10 Sales Follow-Up Emails That Will Boost Your Leads by 90% (Updated)

Sales follow-up emails are a crucial part of your email communication that is done once your primary pitch has been ignored. It bangs on your head if sending another email will be right or not.

You are not alone. 44% of sales professionals stop after the first attempt. 

But, why do salespeople give up so quickly? Mostly, it is due to the fact that writing these mission-critical emails isn’t easy. Besides, toeing the lines between persistence and pushiness is tough. 

80% of sales require at least 5 follow-up emails after the initial contact. Now you must have got a clear picture about the importance of sales follow-up emails.

This article will be your hand guide or manual to write a sales follow-up email. This article is also having some sales email follow-up templates that can be used for sure shot success.

Best practices of sales follow-up emails

1. Reply in the same thread

Make a practice of sending your follow-up emails on the same thread as of the primary email. This will help you in many ways.

1. Your recipient will receive the follow-up email with the subject line starting with [RE], which created curiosity to check the email.
2. Your follow-up email will act as a reminder for the previous email, in case your recipient has missed it.
3. You can manage a proper order of conversation in one place. 

2. Keep it short and simple

After sending a primary email, we assume that the recipient has some idea about your product/service. So the next emails should be on the point. Add value to your sales follow-up email to make it relevant for your recipient. In every email focus on a single CTA to make your user take a step towards your goal.

3. Take a note of the time

Time is one of the most important factors to be considered while sending follow-up emails. While doing business communications with different prospects across the globe, you need to schedule your emails according to their convenient time. This will increase your speed of sales cycle and decrease the overall response time.

4. Analyze the recipient’s behavior

The primary email analysis will help you decide the follow-up step you should take. For example, you notice your recipient is continuously opening your emails and checking the links but is not replying to you, it means he is not confident with your solution. Now it’s the right time to send a follow-up email with more valuable information to build trust. These tasks might be tedious, but you use a tool like Saleshandy to automate your follow-up sequence according to recipients’ behavioral conditions like Not opened, Not Replied, or Regardless.

Let’s talk about different Sales Follow-Up Emails

1. Just checking in

Sometimes, needy follow-up emails like ‘Am I bugging you yet?’ Or, ‘I didn’t receive your email’ can get you in trouble. Following up with missing points or just checking in – kind of emails can be more effective than sounding needy.

For instance, It’s a basic sales psychology that “You should not let yourself associated with a negative or needy image, ever”.

Usually, you can’t say something like “Hey, we are not scammers”, or, “we don’t want to sound like lazy loudmouths out to squeeze from you. That would be outright murder for your brand. According to basic human nature, the prospect will take you as a scammer, lazy, and have nothing worthwhile to offer. But, brilliant sales genius knows when and how to inject ‘negativity’ to compel unresponsive contacts to action.

“Am I bugging you yet?”

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.

Takeaway – Most of the time, it’s recommended to follow-up with the missing points or if you think your straightforward game is strong, you can directly approach with the above template. Of course, if you want to increase your chances of getting a reply, it’s better to be creative and come up with different just checking in email alternatives. Make sure that they are thoughtful, upfront, and hyper-relevant to your specific contact.

2. Observe their actions

If you are observing your prospect’s action well, you can capture their attention quickly and result in about 50% more reply rate.

Let’s say you are using an email tracking tool like Saleshandy and you receive real-time tracking notifications. You can draw the following feedback.

1. You can know the recipient’s interest level and act accordingly.
2. You can keep a record of who is opening your email and how many times it has been opened to pitch a short email on the basis of their behavioral actions.

For instance, you could do a short email like this:

Hi Kent,

I noticed that you read the email which I sent you on Friday and checked our website. But, I never heard back from you.

I was wondering if these actions mean you’re interested in learning more about SalesHandy and how we can provide value to your online businesses at [name of the business].

I wanted to follow up with you today to check if you have any questions about SalesHandy or any of our features.

If you are available, we can have a 10 min quick call next week. I can assist you in reaching out to multiple recipients easily.

Thanks,

Takeaway– Always know where your limits are. You don’t want to sound needy or creepy to your prospects.  It’s always suggested that you pitch a polite and subtle follow-up email that doesn’t violate anyone’s ‘right to think’ privilege.

3. [Your Company] Call summary.

Remember to keep adding value when you’ve just hung up after a sales call. Now, one of those follow-up emails you furiously cranked out in retaliation when your espresso broke down – just worked perfectly. So, the good news is you got your prospect on the phone for a sales call But following up to confirm the talk points is a good approach to get the deal going.

Here is the sample:

Hi Jones,

It was great talking to you today. I’m glad that I could help you with your [Problems]. I am also sharing the key features of how Saleshandy can automate your work and make it even easier.

Here are the top value adds we went over:

▪️ Saleshandy an email outreach automation will allow you (or any sales rep) to send personalized emails campaigns, automated follow-ups sequences and advanced analytics to boost your email productivity.

▪️ Saleshandy templates allow sales representatives to respond quicker and gauge the effectiveness of their campaigns through the open and reply rate data.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

P.S You can watch these videos to see how Saleshandy helps sales reps to make data-driven decisions that optimize their sales process.

Thanks,

Takeaway– To keep the deal moving forward, you need to follow up with a note thanking them for their time. Plus, giving them a quick recap of the call can fix talk points in their mind. The above template can ensure a 50%+ response rate.

4. Sorry, I couldn’t reach you

Now, this type of template works best if you had left a voicemail to increase the chances of hearing back.

A general voicemail can be just 3 minutes long but you have a lot to say. So after a quick note on the voicemail, you can write a follow-up email asking for their convenient time to schedule a call.

Hi [Prospect’s name],

I just called to [give the purpose of your call] but I could not reach you.

In my voicemail, I mentioned that I’ll try you again on [date and time], but feel free to reach me whenever it works best for you on [phone number] or shoot me any questions via email. I will be glad to respond.

[Your Name]

Takeaway– You realize clients are not always ready to get calls. But, they might be able to answer a quick email from their mobile devices. The email is easy to read and respond to because it’s short, directive, and requires only a quick answer. This email gave us a whopping 80% response rate within 24 hours!

5. Permission to close your file?

This is like the one last try email to get the prospect aboard. When you are trying to connect with the prospect for a long time, you can ask him for permission to close their account. In these types of emails, you are more likely to get a straightforward response from your prospect.

[Prospect’s name],

We are in the process of closing files for the month. Typically when we haven’t heard back from someone it either means they aren’t interested or are really busy. If you aren’t interested, do I have permission to close your file?

If you’re still interested, what do you recommend as a next step?

Thanks for your help.

Takeaway– Why is this email powerful? It puts the ball squarely in the prospect’s court. They will be compelled to tell you whether they would like to proceed or not. Also, by asking the buyer to suggest the next step, you’ll be able to gauge a level of commitment of the prospect.

6. Great call, no follow-up

You had a really good sales call and you are expecting a positive response from the prospect. You felt the connection between you and the prospect, as he was even helping you with your description as if you both were on the same page all of the time.

But somehow, a month later, there’s no more follow-up, no returned calls, and no emails.

You are not liking this and would love to get the prospect back on track. What can you do now? Here’s the follow-up email after the phone call template that you can use.

Hi [Name],

It has been over a month and I didn’t hear from you.

I am just following up to know if everything is fine. I was also wondering what is your next step regarding our last discussion.

Please tell me how would you like us to proceed regarding our talk at the meeting.

Thank you for your time!

[YOUR SIGNATURE]

7. Trigger Event=New Follow-up

If you’re looking for a great business follow up email sample, here’s one. With great tools like Saleshandy for example, which allows you to track everything, you can pitch back to your prospect once they read your email. It can be very useful as people often close large deals just because of a simple trigger notification that they respond upon.

Hello [Name],

I know that I might be a little earlier than what we decided, but I was wondering if you’ve given any thoughts to my proposal. 

I have a little spare time in my schedule right now, so if there are any more questions that you’d like me to answer about, I’d be more than happy to do so right away.

I’m waiting for your questions, send them my way!

Thanks, [YOUR NAME]

8. New Leads

If you are following up with leads that just came to you for downloading marketing content or signing up for the newsletter, you’re having a difficult task ahead of you. These leads are not secured leads and so they need further nurturing with a perfect sales follow-up email.

You need to win over them by showing that your company is worth much more than the downloadable content or newsletter. There are 1/3 chances that you’ll get a response if you follow up and use the template that we’ve described below.

Hi [Name],

That was a great talk by you in [Event Name]. I really loved it, and I hope you enjoyed it too. I found that you have gathered a lot of information about the SalesHandy email automation tool, which helps you improve the [Problem] sector of your business.

I am quite sure that this is a priority for you, as it is with anyone because your sales team’s productivity would mean the difference between success and failure. I thought you’d love it if I send  [PIECE OF CONTENT, ARTICLE, GUIDE] for you to read and review. For any more details about how this all works, call me or email me at any time, I’m always ready to chat about it!

Let me know how I can help you with this!

[YOUR SIGNATURE]

9. After the Event

The chances are, you’re going to send one of your sales follow-up emails at the end of a show, a conference, meeting, or any event that gathers business owners and clients alike. If that’s the case, use the sales follow-up email template below.

Hi [NAME OF CONTACT],

That was an amazing event. I really loved it, and I hope you enjoyed it too. I see you have gathered a lot of information about the new email tracking service like SalesHandy, which helps you improve the [PROBLEM] sector of your business.

I am quite sure that this is a priority for you, as it is with anyone because your sales team’s productivity would mean the difference between success and failure. I thought you’d love it for me to send you my [PIECE OF CONTENT, ARTICLE, GUIDE] for you to read and review. For any more details about how this all works, call me or email me at any time, I’m always ready to chat about it!

Let me know how can I help you with this!

[YOUR SIGNATURE]

10. The Final Countdown

Here’s one follow-up email sample for a proposal that will make a difference. If nothing else works, it’s time to pull out the big guns. And by that, we mean the final sales follow-up email, the break-up letter, the “so long, fellow” message that you’d never want to get in your Inbox.

This works because the prospect is still confused and this final action will force him to take action quickly. In any case, you have a definitive response and you can close the deal or move to the next prospect.

Hello [NAME OF CONTACT],

Although I tried my best to get in touch with you and talk about [YOUR SERVICE], I failed to hear back from you, which can mean only one of two things:

1. You’re all good with [SERVICE] which means I’ll stop trying to reach you.

2. You’re interested in having a talk about it but didn’t get the chance to call or email back.

In any case, as I was getting worried, I decided to send you one final email, so please let me know your plans for this.

Summing it up

After a while, how we performed is put behind us. We are forced to either look for more prospects or begin our cadence of follow up emails. But, the process of contacting a prospect doesn’t have to be overwhelming. This post has provided a handful of tidbits and templates you may find helpful next time you’ll contacting your prospects.

The article was updated on July 1, 2020.