The Ultimate Follow-Up Email Templates You Can Use in 2022

Let’s face it.

Email is never going to go away that easily.

It serves as the primary, official means of communication for a lot of businesses.

And, it has always worked to bring in leads.

It’s important.

But, here’s the thing.

Your emails only work if your prospects are reading them. If they’re not, then you have a giant problem on your hands and you’ve got to take advantage of the next best thing: the follow-up email.

In this guide, we take a look at the best follow-up email templates you can use with any campaign, and help you with your lead nurturing efforts in omnichannel marketing!

Why Should You Send Follow-Up Emails?

You don’t just send follow-up emails to get the attention of your prospects.

It goes beyond that.

Follow-up emails first serve as a reminder to prospects about your offer. Most clients need a reminder that you have a pending transaction with them, they could have lost your initial email in their inbox, accidentally archived or deleted, read it and forgot about it, or the first message just didn’t go through.

Sending a reminder message is just good business practice because you keep your funnel lubricated and prospects moving through the sales process.

An argument against follow-up emails is that it comes off as too needy, but we beg to differ.

You see sometimes clients like being chased, it makes them feel important and it also shows them how much they matter to you. Sometimes this is the boost that they need for you to be recognized.

The chase is good, every relationship gets a little momentum because of a chase.

Lastly, a follow-up email is also a sign of professionalism.

Professionals will always keep you updated once you get into any process with them because that’s just good etiquette.

This is why before they even give up on a client they’ll send a message – we discuss this in Follow-Up Template 5 in this guide.

Here’s how to create an email nurture sequence!

Follow-Up Email Template 1: The Cold Email Follow-Up

The most common use for a follow-up email template is after a cold email.

Cold emails might still be a go-to for a lot of companies, but truth be told, without integrating other omnichannel campaigns on other platforms, it might not be the best way to go about things.

The least you can do with a cold email campaign is to make sure you’re following up.

And, there are a bunch of ways you can do this.

Subject Line: RE: *Last Email Subject Line*

Hi *Prospect Name*!

I know the last email must have left you with a lot of questions.

Feel free to pop me a quick email if you need help with something.

I also wanted to ask if you were free on *day of the week* at around *hours when you’re free on that date*

Looking forward to working with you,

*Your Name*

Short and sweet is the best, remember that.

Sometimes all you need to do is to give them a quick reminder that you’re just around to help them with anything that they might need.

Also, notice that we’ve included a quick way for you to jump into a call with them.

This is critical with cold email follow-ups because you want to start building a relationship with them, and what better way to do it than with real conversations?

Follow-Up Email Template 2: No Response

The no response follow-up email template is a crowd favorite.

Why?

Because it happens to most of us when we try to reach out to prospects.

Here’s what.

No response doesn’t mean that they haven’t read your email yet – that’s just one of the possible reasons. It could be that the previous email was buried in their inbox, they read your email but are unwilling to act, or they read and forgot about it.

Regardless of their reason, you need to be able to sequence out your emails for positive, negative, or no responses.

When they don’t respond to your email for three to four days, you can send out this template.

Subject Line: *the same as your last email to them*

Hey *Prospect Name*,

I don’t know if you were able to check out the email that I sent a couple of days ago, but that’s alright!

In any case, I also wanted to know how you were able to *prospect’s major achievement* even give the *insert pain point that the prospect overcame*

[[You can change the paragraph above depending on the first email you sent them. For organic, subtle campaigns, you can keep the paragraph to drive a conversation.]]

Are you free to talk?

*add an image here of where you could hangout, it could be a pic of you having coffee or saying hi, it can be a meme, etc.*

It looks like we both have *similar interests in the industry* and I’d love to pick your brain regarding it.

How does *day of the week when you want to book an appointment* sound for you?

I’m really excited, I included my Calendly link here as well.

Talk to you soon!

*Your Name* 

This follow-up doesn’t push for your initial agenda – if you decided to sell on your first email (which you shouldn’t) – but rather it’s a “getting to know you” email instead.

It does a couple of things to encourage your prospect to finally reply to you.

First of all, it rephrases the proposal in the form of a quick chat that allows the connections with your prospect to be more casual rather than serious.

This is further highlighted through the use of a quick graphic to add a little fun and humor to the conversation. Now a lot of prospects especially in serious industries, don’t mind a little fun.

In fact, a lot of professionals welcome a meme or two because it’s breath of fresh air from all the usual emails that they are bombarded with on a daily basis.

Lastly, there’s the reference to a link for them to book an appointment with you. This CTA is extremely helpful if securing a quick meet right there and then.

The combination of casual conversation, a little humor, and a quick meeting invite will do wonders for ensuring that your next follow-up results in a sales discovery call that will bring in sales.

Follow-Up Email Template 3: After a Meeting

There’s no excuse for you not to send an email after a meeting.

In fact, it’s one of the most important SOPs after every sales triage/serious conversation/sales discovery meet with your prospect.

Sending an email after a meeting shows prospects that you are serious about doing business with them and that you are professional with the way you conduct your activities.

Beyond that, it also opens the doors to communicating even after a bad meeting.

You can take this a step further by sending them articles or other actionable resources even after the follow-up email. This greatly boosts your efforts in lead generation.

Subject Line: Notes About Earlier

Hi *Prospect Name*,

I had a great time speaking with you today!

Here are a couple of notes on the meeting we had, and a quick summary of everything that we discussed.

Let me know, if everything’s alright or if I’ve accidentally missed something out.

The Goals:

*write down in list form what the goals of the meeting were*

Your Challenges:

*write down in list form how you’re going to help your client get over their pain points*

Our Next Steps:

*this part is critical because it allows you to plan another meeting with the client and shows them your plans moving forward*

Really looking forward to working with you,

*Your Name*

This isn’t your standard “minutes of the meeting” email.

This takes it a couple of steps further by detailing the next steps and providing a concrete plan of attack after a successful sales phone call.

It starts off with the standard salutations and then provides a tri-section plan that aims to summarize the meeting, remind the prospect of the challenges ahead, and the next steps in overcoming these challenges.

Here’s why it works.

First of all, it’s simple, you want to keep it to bullet points because this allows a prospect to quickly read through the email and not be intimidated by its length.

Start with a summary and highlight the good points of the conversation or meeting that you just had, this keeps them in good spirits.

The pain points work on the emotions that they feel are associated with their business, you remind them of their problems to elicit an emotional response, but you reassure them that they are only challenges.

The final part of this email aims to assure both parties that there will be a second meeting to start working towards finishing the challenges. This is a good setup on behalf o the marketer because it ensures that the client will be assimilated into the sales funnel.

When is the best time for a sales call?

Follow-Up Email Template 4: After They Trigger an Event

Did they just happen to reread an email that you sent them a couple of months ago? Fill out a form but haven’t replied to your first email? Or, maybe they just happened to click on a certain “special” link on your website?

These events are all triggers because they initiated action and you are in a position to do something about what they did

Whatever event they trigger is a good enough excuse for you to send a follow-up email.

It does wonders for your lead nurturing and you get to come off as someone who’s really on top of their game when it comes to engaging with interested parties.

Here’s the thing.

The email doesn’t even have to be about the event that they triggered, it could be a “random” follow-up triggered by the prospect doing something mundane like rechecking your proposal to them.

Here’s a general follow-up email template for event triggers.

Subject Line: RE: *Insert Proposal Topic*

Hi *Prospect Name*!

How are you?

We spoke in *month where you last spoke with each other* regarding *talk about the last thing you spoke about*.

I know that it might be a little early, but I wanted to get in touch with you to ask about your thoughts regarding the offer.

Do you have any thoughts about the proposal I sent over?

Just let me know and I’m more than willing to help you out.

We can talk properly this coming *day of the week* at around *provide hours when you’ll be free*. We can do Calendly, here’s my link.

Looking forward to hearing from you again!

*Your Name*

Do you know why this approach is so effective?

It’s because of the timing.

They might run into your proposal or email again – if you’re tracking it – and you’ll be able to hit them up as soon as they’re done rereading it. This gives you a lot of leverage because they initiated the first move and their idea of you is still fresh in their minds since they had a chance to interact with your material.

It might also be perfect timing for a prospect who has finally decided not to take you on. It gives you a chance to reopen the conversation and do something about winning the deal.

Notice how the email acknowledges that the follow-up might be a “little early”, this shows your prospect that you respect their decision-making time.

It also contains a quick reminder of what your last conversation was with them and this is good because you want to recap what went down last time you spoke.

Lastly, it gives them a CTA link within the email so that you can speak with them again and continue to build rapport and nurture the lead to fruition.

Follow-Up Email Template 5: The Last Follow-Up

When all of your follow-up methods have failed, do you stop following up?

Nope.

You go for one last follow-up to tell your prospects that you’re going to stop following up.

(Also you want to remove that particular prospect from your main list and analyze if they should still be in your future remarketing lists, say when they finally have the budget to purchase what you’re offering them.)

Why do we do this?

Because you can use this as an opportunity to find the right person to call or get a final referral to go for someone else.

This allows you to be more efficient with the leads that you have.

Here’s a template that you can use for your final follow-up:

Subject Line: RE: *your last email subject line*

Hey *Prospect Name”,

I want to apologize for hitting you up so much, and I think that I might be emailing the wrong person regarding *subject you want to discuss or services you’re selling*.

Do you think you can get me in touch with the right person to talk to regarding partnerships with *insert your industry here*?

I’d be absolutely grateful if you can help me out.

Also, don’t worry, I won’t be sending you emails moving forward.

Thank you for understanding,

*Your Name*

Do you see why this email works out?

First of all, it starts with a sincere apology acknowledging the stress you might have given your prospect, then it follows up by asking if they know anybody they can connect you with.

Although the chances of them helping you out might be slim, there’s no harm in sending out one final email as compared to completely ghosting a prospect out of nowhere.

A slim chance is better than doing nothing.

Use an Email Automation Service

Email automation is critical in making sure that everything works like clockwork.

By automating your processes, you don’t just minimize cost and reduce human-related errors, you can also make sure that you don’t miss out on your follow-ups. Remember the longer you let a lead sit there, the colder they get and that is an inefficient waste of leads.

Now, there are a lot of email automation services out there with a few that even integrate with your CRM so that you’ll be able to pull lead data and scoring in every touchpoint with your prospect.

This helps with omnichannel campaigns where it’s important that you keep track of the people that you are reaching out to.

It also doesn’t matter if you’re dealing 20 leads or 1,000 leads, email automation helps you cut down on time, resources, and the manpower required to run a lead generation campaign off of email.

Our Follow-Up Email Template Takeaways

We’ve seen it happen before.

Really good cold emails getting sent out with amazing copy, converting subject lines, and ending up on the backburner because marketers forgot about sequencing.

Here’s the thing.

You should never, ever send out an email without a proper follow-up ready.

If you use our follow-up email templates, you’ll be able to send your prospects a reminder about your offer, be back at the top of their inbox, and remind them how important your relationship is with them.

The last part is critical.

People like to be chased because it shows them their worth.

It can also help build the foundation for an equitable relationship moving forward.

With growth hacking, building relationships is the main driving force for growth.