How to write effective follow up emails (plus examples)

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In today’s fast-paced world, sending a single email may not be enough to get your audience to take action. That’s where follow-up emails come in.

Whether you’re a marketer looking to convert leads into customers or a professional seeking a response from a client, following up can significantly improve your chances of success.

In this article, we’ll explore the importance of follow-up emails and provide you with actionable tips on how to write them effectively, so you can achieve your desired outcomes.

Read more:
1. Beginners guide to email marketing
2. How to write email drip campaigns
3. How to increase your email open rates

What is a follow up email

A follow up email is a message you send to someone you’ve previously been in contact with.

There are many reasons why you could send them:

  • You might send follow up emails to people who download your content, asking them if they found it valuable.
  • You can send a follow up email to people who are in the middle of a free trial of your service, with questions regarding their experience.
  • You can follow up after an event in order to touch base.

💡 Pro tip: Instead of sending a single follow up you can create an entire follow up email sequence that’ll keep nurturing your audience even when you’re asleep. Using Autoresponders you can create tailor-made programs that will perfectly match your subscribers’ needs and interests.

How to write a follow up email

Here are a few tips that will help you write an effective follow up email.

1. Start with the CTA in mind

Always think of your goal first. What exactly do you need to know? What do you want the recipient to do?

This will determine your CTA – and the remaining content that leads up to it.  

Don’t have a clear goal? Maybe it’s not a great idea to send the email after all.

2. Pay attention to your subject line

Make it stand out. However short or long it is, it should be specific. Make sure the most important info is at the beginning in case it gets cut off in the inbox. Use the preheader to complement it and add the information you can’t (or don’t want to) fit in the subject line. Here’s an example of a longer subject line which makes the preheader irrelevant since you don’t really see it anyway. It includes specific information about what the email’s related to  – which makes it much easier for the reader to decide whether to open it .

Example:

Follow up email subject line example.

These two (follow up emails sent to inactive customers) not so much:

Follow up email subject line example.
follow up email bad subject line example 2.

(Plus, it looks like the preheader isn’t used there at all – and it could really help to make these subject lines clear).

Also, using “tricks” like “fyi” is probably a little passé now – people quickly see through them and become blind to them. For a followup email, a good idea might be to include the recipient’s first name to make it more personable. Test it to see if that works for your audience, though – people have different preferences when it comes to email personalization.

For more strategies, read our guide to writing effective email subject lines that get your emails opened.

💡 Stuck with writer’s block? Relax! Using an AI email generator you can create a highly captivating follow up email in moments. Want it to generate the subject lines? Or maybe the entire follow up email template? You decide!

3. But be personal, anyway

Make the email seem like it’s from a real human – people don’t really want to talk to brands; they want to talk to people. And just because the followup email is automated doesn’t mean it has to sound robotic. After all, there’s always a person behind writing the copy and setting up the automation rules. So make yourself seen.

This means, use natural language. Like you were really having a conversation with the person you’re sending your email to.

A big trend today is to actually send plain-text (or faux plain-text) emails that look and feel like emails from someone you know, often with a real person’s name attached to the sender address. One great example are emails sent by Moo – or their “robot”. This post-order followup email asking for feedback shows exactly what I mean. Everyone knows it’s an automated email, but still, it doesn’t really read like one. And what’s even better, you know there’s someone on the other end of the line who will read what you have to say.

Example:

follow up personal copy email example.

And look at this simple subscription confirmation email from Really Good Emails (a really good email indeed)

Example 2:

a great email from really good emails.

Another way to make your email feel more personal is to make it personalized.

But don’t just use the recipient’s name in the subject line. That’s been used too many times already.

Make the content personalized and, therefore, more relevant to your recipient. Use the information you have about them – their company name, what they’re doing, and how you know each other. Our data continually shows that this tactic can increase your click-through rates!

And don’t forget to mention what your previous email was about. Make it a polite follow up email, just in case they genuinely missed your previous message and not simply ignored it.

4. You don’t have to keep it short – but keep it interesting

In certain cases – like sales follow up emails – you might actually want to send a longer email. The plain-text version even encourages longer copy. But whether this is a good idea will depend on several factors like:

  • the type of email you’re sending
  • who your audience is
  • what stage of awareness they’re at – do they need a story first to get them where you want the email to take them, or are they ready to click that button and all you need is a few crisp sentences to encourage them?

Adjust the content of the email to the recipient’s needs, and whatever the length, don’t forget about your goal. Make it clear all the way.

And format your email in a clear way – forget about long paragraphs (even if they’re super interesting, you risk losing a lot of attention) and super long sentences.

Don’t be afraid to try something different – there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all. Test different kinds of copy to see what works for your customers.

When should I send follow up emails?

I recommend following a simple principle – send a follow up email whenever there is an information need that justifies sending one. Obviously, you should always consider your target audience preferences and use common sense.

Those information needs vary from company to company and depend on whether you operate in a B2B or B2C environment. Here are a few common examples:

B2C follow up emails

  • Welcome email: an email sent whenever a new person joins your email marketing list. You can use this email to show the new subscribers what they can expect from your email marketing program.
Fellow follow up email.
A fragment of a welcome email from Fellow. The email promotes the awarded product, a blog with interesting content, incentivizes purchase with a discount code, and informs about the brand’s social media channels.

You can use the email welcome series to onboard new customers. Here’s a blog explaining how to do it right: How to Onboard New Customers with Welcome Emails

  • Thank you email: there are a lot of reasons to send a thank you email. Maybe someone has bought your product or took part in an event that you organized? Follow up to get valuable feedback that will help you improve your customer experience.
  • Outreach follow up: these are tough nuts to crack. Here’s what Ada Durzyńska, GetResponse blog’s editor has to say: 

As the blog’s editor, I receive hundreds of outreach emails every day and, what’s more surprising, two times as many follow-up emails. Why is that? Well, many times, people want to follow up too quickly, sometimes following up two times on an email sent 10 minutes earlier.

It’s only natural for a person to want to know if their email has been read, and to want answers ASAP. But, give the person you reach out to some more time to read your email and familiarize themselves with your offer. If you want to follow up quickly, wait at least a few hours. If it’s not an urgent matter – the soonest you should follow up is the next day.

Remember to always attach the previous outreach message in your follow up in a way you find suitable (forward, reply, or as an attachment).

As for the email’s copy – make it sound kind, light-hearted, and be patient. Try to include a question in your follow up email, it’s harder for the reader to skip. So, for example, switch the usual “Just making sure you saw this” for something just a bit more engaging, like “What do you think of my offer?”, or even something as straightforward as “is the silence a ‘no’?“.

Also, while making the email as unobtrusive for the reader as you can, don’t be overmodest. A good “I’m following up on this email, because it’s worth not giving up!” will take you further than “I know you’re probably too busy to read such emails, and I really don’t want to bother you…“. And, for the sake of being nice to others, skip the “are you alive?!” and “I’m CC’ing all your management on this email”.

Make the subject line stand out, because the more creative you get, the better chances are you’re going to get a reply, either positive or negative. Just to be clear, “A quick follow up” is the subject line of (probably) 99% of follow up emails.

Ada Durzyńska, GetResponse blog’s editor
  • Free-trial follow up: if you provide a SaaS product, you probably offer a free-trial period when people can test if it provides a solution to their problems. Send at least one follow up email during the fee-trial in order to monitor customer satisfaction.
  • Product campaign follow up: so you’ve launched a promo campaign for a new product. Track conversion and send a follow up email to those who visited the landing page.
Care of follow up email.
An email from care/of with customized product based on survey results.
  • Customer satisfaction survey: ask your customers if they are satisfied with your product and the overall experience. You can send a simple follow up email with an NPS score.  Segment contacts based on the perception of your business and personalize further communication. E.g., find out what’s bothering the unhappy ones, what you can do to improve the customer experience, ask the happy one for a testimonial.
Follow up satisfaction email.
An email from IKEA with the Net Promoter Score (NPS), sent after visiting their shopping center.
  • Customer feedback: use follow up emails to check if customers remain satisfied with your product after the purchase. Remember that satisfied customers are likely to come back and recommend your product. Such feedback loop with your customers provides you with valuable information that helps you develop your product and can be used as user-generated content for marketing purposes.

👉 Read more: Guide to survey emails

B2B follow up emails

The customer journey in B2B environment might be longer and more complex. Here are a few practical tips form the expert, Beata Patfield, Senior Business Development Executive at GetResponse:

Event follow up

Be personable! Call them by name, ask about something personal you’d spoken about previously, show you were actually listening. Did their kid ace those SATs?


Go through your past interactions. Were there any questions you were supposed to get back to them on? Make sure to do it now.


Be brief. Don’t write a three paragraph email just to ask them if they like your product.


Leave the ball in their court. Make sure to finish strong with a specific and actionable CTA – ‘Let me know what you think!’ or ‘When can we jump on a call to discuss your feedback?’ is always better than ‘let’s touch base’ or ‘looking forward to hearing from you’.


And finally, don’t forget the CC. If they had a colleague involved in the conversation, make sure to include them. Otherwise, at best you’ll be deemed as forgetful, at worst – disrespectful.

Sales follow up email

Speed matters. Contact your prospects as soon as you can after you hear from them. Do you really want your competition to beat you to it?

Don’t give up. It may take up to 5-7 tries to actually get through to your prospect.

Check your metrics. Do your emails get opened? Just like with online marketing, it matters what time you send your emails and what you put in your subject line. If you’re getting opens but not replies, revamp your content.

Use multiple channels if one isn’t sufficient. No reply to your emails? Give them a call. Not picking up? Look for them on LinkedIn on Skype – you have many options at your fingertips, all you have to do is look.

Be flexible and adapt. Once you’ve established two-way communication, have a plan but be open to change. Your process is to answer the inquiry, demo the product, then reach a decision – but your prospect can switch things up on you, and you just have to roll with it. It’s not about you, it’s about them.

Beata Patfield, Senior Business Development Executive at GetResponse

If you like the idea of automated emails – using autoresponders and marketing automation workflows to send emails in specific time intervals or in response to your customer’s actions, here’s a perfect article for you:

30+ Automated Emails You Should Be Sending Today

Follow up email vs follow up email cycles

Some time ago we did a podcast with Dr Dave Chaffey, CEO and co-founder of digital marketing advice site Smart Insights, where he gives the following advice:

“You should be looking at the lifecycle of the prospect, as they are interacting with your business and figure out how you can provide reminders to encourage them to buy with you.

(…) One of the touchpoints to start with is the welcome. The first thing you can do is create a welcome series instead of a welcome email. The welcome sequence is the first impression. That first email you send is in some ways the most important one. And if you turn it into a sequence, you can engage your audience from the very beginning of the subscription.”

Dr Dave Chaffey, CEO and co-founder of digital marketing advice site Smart Insights

So, think about the customer journey, and decide if one email or rather a series of emails will bring the best results. Here’s a comparison between a single email and an email cycle.

Follow up emailFollow up email cycle
one-time opportunityseveral opportunities
you ask one question/approach issue from one angleyou can ask a few questions/approach the issue from different angles
 you can progressively profile your contacts

When do you send follow up emails?

Ready to create your own follow ups?

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Email templates in GetResponse.

Feel free to share your fresh thoughts and best practices in the comment box below. We’d love to learn more on follow ups from you.


Irek Klimczak
Irek Klimczak
Entrusted as Content Project Manager at GetResponse, Irek expertly and smoothly runs content marketing projects at all stages of the customer journey in Polish, Russian and English-speaking markets. He possesses more than 6 years of experience in online marketing with a broad teaching background. Irek regularly runs workshops covering digital marketing strategy and tactics, and has delivered presentations at many international events (e.g. Singapore, the US, UK, Poland). You can reach out to Irek and connect on LinkedIn.