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Are you tired of getting low response rates to your cold emails? Even after following our advice on how to write a cold email, you may not be getting the results you were hoping for. But you feel confident you've crafted personalized, enticing subject lines, intro text, and first lines - along with a stellar call to action.
So what gives?
If you're following a "one and done" strategy and just sending out one cold email to each prospect on your list, you are leaving heaps of money on the table. Trust us - the sales are in the follow-up. Rarely will you get responses - let alone, close a deal - with just a single email.
That's why we're going to teach you how to follow up on a cold email. By the end of this guide, you'll be a master at the art of following up. You'll enjoy higher open rates, click rates, response rates, and thus, more sales. Let's start off by talking about why following up is so important.
Why Is It So Important To Follow Up On A Cold Email?
If you haven't really experimented with email follow-ups, it could be because you think it is going to annoy your prospects. The last thing you want to do is draw the ire of potential clients - and so if you don't get a response right away, you assume they're uninterested and move on.
This is the wrong mindset - and today, we're going to help you shift your thinking so you can look at the follow-up email in a whole new light. There is nothing annoying about following up. In fact, it's actually very respectful and appreciated - when done the right way, of course. As you'll soon learn, there are a few things you should do to prevent your follow-up from being deemed spammy or flat-out annoying.
With that said, though, follow-up emails will be some of your best converting emails. In fact, we've seen research suggesting that just adding a single follow-up email to your cold email campaign will boost response rates by over 20%! Imagine what starts happening as you add a second or even a third follow-up email.
The reason you need to follow up with prospects is that they're just plain busy. If you're cold-emailing them, it's probably because they're a decision-maker you're hoping to close a deal with. As such, they no doubt have hundreds of other emails flooding their inbox a day. They're being pulled in all sorts of directions - maybe they wanted to reply to you but forgot to, or just didn't have time. Or, maybe they simply missed your email in their crowded inbox.
By getting additional emails in front of them, you'll give them another chance to reply. They'll see that you're relentless in your pursuit of reaching them - which will show them you're serious. This goes a long way when trying to pitch an offer.
How To Follow Up On A Cold Email & Get Responses
Now you recognize the importance of the follow-up email. But how do you go about it? The last thing you want to do is come off as desperate or irritate your prospects. There are a few subtle keys to the perfect follow-up email and the perfect follow-up sequence. Allow us to explain how to follow up on a cold email and actually get results from your efforts. First things first - when should you send that second email?
How Long Should I Wait Between Follow-Up Emails?
There is a fine line between sending a follow-up email too soon after your initial contact and waiting too long. Timing is everything. You likely already know which day of the week works best to send your initial contact on, and what time of day to send it at. But what about the follow-up email?
If you ask different marketers, you'll get different responses. We've seen that waiting at least 3 days after your first email before sending the second works best. With each subsequent follow-up you send, you'll likely want to push that time frame out more. For example, your second follow-up email would likely go out 5 days after the first one, and then you can send a third follow-up a week after that.
What Should I Say In A Follow-Up Email?
Now comes the fun part: actually building your follow-up email strategy. You're probably wondering, what should I say in a follow-up email? We see so many email marketers get this aspect of the follow-up wrong. They start their second email with some iteration of "just following up here". There is a good chance the prospect didn't see your initial correspondence, so they don't have a clue what you're following up on. Or if they saw it, they likely forgot all about you by the time you got around to following up.
Instead, reiterate why you're reaching out to them - how can you help them eliminate a pain point or grow their business? The same principles to writing an effective sales email apply to the follow-up. You should make the follow-up about them and their pain points. If you follow up with who you are and what you do, you'll see abysmal results. Your goal should be to get the prospect to say - wow, I'm glad they followed up with me!
That's the reality of quality follow-up emails - when done correctly, your prospects will thank you for following up with them. Here are a few dos and don'ts of what to say in your follow-ups:
- Do keep your follow-ups short and sweet. If you're wondering how long a cold email should be, we encourage you to keep them under 200 words. Your follow-ups should be even shorter.
- Don't start off with any iteration of "sorry to bother you" or "I know you're busy, but if you don't mind...". These types of phrases frame you as an annoyance in the recipients' minds. After all, you're doing them a favor by following up.
- Do personalize your follow-up messaging. Go above and beyond using text replacements for their first name or business name. Ask them how sales are that week - or if you know they're a fan of a certain sports team, ask if they saw their team's big game against a certain opponent over the weekend.
- Don't repeat your previous email. Because you'll be replying directly to it, they can scroll down to see it for reference. It didn't work the first time, so go with a different approach in your follow-up - maybe you can try a different angle, or try adding a Loom video instead of a text-based response.
- Do approach the prospect with a "help first" mentality. After lowering their sales guard with some non-salesy personalization, jump right into "what's in it for them".
Starting A New Email Thread vs Replying To Your Initial Outreach Campaign
Some email marketers add their unresponsive prospects to a new campaign after a few days. However, we recommend keeping everything within one email thread. This will greatly increase your chances of getting a response. First and foremost, your initial correspondence will be right below your follow-up text for them to refer to. If you're doing cold emails manually, you can go back into your sent folder and hit "reply" again.
You can also tweak the cold email subject line in your follow-up email. This will give you another chance to entice them with a personalized, creative subject line. However, many marketers get great results by simply keeping the same subject line and adding the standard "Re:" to the front.
One of two things happens when you do this: if the prospect just plain forgot to open your email or respond, they'll be reminded when they see the same subject line pop back up. Or, if they missed your email entirely, they'll see the "Re:" and assume they were in a conversation that they don't remember, and click through to see.
How Many Times Should You Follow Up On A Cold Email?
One of the most questions we get surrounding the follow-up email strategy is, "how many times should you follow up on a cold email?". Again - this is a question that gets different answers depending on who you ask. It also comes down to your unique preferences - how relentless do you want to be?
In our opinion, the bare minimum number of follow-ups you should send is 4. However, we've seen people get great results sending up to 12 follow-up emails. A good strategy is to send the 4 follow-ups, then move the prospect into another campaign that will follow up with them in 2-3 months and put them through another cold email campaign. This gives time for their needs to change - they might be in a better place to respond by then.
Make no mistake though - the more follow-ups you have in your sequence, the more people you're going to annoy. With that said, you'll also earn more sales as you send more follow-ups - so it's a bit of give and take.
In saying that, we want to help you reframe your thinking when it comes to "annoying your prospects". It's true - you should try to be respectful of their time and inbox. But, don't be afraid of annoying them. If you end up bothering them to the point where they demand you remove their email from your list, that's a win - they were never your ideal customer in the first place!
Should I Segment My Follow Ups Based On Who Opened & Who Didn't?
If you are serious about getting results with cold email, you should take your sales follow-up email strategy seriously. That means segmenting based on engagement. A prospect who opened your email is more qualified than someone who did not. Thus, you may want to use different messaging to someone who opened than someone who didn't. You can create your cold email campaign in a matter such that those who take a specific action are added to a different campaign. You're probably thinking, this sounds tricky - is there a way to automate all that work?
Is There A Way To Automate Cold Email Follow-Ups?
Remembering your follow-up schedule and then going and manually replying to your initial cold email is time-consuming. It's easy to make mistakes due to human error when you go about it this way, too. That's why you should use software to automate your follow-up email sequence. There are tons of options out there, and we even cover one in our review of the best marketing tools for startups - so take a look!
These email autoresponder software - or CRM dashboards - allow you to build your entire follow-up email strategy neatly. You can create personalized follow-up templates, schedule them at the proper dates, and let them fire away. Most of the time, anyone who responds to an email will be removed from the sequence and tagged as a lead - requiring you to then manually follow up with their response.
Final Thoughts On How To Follow Up On A Cold Email
Not sure how to write out your follow-up emails? We've got a trick for you to try out: email AI. This intuitive piece of technology will help you build incredible follow-ups to your previous email. You'll start getting more responses, more sales, and quickly scale up your cold email strategy.
How does it work, though?
Simple - our AI writer spits out high-converting first lines for your emails that are personalized to the recipient. You'll enjoy up to a 150% increase in positive responses, over 4 times as many meetings booked, and up to a 333% increase in connection acceptance rates. Our customers have used our AI writing software to generate almost $5 million in sales.
If you want to start achieving the same results for yourself, head over to our site and try it out for free - your first 25 lines are free! Trust us - you'll never write another piece of copy the same again.
