Best Sales Follow Up
Email Templates

The reality is–no replies, common ghosting, and prospects forgetting to attend demos. The best way to not give up after all this is to follow up effectively. Here’s why follow-ups are important:

• 80% of sales require 5 follow-up phone calls after the meeting.
• 63% of people requesting information on your company today will not purchase for at least three months – and 20% will take more than 12 months to buy.
• If you follow up with web leads within 1 minute, you’ve 391% more chances to convert them.

Very clearly, fortune favors the salesperson who follows up. But how can you write effective ones for all the different stages in the sales process? In this article, we share a collection of sales follow-up email templates for different scenarios you can use in your sales email campaigns.

How To Write a Sales Follow-up Email?

You are writing a follow-up because your cold email didn’t hit the mark. So, going for the basic follow-up template where you give away the reason for your email- following up, right from the subject line won’t do the job. You need an email that’s as unique or even better than the first email you sent them. And here’s a 4-step framework to write such follow-ups:

1. Use a Follow-up Email Subject Line

Your email subject line has one job – get your prospects to open your email. It should be catchy, relevant, or both to grab their eyeballs and urge them to click open your email.

To create subject lines that are catchy and relevant, talk about:

• Pain points prospects might have
• Your customers, who are their direct competitors
• Industry-wide problems
• Industry-specific jokes

2. Go for a Contextual and Compelling Introduction

Introduction is that bridge between the subject line and the email body where you discuss the reason for your email. And just like subject lines, you can begin with pain points, competitors, or even jokes as long as it does two things:

• Satiate the curiosity that made prospects open your email by giving more context to your subject line.
• Compel them to read further by segueing smoothly into the reason for your email.

3. A Body That Mentions the Reason for Your Email

This might be new to you, but you can write a follow-up email without using the word ‘follow up’. Phrases like ‘just following up’ or ‘touching base’ reek off your desperateness for a sale. So, what can you write (or do) instead?

Talk about their pain points, take them through the before-after bridge, give them a glimpse of what would go wrong if they don’t address the issue in time, and reel them in using value.

Here are some ways to provide value:

• Offer them a free trial
• Throw in a case study, pitch deck, or other useful resources
• Offer free advice on how to deal with their pain points

4. Wrap It up With a Soft CTA

A soft call to action makes the prospects feel that the ball is in their court. And asking for a meeting certainly won’t make them feel this way. So, here are some CTAs you can include in your follow-ups:

• Worth a chat?
• Would you be interested in taking a look?
• Is this worth your time?

50 Follow-up Email Templates To Achieve More Sales

These templates have been customized for specific situations that sales reps face in common. You can also build your own templates for other situations using email template builders.

Good Follow Up Email Examples

Here are several examples that can assist you in gaining a better understanding of follow-up emails.

Follow-up Email for Requesting a Referral

Following Up Email After a Trigger

Follow Up Sales Email After a Product Demo

When They Ask To Reach Out After a While

Example for Sales Break up Email

Tips To Keep In Mind Before You Send Follow Ups:

1. Identify the Prospect’s Level of Intent Before Following Up

Your prospect’s level of intent is their readiness to buy from you. Are a few personalized touches enough to close the deal, or do they need nurturing before they are sales-ready? Identify that and craft your follow-up email accordingly.

Pro Tip: Use a sales engagement tool like Klenty that automatically segments and starts campaigns for the audience based on their buying intent.

2. Track the Follow-up Email Opens and Link Clicks

A prospect who opened your emails 3 times, clicked on the link you sent 2 times has a higher buying intent than someone who has never opened your email. But you’ll never know this unless you track email opens, clicks, or replies. In other words, track your email engagement to send relevant and timely follow-ups yours prospects will never ignore.

3. Don’t ‘Follow Up’ or ‘Touch Base’

Don’t make your sales follow up emails all about following up. Avoid phrases like ‘follow up’ or ‘touch base’ in your emails and make the real reason for your email- to follow up, be a minor part of the conversation.

Instead, make it all about providing relevant and timely value. Throw in a resource or highlight a pain point and its consequences. In other words, show them you care whether they buy from you or not.

4. Don’t Be Too Early or Too Late While Following Up

Time is currency when following up with prospects. Send them a day early or a day late, and you’ll be back to square one in no time. Following up early is like breathing down their necks, muttering ‘buy, buy, buy’. On the other hand, when you follow up late, you give them enough time to forget you, your brand, and your offer.

For starters, here is a rule of thumb you can follow – follow up at least 2 days after and no later than 5 days after you send your email.

Automate Your Follow-Ups With Klenty

Automating follow-ups can be like a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s automation, and it saves time. On the other hand, you won’t be able to personalize your follow-ups. So how can you ensure you’re following up with prospects with the right message?

Enter Klenty. Klenty first identifies the buying intent of your prospect based on how they engage with your emails – the number of times they opened your email, clicked on links, etc.

Based on the interest they show in your emails (their buying intent), Klenty categorizes them into prospects with high buying intent and those with low buying intent. Then, it starts sending relevant email sequences to both these sets of audiences.

Those with higher intent will be sent emails that would push them for a demo or purchase. Similarly, those with low intent will be sent more nurture follow-ups to ensure they’ll choose you first when they are ready to buy

In a Nutshell

Writing a follow-up email that triggers a response from a lead can be one of the most daunting tasks for your team. On one hand, you’re trying to elicit a response, on the other, you don’t want to turn off your lead by being perceived as pushy and annoying.

The follow up templates given in this post are a good place to start and strike a perfect balance between these two situations.

Support these templates with Klenty’s Cadence Playbooks to automate and send well-timed sales emails with the right messages to your prospects. Together they can be the difference between losing a prospect and converting them into customers.

FAQ: Popular Queries About Follow-up Emails

How do I know if a follow-up is too pushy?

Here is a checklist you should consider to know if your follow-ups are too pushy:

1. Are you guilt-tripping readers through intros like "I'll be sad if I don't hear from you"?
2. Are you following up without leaving much time between each email?
3. Are your follow-ups mostly about how awesome your product is rather than how you can solve prospects' problems?

If your follow-ups check even one of these, it indicates that they are pushy and reek of desperation.

How can I measure the effectiveness of my follow-up emails?

You can measure the effectiveness of your follow-up emails by tracking 3 metrics. They are:

• Open rates – The percentage of people who opened your follow-ups. This helps you understand:

1. How great or poor your follow-up email subject lines are, and
2. Prospect interest.

• Reply rates – The percentage of people who replied to your follow-ups.
• Click-through rates– The percentage of people who clicked on the links embedded in your follow-ups. This will help you identify the prospect's intent and which links they clicked on the most.

Should I use an automated follow-up email or a personalized one?

Most of your prospects can sense auto-generated, pushy follow-up messages from a mile away and avoid them at all costs. Hence, never use automated or generic follow-up emails unless you want to reduce the chances of getting replies further. Instead, send a personalized follow-up that opens with a pattern interrupting introduction, provides a clear What's In It For Them(WIIFT), and concludes with a compelling CTA.