When sending emails, email marketers invest all the resources on the first emails they send to prospects neglecting the relevance of well-structured follow-ups. Many marketers approach follow-ups just as they pronounce the phrase: “Follow-Ups.”
Well, the sad truth is that these nonchalant marketers are missing out big time on sales because research has shown it over and over again that most sales are generated from follow-ups.
Most sales reps or marketers are still sending bad emails, poorly timing their mails, or do not bother to follow up. This is a big flaw on the part of the salesperson, and this flaw has set this category of personnel behind the chain of relevance in the field.
Many of these marketers who do not bother to follow up on their prospects owe their incapability to not knowing how a follow-up should be sent or perhaps how it even looks like. Let’s take a look at some templates that can send your cold emailing campaign to a whole new level.
Follow-up Email Templates
Below are a few templates that can guide you on how to structure your follow-up emails to produce a more effective result. Please, be guided that these templates were compiled from different websites and archives. This means that there are chances that other marketers are already using these same templates to push their cold email campaign and I would advise that you do not copy this template while sending emails to your prospects. Instead, you are to draw inspiration from these templates to enable you to create a more personalized and unique follow-up that is well suited to your targets.
While you aim at sending the perfect email to those prospects, it is crucial to keep the following points in mind.
- Keep it concise and appealing
- Enable one-stroke response
- Be candid
- Show awareness of their interest
- Display extreme confidence in your offer
- Follow up from sales calls
- Share valuable contents
- Never forget a “Hail Mary” email.
Keep it Concise and Appealing
You should try as much as you can to be brief and straight to the point when sending a follow-up email. Although follow-up emails are ideally shorter than the initial email, you should ensure to keep it polite with pleasantries, friendly, personal and human at all cost. Remember, keep it as brief as humanly possible.
Here are two examples from Sumo’s Sean Bestor:
“Hey [Name]
I saw on Twitter you’ve been sharing some awesome posts on conversion rate optimization.
Recently I spotted these two super helpful posts and just wanted to share them with you:
{{Link 1}}
{{Link 2}}
Would also be happy to share a little about our conversion rates at Sumo if you’re up for it?
Cheers”
AND
“Hey {{Name}},
I’m reaching out because I have several ideas for how you can bring in more leads and ultimately close more deals every month.
Would it be okay for me to reach out next week to share those ideas with you?”
In the first template above, the sender was focused on adding value to the email and somehow creating a calm and engaging activity between the target and the sender. He first offers the prospect something that would be of high relevance to him/her and then went further to invite the prospect to check out his product. In this case, it’s a give and take. This template is playing on the human’s sense of indebtedness as we humans feel a need to reciprocate a kind gesture. Thus, the prospect may feel the need to return the gesture from the salesperson by responding to the email and giving them a chance to influence his decisions.
Enable One-stroke Response
Sometimes, the reason why targets do not reply is owed to the stress and time they would invest in structuring a response to your message. Using one-stroke response is a perfect strategy to alleviate this challenge as prospects will not have to think about composing an ideal response to your email. Instead, all they need to do is reply with one stroke of a key, or a tap on their screens at the case may be.
An example of one-stroke response templates gotten from Right Hello’s Piotr Zaniewicz is shown below:
Hi {{Name}},
I constantly review business relationships in my CRM. Typically if I don’t hear back from someone for 30 days, it means they’re either really busy or just not interested.
If you’re not interested, please let me know, and I’ll promptly close your tab in our CRM to never bother you with {{company}} sales emails again.
1 – “Sorry, I was swamped, but I’m still interested…”
0 – “Please close my tab, I’m not interested…”
From this template, the level of transparency of the salesperson is admirable. He let it out that they use CRM and in the end, he offered the prospect a one-stroke response option which provides a very vivid answer as to what the prospect wants. If the prospect chooses to strike the “0” then it is clear that spending so many resources trying to sell to such prospect is not worth it so, you save the stress for others while you take the time to remove him from the campaign list and stop bothering him with unsolicited emails. That’s a win-win for you both.
Be Candid
Unexpected candor can be a potent weapon when cold emailing. It hits the prospect at the right place at all time. It brings them to feel your texts and connect with via the electronic medium. An example of a template having this unique feature is given below by Dhruv Patel from SalesHandy.
Hi {{Name}},
I hate pushy salespeople, at the same time I’d hate to think I gave up on trying to help you when all you needed was one piece of helpful information I’d forgotten.
Show Awareness of Their Interests
Yeah! Many of these prospects are learned enough to know that you track every email you send to them (that’s one of your job descriptions, anyway) and you know whether or not you opened the email. So, when following up, it is vital to acknowledge the fact that they have opened your previous mail and taken action towards a probably positive dealing with your business. At the same time, you could still send an email acknowledging their disinterest in your offering but have it spelled out on the subject line because you might now get a chance of having your mail being read in totality.
This awareness in a prospect’s interest was well expressed also by Dhruv Patel of SalesHandy in one of his templates that reads:
“Hi {{name}},
I noticed that you opened the email that I sent you on Friday and checked out our site {{your URL}}. But, I never heard back from you.
I was simply wondering if these actions mean you’re interested in learning more about {{your business name}} and how we can provide value to your online businesses similar to yours at {{name of the business}}.
As someone who is constantly reaching out to numerous prospects up and down {{your location}}, I wanted to follow up today to see if you have any questions about {{your business name}} or any of our products. I think you’re the perfect person to discuss {{your business name}} with.
Do you have 10 minutes for a brief phone call next week?”
Display Extreme Confidence in Your Offering
Most prospects need the product you are selling and you know they do –that’s why they are your prospects in the first place –but many of them do not realize that need the products more than they think they do. Because of this, many prospects reject offers like this, especially offers sent via email. Once this happens, you can send an email displaying your extreme confidence in the products you are selling and give them the reasons why they need the products.
Here is a modified template that serves this purpose gotten from Klenty:
Hey {{Name}},
I understand your position, but I wouldn’t follow up with you if I didn’t strongly think that [your company] can help {{prospect company}} solve {{challenge}} by {{product benefit #1}] and {{product benefit #2}}.
Let me know if you want me to jump on a call so I can walk you through what we do.
Follow Up from Sales Calls
Well, sales call does the magic! Sales are the objective of every salesperson so; it is imperative for every salesperson to have a sales call often and on. But what happens after a sales call? You can’t leave it all to the prospect; you still have to follow them up after the sales call by sending them an email appreciating their audience and time while hinting them on a few more information that will keep them geared.
A typical follow-up from sales call is displayed Neville Medhora from the Kopywriting Kourse in the template below:
Hey {{Name}},
It was great meeting this afternoon.
1.) Here’s a handy Business One Pager you can print and send to anyone in the department.
2.) I’ve attached the full slide deck in a PowerPoint to this email.
3.) I’ve also attached the full custom SEO report on your website. Feel free to share this around the team.
Share Valuable Contents
Prospects are humans and humans generally cherish this human-human connection –even tech-savvies do. So, connecting with them as a friend, advisor and someone with an opinion that serves in their best interest brings you closer to them; not just on a sales level but also, on a trust and communication level.
When sending follow-up emails, ensure to send emails with valuable contents: advice, share wisdom, social proof, statistics, news, and all other forms of information that you are sure would be of value to the prospect. Doing this pushes your email ahead of the flocks of unsolicited emails received by the prospect and that, my friend, is significant progress.
The template below is from HubSpot’s Aja Frost and accurately depicts a value-adding follow up email:
Hi {{name}}
You likely deal with [business pain], so I thought I’d share a quick tip many of my clients have found helpful: {{1-2 sentence actionable piece of advice}}.
I have a few more ideas around {{improving X}}. Let me know if you’re interested in hearing them.
Never Forget to Send a “Hail Mary” Email
No matter how excellent a sales rep you are, some prospects would not want to show interest in your offering, and they are so head-bent on checking your products out no matter what you say. Whenever you meet a target like this, it is wiser to let the pursuit go to keep your sanity and energy than pursuing that sale with all your resources. In the case of letting go, it is essential to send a “Hail Mary” email to try to gear them up a little more. This is more like the last resort you have and when they act uninterested to this email; dear salesperson, you should move on.
A perfect example of a graceful “Hail Mary” email was found in a template from Naya Tsoukala of Gmelius:
Hi {{name}}
You likely deal with [business pain], so I thought I’d share a quick tip many of my clients have found helpful: {{1-2 sentence actionable piece of advice}}.
I have a few more ideas around {{improving X}}. Let me know if you’re interested in hearing them.
Should you have a need to reconsider the formats of your follow-up email; employing the ideas from these templates can undoubtedly take your cold email campaign to an entirely new level.
