How to write a follow-up email that gets a reply

A good follow-up email is a reply in the original thread that adds one useful thing and asks one easy question. It is short (a few lines), names what you are waiting for, and makes answering cheaper than ignoring. Send the first one after two to four working days, and stop after two or three.

Most threads do not go quiet because the other person said no. They go quiet because your email arrived at a bad moment, got buried under twenty others, or needed a decision the person was not ready to make. A follow-up is how you give the thread a second chance without making anyone feel chased.

The test for any follow-up: could the person answer it in under a minute, from their phone, without opening an attachment?

Yes, and most people stop too early. Yesware looked at over 500,000 sales emails sent by its users and found that 70% of unanswered email chains stopped after the first attempt. Yet when the first email got no reply, there was still a 21% chance of a reply to the second one. Yesware also found that most replies arrive fast: 90% of emails that got a reply were answered within a day of being opened.

A larger outreach study by Backlinko and Pitchbox, covering 12 million outreach emails, found that a single follow-up increased replies by 65.8%. These are outreach and sales numbers, so the exact rates will not match a thread with a client you already know, where reply rates are much higher. The direction holds, though: one polite follow-up is worth sending, almost always.

Every good follow-up has the same four parts. You can write one in two minutes once you know them.

1. 1Context in one line. Remind them what this is about, without guilt: "On the Q4 quote I sent on Monday".
2. 2One new thing. An answer to a question they asked, a detail you left out, a relevant change (price valid until a date, a slot opening up), or something useful to them.
3. 3One easy question. Something answerable in a line: "Would Tuesday at 10:00 work?" beats "Let me know your thoughts".
4. 4A way out. Optional but powerful: "If the timing is wrong, tell me and I will check back in January." People reply to close a loop.

Reply in the thread, do not start a new one

Hit reply on your last message instead of writing a new email. The person sees the whole history under your note, their mail app groups it with the original, and you avoid the "which quote was this?" question. Keep the original subject; most mail apps add "Re:" for you.

Keep it short

Boomerang analysed over 40 million emails its users sent and found that messages of 50 to 125 words had the best response rates, all above 50%. The same study found that emails asking 1 to 3 questions were 50% more likely to get a response than emails asking none. A follow-up is the right place for exactly one of those questions.

Three examples for the most common situations. There are more, grouped by situation, in follow-up email templates.

Guilt-tripping ("I guess you are too busy") and fake urgency ("only today") damage a relationship you probably want to keep. A real deadline is fine and useful: say the date and why it exists.

For most business threads, wait two to four working days before the first follow-up, then leave a little longer between each one. Three touches in total (the original plus two follow-ups) is a sensible default; more only makes sense in a planned sales sequence. The full breakdown by situation is in how long to wait before following up, and for outbound sales, in sales follow-up cadence.

• Send in their morning, on a working day. Backlinko and Pitchbox found weekday emails did better than weekend ones, with a slight edge for Wednesday.
• If they told you a date ("after the board meeting"), follow up the day after that date, not before.
• If someone else is waiting on you, answer first, follow up second.

The last email in a sequence closes the loop. It tells the person you will stop writing, which takes the pressure off and often gets the reply the earlier ones did not. Keep it warm and leave the door open.

The hardest part of following up is not writing the email, it is remembering to. Options, from simple to automatic: a calendar reminder for each important thread, a "waiting for" label you review every morning, a snooze or reminder feature in your mail app, or the follow-up planner to lay out dates for a whole sequence.

Skein takes this job off your plate: it reads the threads on your domain, notices the one that went quiet, drafts the follow-up in your tone and, by default, asks you before anything is sent. You can see it work on sample mail in the demo.