follow-up emails

Who doesn’t love more sales? 

Marketers and sales reps focus more on implementing email marketing best practices in their outreach campaigns and perfecting them, leaving following up unnoticed. 

However, if done correctly and strategically, follow-up emails are an excellent way to build rapport with prospects and maintain context to drive more sales. That’s why creating a follow-up email strategy can boost conversions. 

So, how do you chalk out the best follow-up strategy? In this blog post, we’ve discussed how you can create an essential email follow-up strategy to boost conversions. 

Let’s get started! 

What Is A Follow-Up Email?  

A follow-up email is an email you send at a crucial point in your customer’s journey through the sales funnel to achieve something specific, such as collecting information or converting into paid customers. 

Follow-up emails work as reminders for the initial email. Here are some instances of sending follow-up emails: 

  • You might send a follow-up email asking if they’ve found your content valuable.
  • You can send follow-up emails to customers who are using free-trial of your service to turn them into paid customers. 
  • You may want to follow up after an in-person meeting to touch base. 
  • Also, you can send a follow-up, asking for feedback on your service. 

When Should You Write Follow-Up Emails? 

A HubSpot study mentions that emails sent between 9-12 am have seen the highest engagement rate of 34.9%. Another great time to send emails is between 12-2 pm, as it has also seen higher engagement rates of 27.6%. 

According to a data analysis by CoSchedule, Thursday is the best day to send business emails, followed by Tuesday and Wednesday. 

How Many Follow-Up Emails Are Required For Conversions? 

According to a study, the optimum number of follow-up emails lies somewhere between 3-5. However, 44% of sales reps give up after just one follow-up. This means persistence is the key to your campaign’s success. 

Now, you might think about what should be the ideal sequence of follow-up emails. Below is a chart to help you schedule your follow-up emails: 

1st Follow -Up Day 3
2nd Follow-UpDay 7
3rd Follow-UpDay 11
4th Follow-UpDay 15
5th Follow-UpDay 19

If you maintain context and send multiple follow-ups adding context and offering value to your prospects, you have a higher chance of converting them into your customers. 

10 Essential Email Follow-Up Strategies To Boost Conversions

1. Create Follow-Up Sequence Automation

Manually following up with leads might be viable for local businesses, but following up with hundreds and thousands of prospects personally is nearly impossible. 

That’s why it is important to automate follow-up sequences for scalable and successful email marketing campaigns. On that note, a sales engagement platform or a cold emailing tool such as Smartlead, Instantly, or Mailshake can automate your follow-up email sequences so you can answer all your prospects’ queries instantly. 

Pro tip: Besides email as the primary channel for communication, make sure you add social media channels and phone into your outreach cadence. 

2. Set An Achievable Goal And Find The Purpose

Before you jump into creating a follow-up strategy, you need to determine the purpose and goal of your email. 

For example, you may aim to: 

Schedule a meeting

Gather additional info about something

Finalize an offer

Complete a transaction

Different goals for follow-up emails change the fundamentals of each follow-up email you work on, sometimes even within an email sequence based on your intent. 

That’s why it is necessary to be aware of your goal and the prospective outcome of your follow-up email. Never send emails if you are unsure about the outcome. 

3. Think From Your Recipients’ POV

Follow-up emails come at a very crucial stage of a customer’s journey through the sales funnel. At this point, follow-up emails can single-handedly increase your conversions or drop reply rates. 

That’s why putting yourself in your customer’s shoes is important. For example, ask yourself how often you should send emails. 

Although there are definitive answers for the frequency of follow-up emails suggested by experts, make sure you think of the situation from your customer’s POV. 

Now, ask yourself: 

  • Do I need to follow up besides conversions? 
  • What purpose will the follow-up fulfill? 
  • What is in there for your customers? 

Once you get clear answers to these questions, you can create a perfect follow-up email sequence that’s tailored for your audience, not for you. 

Let’s look into this with two possible scenarios: 

If your prospect is requesting a demo or a meeting, you should be more proactive in reaching out and meeting their needs. 

If prospects have downloaded resources (from your website), it means they are interested but didn’t request further communication. In such cases, you must proactively follow up to showcase your worth and how your service/product can be helpful for them by launching drip campaigns based on what they downloaded.  

4. Use Multiple Communication Channels

Most marketers and sales reps who are one step ahead of their competitors are stepping up their follow-up game with omnichannel communication. 

Although email is the most effective communication channel for businesses (especially B2B audiences), it doesn’t mean other communication methods are not worth the effort. 

For example, companies that implement social media channels to reach out to their customers besides emails have a greater revenue yield than the companies that don’t. Plus, omnichannel communication increases customer engagement and helps in customer retention & lead nurturing.

Based on your industry and brand image, you can make use of Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, etc. 

5. Personalize The Follow-Up Messages

Personalization is the key to your prospects’ hearts and closing deals. For example, adding a prospect’s first name in the subject line increases open email rates. That’s why you should customize all your follow-up messages based on prospect data and the intent of your message. 

Make sure your email focuses on prospects’ problems and solving them rather than boasting about yourself. You can personalize your message based on their age, job role, location, specific problems, etc. 

6. Write An Eye-Catching Subject Line

The subject line is the first thing your prospects will notice. In fact, 47% of email users open an email solely based on its subject line. 

That’s why make sure you are writing short yet catchy email subject lines for your follow-up emails. You can make use of the FOMO of your prospects. For example, “All your friends are here” is a great example of a follow-up subject line. 

Make sure it’s not more than nine words or 60 characters. Moreover, using symbols, emojis, and prospects’ names in subject lines increase email open rates significantly. 

7. KISS: Keep It Short And Simple

There’s absolutely no point in creating difficulty. No matter what industry you work for, do not write emails filled with technical terms and complicated jargon. 

Your aim is to convert them into customers by showing your previous success records and educating them. So, write in friendly and easy language and explain things in layman’s terms.

Also, keep your message short and use short paragraphs. 

8. Use Single CTA

Although debatable, adding multiple CTAs in one email or campaign results in lower conversion rates. By offering more than one CTA in your email, you are distracting your prospects from the main agenda. Also, it lessens the impact of the main CTA. 

So, don’t stuff your email with images and links. Add one clear and string CTA based on the intent of the campaign. 

9. Learn The Art Of Letting Go

As a marketer or a sales rep, you need to draw a line between unethical pushing and convincing. If a prospect requests you not to send follow-up emails, you should remove them ASAP. 

This will keep your sender’s reputation intact and maintain the goodwill of the brand. No matter at what point your prospect is in their customer journey, you should maintain a non-pushy approach. 

Thank them for their time and focus on other prospects. 

10. Express Gratitude

You might receive varied customer reactions to your follow-up emails. No matter what the responses are, you should thank them and express your gratitude for responding. 

Keep a friendly yet professional tone, and at least write a couple of words to thank them.  

Conclusion

Sending follow-up emails can be a little tiresome and time-consuming. But the key to success is in persistent following up. 

That’s where automation tools come in. Besides creating follow-up strategies for your email marketing campaigns, use an email automation tool to automate email sending. 

This way, you can add value to your prospects quickly so that you and your sales team can focus on closing more deals. 

Jeena Alfredo is a passionate digital marketer at The Business Goals. She is working with other companies to help them manage the relationship with The Business Goals for the publications.

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