Many of us in the email marketing sector have dealt with one or two emails that just simply get ignored. While most people could think that this is the end of the line for that recipient. This is not necessarily so. Here we will be exploring the #1 strategy to write a follow-up email after no response.
The psychology of people might get you to form your own particular opinion on how long you should try to get a prospect. This can be good or bad depending on how much experience you have. But before go we further into the best strategy to write a follow-up email after no response, let’s take a look at what you’ll find below.
Let’s get on to the first point in which we’ll cover the basics about a follow-up email, as well as the numbers you should handle for your own emails and what do they mean.
Table of Contents
While most people seeing this will have prior knowledge about outreach campaigns in email marketing. Let’s go over the basics once again. You may know that outreach emails and follow-ups used to be a double-digit metric with quality not much different than today. For instance, what you can most certainly find in any outreach email is something like:
As for the follow-up, the most common are these:
These are the most generic follow-up emails and to be quite honest, really uninspired ones. The most likely destination of these will be the trash bin.
It’s not an issue of whether you should send follow-up emails or not. It’s an issue of how to do it correctly.
Some marketers and entrepreneurs would have you completely stop sending emails to those recipients that yield no initial response. This is of course based on their experiences and their success. While it’s good to get advice from others from time to time, there’s also a time when you should just simply get your experience firsthand.
You can always follow simple logic. If you sell too hard or asking for favors right away, it’s most likely not going to go our way. This doesn’t change regardless of how many follow-up emails you send.
When it comes to if you should or shouldn’t send follow-up emails, there’s a simple reason to actually do it. Sending follow-up emails can, and likely will, provide more replies than what you already have. But let’s look at this further.
Let’s review some data from the industry, courtesy of Yesware.
The horizontal axis represents the number of sent follow-up emails. As you can see, they went as high as 10. In this case, the number of replies keep getting lower until it bounces back up. Don’t forget that more replies mean more opportunities to generate profit.
Another piece of information that is particularly interesting is that about 70% of salespeople stop sending emails after no initial reply. This means that 7 of 10 people doing email outreach will never even get to those 30 extra replies for the cost of one follow-up email.
However, the hypothesis that more follow-ups mean more replies doesn’t just stand on the information from Yesware. Let’s take a look at more data, this time from Iko System.
This is more evidence that you have more to gain in sending follow-up emails than what most people believe. While the reply rates seem to work in funny ways and following no essential patron overall. We can tell you that by sending follow-up emails you’ll most likely receive more replies. Aside from that, these inconsistencies might be due to the sector of the industry you work in, this leads us to the following topic.
Sure, it’s easy to just google for information about someone else’s campaign performance and use that data as a guideline. But this is actually something you shouldn’t do. Reply rates behave differently depending on what type of brand it’s doing the outreach. Not to mention season, work hours, economy and more.
You should always develop your own strategy and numbers to see exactly how your campaigns perform. You can, however, find useful tips and guides that cover the basics of outreach emails in our article about cold emails. This can help you clear out the basics in case you need to be certain that you’re doing it right.
Remember always use your own numbers as a basis for your predictions and strategies. Which in turn brings us to the next topic.
Before we can give any tips, we have to make sure that everyone is clear on the basics. So, let’s review how we go about outreach emails.
People usually consider a follow-up email as a backup plan in case there’s no reply from the initial contact. However, just reminding the recipient of the main email isn’t always as inspired as some people think. You should always strive to be more creative and provide value to your audience, this can be done in a follow-up email as well.
Your strategy for handling email follow-ups will rely on the content you provide. But it will also dictate how many follow-ups you send. Regardless of this, there’s one thing that it should always be present in all your campaigns, personalization.
Ideally, you will base your strategy from the points mentioned above. You have do define exactly why are you doing an outreach campaign. That goal will define the rest of your strategy and it something to build it upon.
When we mention that personalization is something that should always be present in all your emails it follows a simple logic. You have to make your emails stand out, even your follow-up emails. Personalization not only does that, but it also helps your audience feel more in contact with your message and therefore much more likely to reply. When it comes to follow-up emails you can use personalization to do more than a simple reminder to read the main email. Let’s talk more about this from the strategy point of view.
Personalization is a powerful tool for all your email campaigns, it can get you to have an open rate as high as 82% and a reply rate of 52%.
You can use personalized images to drive attention from your audience. The main message has to be something that you yourself have written. You can rely on many tips and tricks about personalization to make sure that your follow-up emails are attentive and get you that reply.
Remember that one of the main aims of outreach campaigns is to actually form a connection with the recipient. After that is done you can go about creating the ideal ambient for the ask. This is all done by providing value and keeping your prospects engaged with your emails.
You can learn more tips and tricks on personalization for your emails in our article.
This applies for a simple outreach campaign as well as follow-up emails. Your objective is always circling around what your prospect wants and how what you offer can provide a solution. This means that you always have to consider their needs and desires before you ask them for anything.
You can personalize your emails as much as you want without leaving your main topic in order to give each follow-up a unique vibe. This does help in the long tun to make the most of your strategy. Let’s say for example that your strategy consists of a maximum of 4 follow-up emails after no response. You will have to make the best out of every follow-up email, for this personalization and prioritizing your prospects needs are fundamental.
People don’t like to receive generic emails and this is certainly not the way to go. Instead, you should do all the pertinent research about your prospect and write a well-crafted email to get their initial attention. If there’s no response you can go ahead and apply your strategy based on personalized follow-up emails.
This is a must-do for every email marketing campaign involving outreach. Previously we learned why you should care about your recipient first. This comes in many forms, one is to provide value with every email you send, even the follow-ups.
Most people just skip this part and go straight for the ask, this does come across as selfish and is something that you should avoid. Depending on the topic and the nature of the outreach there are lots of ways to provide value to a recipient. Remember that this is something that can be done on each follow-up depending on the topic.
Personalization can mainly help you with your outreach strategy and your opening rate. But regardless of it your main goal here is to get that reply. Let’s say that you have sent your campaign initial email and it’s a great one. You’re amazed by how many replies you’ve got but there are some people with the perfect profile that yield no initial answer.
You can, and should, send them a brief personalized reminder based on the same topic. You can make it short or long depending on how you handle the overall campaign and content quality. As we’ve seen in the graphs above, people do sometimes forget about replying, a follow-up can be exactly what they need to get in touch with you. However, when it comes to reminders you should try to keep them short and on point.
This is the same as asking if size matters. But there’s never a straight answer to this. That’s because the length of your follow-ups depends on your audience and your own experience. Remember to always generate your own number and use them for your campaigns.
Additionally, you can always A/B test which length works best for your follow-up emails. Some people might usually advise to keep all your follow-up emails short, but this isn’t always the case. In fact, this is considered a part of an email marketing myth.
Always create your own experience and method, this is the best way to make sure that you can implement the best length for your follow-ups.
This should come as no surprise. All your follow-up emails must have a good and clear call to action. You should always focus on the main goal of the outreach campaign and make the call to action about that.
In fact, a great call to action is part of our 7 actionable tips and tricks to boost your sales. As long as you’re providing value to your recipients with your follow-ups eventually this call to action will pay off.
Below you will find a couple of good alternatives for follow-up emails and their perks. You can make full use of these methods depending on your outreach strategy.
These are typically short emails focusing more on being fast and easy to read. A good idea is to always incorporate an image to make them look fresh. Also, always take some time to add a little personalization to these reminders.
Easy reminders are great when you have good content and a long list of recipients. Some people usually forget about an email, reminding them about it is a good way to increase your replies. These can be used in many different situations.
When it comes to short follow-up emails the best way to go is to be witty. Your sense of humor can go a long way to charm your prospect into replying or following your call to action directly.
Nothing works quite as work as real-time marketing right now. You can try to provide entertainment value to your recipients in your follow-up emails based on the event that everybody in the world, or most of it anyway, can relate to.
Try using events like worldwide movie premiers, great sports events and such. You can even personalize different emails based on the geographical location of your recipients and their interest, of course, you would need to segment your mailing list first.
Again, this is usually done via personalization, but regardless of all the effort, this is a great way to handle your email follow-ups. When these follow-up emails do take effect and you get that reply, the tone of the conversation and likely will be based on the last follow-up you sent. So, this is a good tool to consider when you’re thinking ahead.
These emails can be implemented as a quick follow-up reminder with a personalized image. Or you can opt to provide further value to your recipient, this all depends on your strategy and your topic.
In addition, you can set-up automatic replies for different email platforms. One of our articles handles how to set up automatic emails on outlook.
Now we will provide you with two great templates for marketing agencies. These are great for outreach campaigns and work wonders when adapted to be follow-up emails. These are based on two different scenarios and you can personalize them in any way you deem necessary.
“Hi {First Name of the Recipient}!
Imagine that you got someone grinding so hard on your Facebook Ads that one day your name pops in Time Square.
{Image}
{First Name of the Recipient}, to show you I'm for real, made you a quick video.
Need 3.5 minutes of your time to demonstrate how to build your Facebook Ads Funnel that actually converts.
This is the exact process I've used to drive {RESULT} for {COMPANY}
I'll show you that too. Here's the link.
{Call to action with a Link}
Take care,
{Your Name}”
“Hello {First Name of the Recipient}!
Facilitating transactions is objective number one for any business. The second part of the equation is building a brand. Giving {Company Name of the recipient} the ULTIMATE POWER.
{Image}
{First Name of the Recipient}, I made you a quick video as I want to help you accomplish this. For real!
Need 3.5 minutes of your time to show you the entire plan and why I'm the man for the job. 3.5 minutes, that's it!
Here's the link.
{Call to Action with Link}
Take care,
{Your Name}”
Do keep in mind that these templates are meant to be used along with a personalized pertinent image. You can modify them to suit your needs and make more into what you’d use in a follow-up email.
In case you need some extra convincing with this you can always read our article about the importance of images. At last, remember to always use a good format for your emails, even your follow-up emails.
By now you surely understand the importance of getting and using your own numbers. In addition to this, you should always strive to provide value in all your emails, even your follow-ups.
People often say that a follow up after getting no initial response is a waste of time. However, people do forget and sending follow-up emails CAN increase your reply rate. You should always consider the way you can bring up your value to your recipient as a way to make your email effective towards the main goal of the campaign. Remember that following a well-crafted strategy is a great way to achieve success.
We cannot leave you without making sure that you have all that you need to make the best possible follow-up emails. This starts with having a clean mailing list. While you should always do your research on your prospects, you also have to make sure that the email address you have is valid. EmailVerify can help you out with exactly this.
Offering 99% accuracy for all your validations, Verifybee.com can protect you against spam traps and more. It checks for spelling errors in your addresses and it a valuable tool to always keep nearby.
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