up isn’t just a waste of the sender’s time — it actively wastes the prospect’s time, and that’s even worse.
If this looks similar to your own approach to follow ups… just stop sending them. And read on.
Let’s discuss in detail what makes a proper follow up:
A great follow up is short
Nobody has the time to read through their email inbox.
If a person has already read your first email and decided not to reply, and you still make them read another huge message… Yeah, it won’t win you any new clients.
Besides, keep in mind the reason why you’re following up in the first place — it’s not to sell your prospect on your product all over again, it’s to remind them about that initial message they didn’t reply to.
So let’s look at a great follow up email sample after no response:
It puts the most important information — time of the previous email — right in the very beginning of the message. It will help your prospect remember what’s the deal with your follow up and find an original email if necessary.
The message runs just three sentences long (36 words to be exact), but it sounds enthusiastic and gives the recipient all the necessary information to remember why you’re following up in the first place. It’s pretty great.
Your follow up email is personal — and fun
To return back to that abysmal follow up example that I’ve mentioned a couple of paragraphs earlier, it’s actually pretty easy to mend its robotic, unnatural tone.
Just by mentioning the name of your prospect, their company and something that they actually did since the last time you’ve contacted them will work wonders for your follow up strategy.
Context matters, by the way. A message that tells me ‘great job on your latest blog post’ can be speaking about an article I’ve done in 2014, but if you put in an exact date, it means that you’ve done your homework:
Just by mentioning the name of your prospect, their company and something that they actually did since the last time you’ve contacted them will work wonders for your follow up strategy.
A message like this instantly tells me that a sender cares about who I am and what I do, and that I should probably reward their approach with a reply.
Oh, and here’s another tip: don’t be afraid to tell a joke — or maybe even turn your follow up into a fun little game. Here’s a stellar example:
Follow ups can be annoying by their very nature, so don’t be afraid to recognize that in a fun way.
This message is also great for another reason: it offers the recipient a shortcut to take. Let’s talk about that.
Include a decision shortcut
So the last example may be a bit of an overkill, but having a shortcut to a quick reply (instead of a regular call-to-action) is a great strategy to utilize in your follow ups.
Here’s what it means.
People often won’t reply to your message for one of two reasons:
- They are too busy
- They are not interested
When you’re following up, your main goal should be to receive an answer. And even if that answer is a brisk “Don’t message me again”, it’s a valid outcome: you can now spend that energy elsewhere.
So make it as simple as possible for people to reply by basically including their replies in your template.
Here’s how:
Ending with a question about the direction of the company will prompt your prospect to reply with a concrete yes or no: ‘yes, we decided on another strategy’, ‘no, we still want in’:
Offer something of value
Sometimes receiving a response will take up to a few weeks. In that case don’t be afraid to include something new in your next follow up.
Maybe you published a new blog post on a relevant topic — or even released a new feature. Use it as a way to quietly shame your prospect into replying without being too aggressive about it.
After all, there’s a reason why I’ve been thinking about that prospect:
Just be sure not to come off as too needy (which means not explaining a prospect that you have a free trial for the fifth time in a row).
Conclusions
Writing a great follow up isn’t easy. Sometimes the urge to call it a day after the initial email is strong. Resist it!
Hopefully, some of the tips and examples above will be enough to improve your follow ups. Just remember the most important thing about cold emails: you’re messaging real human beings and you should always respect their time.
Have a tip of your own? Share it in the comments!
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