We’ve all been there: you have a great first conversation with your new prospect and feel positive about what comes next, only to be met with silence. Argh. 😐

So is now the time to cut your losses and move on? Of course not!

Rather, now’s the time to be tactical. Swoop in with a friendly sales follow-up email. Remind the person that you (and your company) are ready and waiting to help them achieve their business goals, and show them how.

But how do you write a follow-up sales email that hits the spot and leads your prospect further down the road to conversion? Keep reading for some top tips from sales experts—plus, we’ve included some handy follow-up email templates you can swipe as well.

How do you write a good follow-up email for sales?

A good sales follow-up email should be short, engaging, and encourage your prospect to respond. It’s also got to sound like a real person has written it—not a robot—and should remind them how you can make real, meaningful benefits to their business.

Simple, right? 😅Here are 10 tips to help you craft the perfect message.

10 sales follow-up email tips

1. Use an eye-catching subject line 👀

We all have inboxes that are overflowing with emails from people wanting to get our attention. Yours has to stand out from the rest. How? Start with a snappy subject line—one that piques your prospect’s curiosity and is appropriate to the stage of the sales journey you’ve reached with them. 

For example:

• After a trigger event: What did you think of [title of blog post]?
• When you’ve had no response: Still interested?
• After leaving a voicemail: Sorry I missed you just now

2. Keep it brief

Your prospect is more likely to read your follow-up email if it’s short and to the point. A 2,000-word essay (no matter how well-written) will likely land in the bin.

Following up with info that your prospect has asked for, or something they might find interesting, is a great idea. Include it as an attachment if it’s quite long, as this will allow them to go back to read it in their own time.

3. Add personality

Let your personality shine through. Be warm and human. The more your prospect feels like you’re speaking to them and only them, the better. 

If you do use an email template—and we recommend you do, they save loads of time—make sure you tweak it to suit what you know about your prospect. You could mention something they said in a previous call, or something they shared on social media.

For example:

I remembered that you said you were interested in [topic], and I was reading the other day…

I spotted the blog post you shared about [topic] yesterday, and it got me thinking…

4. Share relevant content

Consider sending a sales follow-up email on something your prospect might be interested in. This could be a quick tip, some industry stats, or a link to a white paper.

An email like this has a couple of advantages:

• It’s a good tactic to use with colder leads who aren’t responding to you—it comes across as less pushy.
• It helps establish you as more of an advisor than a salesperson, someone who genuinely wants to help build your prospect’s business.

5. Get the timing right

For most prospects, the right time to send a follow-up email is about one or two days after the first time you’ve spoken. 

If you know that your prospect needs to discuss your offer with other decision makers at their company, it’s important to allow more time for those conversations to take place. In these instances, you might want to wait four to five days before emailing.

6. Be persistent (but know when to give up)

Don’t be disheartened if your first follow-up email doesn’t get a response. Plan to send at least two to three follow-ups in total. After that, conversion rates start to drop—so it becomes less worth your time and effort to keep emailing.

Better to move on and find new leads who will be interested in what you have to say.

7. Use the numbers technique

This is a popular approach to use with prospects who aren’t responding, as it provides them with a very quick and simple way to get in touch with you. It looks something like this:

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As we said, this is a well-used technique, so you’ll want to make sure you adapt it to make it your own.

8. Pair a voicemail and an email 📞

Imagine you’ve called to follow up with a prospect, they haven’t picked up, and you’ve left a voicemail. Don’t leave it there—send an email as well. Something along the lines of: Sorry I missed you. Let me know when would be a better time to chat…

This two-pronged approach shows how committed you are to getting their attention. It could be the push they need to get in touch with you.

9. Check before you send

Make sure you give your email a quick spelling and grammar check before you send it on its way. We’re all busy and it’s natural for the odd typo to creep in, but for your email to look professional it’s important to weed out any errors.

10. Save time with a text expander tool

Try using a text expander tool like Magical to speed up writing your sales follow-up emails. 

It can save you from having to type the same thing over and over again. Instead, refine your best messages, add variables for personalization, and save your templates as easy-to-access shortcuts. Simply type // and choose the message you want to send: Great chatting with you the other day! Haven’t heard from you in a while…

This handy tool can save you up to 7 hours a week—that’s almost a whole working day. Just think of what you could do with all that extra time. 

4 sales follow-up email templates

If you’re looking for more ideas of how to write a follow-up email for sales, check out the four templates below. 

Template 1: After the first conversation

You can use this email to check in with a prospect if you don’t hear from them after the first meeting.

Template 2: After a trade show or conference

Here’s a follow-up email template you can use to get in touch with any connections you’ve made at a business event:

Template 3: After a trigger event

If your sales analytics tell you that your prospect has, for example, reopened an email from you or visited your website, now is the ideal time to send a follow-up email.

Template 4: The “break-up” email

If a lead has gone cold and they’re not replying to any of your messages, you can try sending one last “break-up” email. This is where you tell the person (politely) that, as you haven’t heard from them, you won’t be contacting them again.

Either this will allow you to move on to new, more promising deals, or it will give the lead the spur they need to get back in touch.

A little bit of humor can work well:

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Still not finding the right words for what you want to say? Check out our other article on 9 of the Best Sales Email Templates for more inspiration.

Send follow-up emails with Magical

With Magical, your follow-up email process is simply and easy. The app saves your perfectly crafted messages as shortcuts. Just hit two keystrokes, and you can insert your message template and personalize it with each contact’s details in an instant. 

Add our free Chrome extension today.