How do I write a follow-up email that gets answers?
A few weeks ago, I shared with you our secrets for writing the perfect cold email. Today, I'm going to talk to you about reminder emails, which are just as important, if not more so.
A few weeks ago, I shared with you our secrets for writing the Cold email perfect.
Today, I'm going to talk about the importance of reminder emails, which can be even more crucial than cold emails.
First, as the name suggests, a Reminder email aims to get back to the recipients who did not respond to your first prospecting message.
I won't keep you waiting any longer, I know you want to know.”How to write a reminder email”, so here are a preview of the 6 key steps for a successful recovery:
6 secrets to write a follow-up email that converts:
- Determine the purpose of the email and keep it in mind when writing.
- Add a new value element by reminder message.
- Don't forget to personalize your reminder.
- Recall the context of the email.
- Include a call to action.
- Respect the timings.
If you follow these tips (which I will detail in a moment), it will allow you to go so far as to double your response and conversion rate, thanks to highly effective reminders.
Does relaunching by email make me mean?
When someone does not respond to your first email, it is normal to ask questions. It is common that by not receiving a response at the first contact you can tell yourself that your prospect is certainly not interested and therefore will not want to receive a 2nd email from you.
However, as strange as it may seem, this reflection has a rather egocentric side...
You don't follow me anymore? 🤨 Wait I'll explain 💪
To think that if a prospect does not respond to you is because you are not interested in him is to put yourself at the center of the story. The reality is that in the majority of cases an absence of response is linked to:
- An email that went unnoticed
- A reception at a bad time
- Opening the email without real attention (read diagonally)
- Or even sometimes an arrival in spam. (If you find yourself in the latter case, I advise you to go read this)
Above all, you should not fall into the trap of thinking that if the first try is not successful you no longer have a chance, otherwise you risk missing out on great opportunities.
So try your luck again and try again.
Because each additional ball brings you closer to the home run ⚾️
(I hope that at this point you have found the link to the presentation image of the article. Otherwise, I definitely recommend the movie Money Ball)
Why write reminder emails?
Les Reminder emails are super important and to prove it to you, we're going to check out Professor Tom's applied statistics class 👨 🏫
According to a study carried out by Yesware, your chances of getting a response to your first email are 30% on average. But if you send a reminder email, you directly increase your chances by an additional 21%.
If we follow the same reasoning based on the numbers that you can find in the table below, where a single email allows you to get 30% of responses, by transforming it into a sequence of 4 emails, it becomes 83%.
Either 3X more likely to get a response by making 3 reminders.
As you will have understood, email sequences are simply the secret of an ultra-efficient ROI in cold e-mailing.
Concretely, unless you are a Bowling Ace, no one strikes every time 🎳 but after several throws, your chances increase considerably.
It's Basic Math!
Professor Tom knocked again 🎓
To summarize, relaunching your prospects allows you to increase your chances of your message ending up in front of their eyes, and therefore to have a response. This means more opportunities to sign new customers, and therefore a better conversion rate.
Of course, more chances of converting does not mean that all methods are good.
The follow-up must be done sparingly, gently and remain of added value for your prospect, to be sure not to irritate him or give a bad image of your company or your products/services.
What time frame between each follow-up email?
In a prospecting sequence, Timing is crucial.
The aim is to send emails frequently enough so as not to be forgotten but without becoming oppressive or intrusive.
In general, if the prospect intends to respond to you, they will do so for the most part on the same day they are sent (source: Yesware). If the prospect did not respond to your email the day you sent them, the probability of them replying to you falls sharply for each additional day that passes (as shown in the graph below 👇).
The idea will therefore be to give him time to see the first email, and to respond to you before relaunching it.
Do you know the 24-hour rule when it comes to cruising? 🥰 Here it is almost the same. There is no need to wait 24 hours to send the first message after a date, yet we all know that it is much more effective in creating desire. It acts as a trailer and allows you to increase the tension.
In cold e-mailing, the 48-72 hour rule applies, because, unlike flirting, your prospect is not waiting for your message.
The golden rule (kept secret for generations 👴) is therefore to wait 2-3 days before the first reminder. Then, you can double this timing for each of the following reminders.
So this gives for example:
2 days, 4 days, 8 days, 16 days,...
By doing this, you make sure you stay.”Top of Mind”, without being too oppressive.
And if you want to push the vice a little further, here is the formula Official developed by Einstein on his sending of prospecting postal letters (x being the timing of the follow-up of the first letter, and y that of the following ones).
if x > 2, then, y = √ (x*2) ^2- (2 + px/3)
Ps: the property of a competition owl is essential for the validity of the equation to be maintained 🦉.
What is the subject line for a reminder email?
Choosing the reminder object is quite simple: most automation tools allow you to send your Reminder emails with the same subject as the first email: This famous “RE: initial object”.
This option has two advantages for you:
- When your prospect opens your email, he will come directly to the previous emails in a chat format. He will therefore be able to easily find the context of your first email.
- This gives your prospect the bias to think that this is a discussion that they have already answered and therefore it pushes them to open your email.
Small exception for your last email, it may contain a new subject because, in this email, you are playing your last cards 🃏, so the idea is to stand out.
How do I write a reminder email that converts?
If you followed all the advice I gave you in our previous article on The structure of a cold email that converts and if you want to boost your chances of receiving a positive response, then you can move on to the next step, The reminder email.
But be careful, what will bristle the hair of most of your prospects in the hundreds of follow-up emails they receive is the absence of value! ❌
A simple one: “Have you seen my previous email”... Honestly, it bothers everyone 🤯.
And you certainly don't want to do #! &#@ Tony Montana.
Tony's not always friendly.
The best way to write reminder emails is to be able to bring a new element of value to your prospect with each email. This will allow you to insist without sounding too pushy (and to avoid Tony's anger).
📄 My advice : The blank sheet technique
The idea is as follows: you take a blank sheet of paper and summarize your value proposition (everything that makes your product or service an advantage over the competition). Then, you break this value proposition into several separate “blocks”. Each block must be independent of the others and provide value by itself to your ideal customer. Each of these blocks taken separately will allow you to write a reminder with added value, without repeating yourself, and without trying to call a 32-page pitch in a single email. The number of blocks you have will give you the ideal number of raises to do.
It's a gift 🎁
PS: If you end up with more than 4-5 blocks of value, you have more work to do to summarize your offer.
By following this method, each reminder email will therefore bring additional value to your prospect. You can think of it as a story divided into chapters (It works quite well for some, hello Netflix 👋).
This will also make it possible to avoid the “follow-up” aspect, which annoys more than one, in their e-mails.
Once you have the various topics for your reminders, it is time to set up the architecture. Here is an approach that may help you:
The structure of a successful follow-up email:
- Start with a personalized greeting.
Customizing only your first email is not enough.
Remember that you are inviting yourself into your prospect's email box, so you have to relaunch them in a gentle and polite way. The minimum is to be cordial, and the best is to be friendly. Otherwise, why would we want to answer you?
- Contextualize the relaunch.
The aim is to refresh the memory of the prospect, who may no longer have your first email in mind. It is therefore important to include a brief reminder of the content of the first email in the follow-up email. The idea is not to rewrite it in its entirety, just to make it a point of connection to introduce the rest.
- Add a valuable item per reminder.
The purpose of a reminder email is not just about relaunching your prospect. You must bring value to him by revealing new information/content (see the white page technique above 📄)
Small exception for your last email, which may not be linked to your value offer. Your last email is a bit like your last chance, you're playing your last card, the last bottle in the sea 🌊
- Closing with a Call To Action.
The objective is to send the prospect in the desired direction. Depending on this, you can offer him a call, a coffee, his opinion on content, on a shared news, on your 3rd primary class photo,... Whatever your objective, be sure to make the “Next Step” clear.
Do not hesitate to narrow your choices to a concrete proposal that is easy to say yes to in a short way. The idea is to pre-mash the work of choice for your prospect.
For example: “Are you available on Wednesday 25 at 13:30 or Thursday 26 at 16:00 to have coffee together at the Leopold Café?”
How do you make your reminder email stand out from the crowd?
Today, email boxes are overflowing with prospecting messages.
Unfortunately, these are often very poorly targeted, or of low quality. You must therefore try to stand out as much as possible otherwise your email could pass by the wayside.
An excellent way to increase your response rate is therefore to customize and humanize your email as much as possible, to make it more famous. For example: by sending a personalized video, a photo or even a signature with your photo. This allows your prospect to put a face to your name and to put the human side back at the heart of the exchange. The idea here is to break the ice of the impersonality of email contact and to get closer to your prospect.
On the other hand, to boost your deliverability rate, avoid newsletters, templates, image montages, etc. Reminder emails should be sent in text format. And attachments should be used sparingly, if necessary.
And above all, keep in mind that the golden rule is personalization. Don't send the exact same email to all your prospects.
The secret of a strike lies in the fact that your prospect is convinced that he is the sole and only recipient of your email.
How do you automate your reminders?
Relaunching is good, doing it without any effort is better.
My final tip: automate the sending of these emails.
There are many automation tools that will allow you to automate the personalized sending of your emails (and your reminders) which will allow you to increase the impact of your efforts tenfold.
Unfortunately we still don't know how to do anything to ensure your message, because good copywriting is like bodybuilding, it takes time before you see the results 🏋️♂️
As for automation, on the other hand, here are some ideas for interesting tools: at Leadix, our heart is very much for Lemlist, a French software 🥖 (yes yes, we know how to appreciate our neighbours 🇫🇷) for e-mailing specialized in multi-channel sequences (e-mail + LinkedIn). Another excellent tool on the French market is The Growth Machine 🔥 that allows for more complex multi-channel sequences and workflows.
Other automation tools are also available such as Overloop, Mailshake or Woodpecker.
Bonus: The perfect reminder email checklist
To finish this article, you won't find a “perfect reminder” template for a simple reason: if a template is effective, as soon as everyone uses it, it very quickly becomes “has been”. You therefore have every interest in making your approach different from the competition, and innovating in your relaunches, according to your industry and your targets.
But innovation does not mean reinventing the wheel. So here are the secret ingredients for a raise that converts almost every time 🥊
The checklist for a follow-up email that converted 💌:
- Be brief but clear ☑️
If you can use fewer words to get the same message across, do it. If a word is not useful, don't add it. The idea is to be able to be as brief as possible, while remaining understandable and pleasant to read.
- Play the feelings card ☑️
Your prospect knows they didn't respond the first few times. If you didn't get it on objective arguments, playing on the sympathy card, or empathy, can make a real difference. Nobody likes to be mean for no reason, use that to your advantage.
- Have a personalized approach ☑️
Just because it's a reminder doesn't mean you have to be tactless and stop making the effort to personalize your message. I would even say that customizing your reminders is a real advantage for a simple reason: too few people are making the effort to do it.
- Humanize your signature ☑️
When you receive hundreds of emails a day you end up forgetting that there is a human behind each of them. A nice signature, with a photo of you, a nice sentence to end your email, a fun “PS:”... are all elements that can make you much more human in the eyes of your prospect, and therefore increase your chances of answers.
You now have all the keys to becoming a relaunch boss.
Now you know why we're not talking about prospecting emails, but about prospecting sequences ⚡️
But never forget this:
The number 1 rule of reminders is that we don't talk about reminders.