When to Send Follow Up Email for the Best Results
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2024 5:50 am
If you don’t ask, you don’t get. It’s an old saying that means that those who are bold to ask for something get rewarded.
It’s no wonder then that email outreach has become so prevalent in the world of business. You’re one email away from your next business opportunity or job and all it takes is reaching out to the right email address.
Unfortunately, we’re all getting bombarded with emails chinese overseas british phone number data daily. The average person gets about 120 emails every day and the one you’re sending them has to fight to get attention. This means that sending just one email is often not enough and it takes more than a catchy subject line for sales emails to stand out with your cold email campaigns.
What you can do is follow up and send a second (or third, fourth, and so on) email to remind the recipient about your initial message.
Today, we’ll talk about follow up emails – what they are, how and when to send them, and what to do to increase their chances of success. Let’s help you become a follow up email pro by the end of this article.
What are follow up emails?
Follow up emails are the emails you send after your initial cold outreach email. This is a type of email after no response is received from the email recipient from the first touchpoint.
They serve to remind the recipient that you reached out to them. The main reason you want to send follow up emails is that the original emails tend to get buried in your recipients’ inboxes and sometimes they forget to respond despite their best intentions.
There are different types of follow up emails, based on the intended results and use case. For example:
Sales follow up emails
Link building follow up emails (asking for a guest post or a link)
Meeting follow up emails
Cold emails for follow up
Follow up emails for job interviews sent to a hiring manager or some other person in the hiring process
And many other types of follow up emails
Why sending follow up emails is a good idea
You may think of a follow up email as borderline spam. In reality, they are a necessity for a handful of reasons. Here are some practical ones.
Your original message was buried in a sea of promotional junk mail
The recipient wanted to reply but got sidetracked by something else and missed your initial email
They are simply more effective – follow-up emails have a 40% higher average reply rate compared to the first email you send out
It takes about 4 times for a customer to say yes when reaching out. This means that just one or two sales follow up emails is not enough and follow-up is necessary, no matter what you’re selling and whom you’re reaching out to
You want to try out different email subject lines, follow up sequences, calls to action and many other aspects that you couldn’t cover in your initial email
When to send follow up emails
The truth is, there is no single definitive answer to this question. It depends on what you’re sending the follow up email for, whether it’s cold emails or those for a warm audience, what your expected results are and much more.
However, the ideal time to send your first polite follow up email is three to five days after your first email. As for any emails after that, adjust the time between the follow up emails depending on the total number of emails you plan to send out. After the second email, you can space them apart between one to two weeks from each other.
For example, if you plan to send five emails total, this is how the schedule would look like:
January 1 – first email
January 4 – second email
January 9 – third email
January 15 – fourth email
January 25 – fifth and final follow up email
While following up and staying on top of mind is the ultimate goal, you don’t want to clog up someone’s email account with daily emails. Not only will this make your target audience ignore your emails but the recipient might also flag them as spam. One too many spam complaints and your sender’s reputation goes down the drain. So, factor in a waiting period in your cold email campaigns.
How many times to follow up with emails
You’re not going to like the answer, but it’s going to be another case of “it depends”. As we’ve highlighted above, it takes about four “nos” until you get a “yes” from a prospect, so five emails should be a good rule of thumb. How many follow ups you need depends on a lot of factors.
However, research shows that about 70% of all email sequences stop after a single email. This means that a huge portion of your competitors are not following up after a single interaction, which is your chance to shine.
It’s no wonder then that email outreach has become so prevalent in the world of business. You’re one email away from your next business opportunity or job and all it takes is reaching out to the right email address.
Unfortunately, we’re all getting bombarded with emails chinese overseas british phone number data daily. The average person gets about 120 emails every day and the one you’re sending them has to fight to get attention. This means that sending just one email is often not enough and it takes more than a catchy subject line for sales emails to stand out with your cold email campaigns.
What you can do is follow up and send a second (or third, fourth, and so on) email to remind the recipient about your initial message.
Today, we’ll talk about follow up emails – what they are, how and when to send them, and what to do to increase their chances of success. Let’s help you become a follow up email pro by the end of this article.
What are follow up emails?
Follow up emails are the emails you send after your initial cold outreach email. This is a type of email after no response is received from the email recipient from the first touchpoint.
They serve to remind the recipient that you reached out to them. The main reason you want to send follow up emails is that the original emails tend to get buried in your recipients’ inboxes and sometimes they forget to respond despite their best intentions.
There are different types of follow up emails, based on the intended results and use case. For example:
Sales follow up emails
Link building follow up emails (asking for a guest post or a link)
Meeting follow up emails
Cold emails for follow up
Follow up emails for job interviews sent to a hiring manager or some other person in the hiring process
And many other types of follow up emails
Why sending follow up emails is a good idea
You may think of a follow up email as borderline spam. In reality, they are a necessity for a handful of reasons. Here are some practical ones.
Your original message was buried in a sea of promotional junk mail
The recipient wanted to reply but got sidetracked by something else and missed your initial email
They are simply more effective – follow-up emails have a 40% higher average reply rate compared to the first email you send out
It takes about 4 times for a customer to say yes when reaching out. This means that just one or two sales follow up emails is not enough and follow-up is necessary, no matter what you’re selling and whom you’re reaching out to
You want to try out different email subject lines, follow up sequences, calls to action and many other aspects that you couldn’t cover in your initial email
When to send follow up emails
The truth is, there is no single definitive answer to this question. It depends on what you’re sending the follow up email for, whether it’s cold emails or those for a warm audience, what your expected results are and much more.
However, the ideal time to send your first polite follow up email is three to five days after your first email. As for any emails after that, adjust the time between the follow up emails depending on the total number of emails you plan to send out. After the second email, you can space them apart between one to two weeks from each other.
For example, if you plan to send five emails total, this is how the schedule would look like:
January 1 – first email
January 4 – second email
January 9 – third email
January 15 – fourth email
January 25 – fifth and final follow up email
While following up and staying on top of mind is the ultimate goal, you don’t want to clog up someone’s email account with daily emails. Not only will this make your target audience ignore your emails but the recipient might also flag them as spam. One too many spam complaints and your sender’s reputation goes down the drain. So, factor in a waiting period in your cold email campaigns.
How many times to follow up with emails
You’re not going to like the answer, but it’s going to be another case of “it depends”. As we’ve highlighted above, it takes about four “nos” until you get a “yes” from a prospect, so five emails should be a good rule of thumb. How many follow ups you need depends on a lot of factors.
However, research shows that about 70% of all email sequences stop after a single email. This means that a huge portion of your competitors are not following up after a single interaction, which is your chance to shine.