How often do you hear from someone and simply forget?
Well, that might happen to your audience as well. Your carefully crafted email might simply be forgotten when everyday chores get in the way of your subscribers.
As daunting as it may sound, there is still something that can be done. The answer is backing your primary email with follow-up emails!
While there are multiple mediums to connect with your audience, follow-up emails are great to connect with and persuade your audience to take action in your desired direction.
Follow-up emails are one of the most effective tricks in the book to build lasting relationships and engagement.
Then why not apply the right strategies to get the results you’ve dreamed of?
Follow-up emails are reminders or prompts; in simpler terms, it’s a gentle push to get the desired response from your audience.
Conversions from follow-up emails could mean anything from purchases, sign-ups, subscriptions, content engagements, introductions, or more.
How to write a follow-up email?
Linking with previous emails
Linking your follow-up emails with your previous conversations can make it sound human and make the readers feel recognized and valued.
A great way is to understand the customer journey or the past user activity before linking them with previous communication. In a nutshell, identify where the follow-up email fits in your sales pipeline.
These emails could be customized as per the following stages – lead acquisition, lead qualification, lead prioritization, or closing the deal.
Linking email content to previous interactions through personalization, makes the readers feel recognized and valued.
Subject lines that strike a chord with your audiences
As per a Harvard Business Review study, 47% of emails are opened or discarded simply based on their subject line.
Shocking, isn’t it?
So that means getting the subject line right, is like half the battle won!
Using the reader’s first name or referencing previous interactions is key to ensuring a highly personalized approach.
Interesting subject lines capture the readers’ attention and can create curiosity and that can increase the chances of your email being read. Hence, subject lines are often the deciding factor if the emails are opened or not. Moreover, ensuring relevance in the subject line is a great way to quickly signal what awaits the readers in the email.
Moreover, subject lines that build up on previous emails work much better. Here are some examples:
- I forgot to mention…
- Next steps…
- Great speaking with you today! Wanted to share something else with you.
- I’d love your feedback on our meeting
- Here’s the info I promised
Offer value while following-up
Unlike lengthy newsletters, follow-up emails simply serve the purpose of following up with the audience regarding a conversion phase. Hence, the length and tonality of such emails must be brief, concise and straightforward.
But besides a brief follow-up, you can also add a value proposition as an additional element.
Why?
Your prospects could be busy and a generic and broad email is more likely to fizzle out!
A great way to do this is to highlight the benefits and outcomes for the audience. You can also direct your subscribers to the website, a product page, infographics, FAQs, an article, or a resource that can offer them more insights into the domain.
Go beyond the basics
Despite making the email concise, you can also offer additional value while persuading your audience. This can include exclusive content, discounts, case studies, social proofs, or resources that the audience must be aware of for future conversions.
Besides informing them about what’s coming next, it also enhances the reader’s interest in the brand’s offerings.
Analyzing some of the best follow-up email examples can help you gauge how to communicate such additional resources seamlessly.
Creating a sense of urgency
Though creating a sense of urgency is important, ensure that incessant and unnecessary urgencies throughout multiple communication verticals may hurt your brand’s reputation.
Opting for this strategy without careful planning may lead to counter-productive results.
Besides maintaining urgency, you must consider tapping into the right frequency with the right follow-up email strategy to not overwhelm your audience or to leave extra spaces for them to forget the brand messaging. Daily emails might lead your audience to hit the ‘unsubscribe’ button.
Types of follow-up emails
Confused about which category your follow-up emails fit into? Check out these types:
Post-purchase follow-ups
Your customer is finally happy to have your product, what next?
Should that be it? Of course not!
Why not nurture your relations with your audience with post-purchase follow-up emails?
The contents of the post-purchase follow-ups include expressing gratitude for the purchase, gathering feedback and reviews and more. The timelines of these emails may differ based on how long it has been since your customer purchased.
Here’s what you can do with post-purchase follow-up emails:
- Asking your audience to join your Facebook group
- Introducing a reward or referral program
- Showing them how to use the product
- What they should expect from it and much more
Event and webinar follow-ups
Follow-up emails are a great way to advertise your expertise to a wider audience even at a later date!
These emails can be used to send event or webinar resources or materials to attendees. Another benefit includes encouraging further interaction and engagement with the audience.
Besides that, you can also promote your next webinar to your audience.
Content engagement follow-ups
Content is king!
But it still bows down to engagement for its supremacy to reign!
A simple appreciation goes a long way! Content engagement follow-ups can also be used to promote your content. This can also lead to a growth in User Generated Content (UGC) through social media engagements such as likes, shares and reposts, transforming this content into a social proof.
Talk about killing 2 birds with a stone!
How to craft the perfect follow-up email strategy?
Create a schedule for the email sequence
Wish to keep the email plan effective and efficient?
Gathering leads and communicating with them from multiple verticals can be tedious. These verticals include emails, phone calls, website inquiries, social media, ads and others. Hence, creating a schedule for further communications is crucial.
It is vital to remember that there are no fixed times to send these emails. The timing may depend on the urgency and context of the situation.
While the prospects will only buy when they are ready to, referring to guidelines can help you nurture the relationship and stay fresh in your customers’ minds.
Treat prospects with respect and care
Ever wondered what can help you get a layer deeper into your audience’s minds in a saturated market?
Here are some golden nuggets you can consider:
- Initiate a genuine and personalized conversation
- Don’t spam
- Hold their attention and nudge them toward conversion
- Do your homework about your audience’s
- Listen to what each prospect has to say
- Know who they are and what they do for conversations to resonate better
- Offer the solution that can make their lives easier
- Offer a prompt follow-up on concerns and queries
Determining timezones
Sending emails in your local time zones might not work for subscribers living across the globe. You can set different sending times for your campaigns based on your audience’s location. This will help you set the email time as per the timings when your subscribers are most active.
Besides optimizing your emails as per the timezones, here’s what shows that the timings are right:
- Improved email open rates
- Amplified website traffic from emails
- Increased offline inquiries
You must note that consistently sending follow-up emails can annoy subscribers and lead them to hit the ‘Unsubscribe’ button!
What we have to say
We hope the question – ‘How to write follow-up emails’ doesn’t haunt you anymore!
Sending emails without a strategy is like throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks. But why would you do that?
Email marketing has the potential to offer businesses a world of opportunities that thriving businesses must not ignore.
Follow-up emails serve multiple purposes – they can remind customers to purchase, provide value and share useful updates or offers about the brand.
Setting up follow-up emails with Icegram Express
If email marketing still makes you feel jittery, we’ve got something that can help!
Let Icegram Express offer you a helping hand with email and newsletter automation, segmentations and multiple other features! Icegram Express helps you set up follow-up emails for different purposes.
While there are many WordPress and WooCommerce plugins for follow-up emails, Icegram Express encapsulates all you need to set your email strategy towards success.
Get in touch with us and transform your email list into a customer acquisition machinery.