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16 Comments

Don't forget to follow up!

A lot of the results the founders in my Sales For Founders course are getting come from follow ups...

Don't forget to send that second (or maybe even third) email! #fyi

  1. 3

    Great advice. 👍

    In fact, 80% of prospects ​say ​no ​at least four times​ before saying ​yes​. That means that those who follow up a minimum of five times are ending up with 80% of the sales.

    (Source)

    Percentages are different depending on who ran the data, but they all trend around 40% to 80% of marketers that give up after one or two emails (total, not just follow-ups).

    Good follow-ups also aren't a series of 5 times the same email. Understand the context, prepare, give first then ask, personalize deeply (beyond "Hi <first name>"), don't ever write in the style "I loved your blog post! now let's talk about my product", ...

    "But they're annoying!"

    ...Until you're the ideal customer, the email was written for you, and you can get the promised benefits of the offer with zero effort.

    I'd love to see you complain after you just got free money, saved time, were able to have more spare time for your family, got valuable knowledge, ... whatever your ideal goal is.

    Final tip for founders: People will still complain. Even if you give them money, time, family, love, ... give them everything in the world and they'll still complain. Because their reward, is being able to complain. They're too attached to it. That's why you follow legal guidelines and have a quick unsubscribe. If they complain instead of just unsubscribing, remove them yourself and block them from ever being contacted again.

  2. 2

    I suck with follow ups.

    Any tips on how to make it easier?

    1. 3

      I found boomerang chrome extension useful, it can schedule a mail, shows a resend option if you don't get a reply.

    2. 1

      I've found that a phone conversation is far more powerful than an email. Even if it's not a fit, you get much better information about why than someone simply ignoring an email. My CRM automatically tells me when to call back prospects until I get an answer, so I can just go in call them on the right cadence. As an introvert, this was a tough habit to establish, but it's actually really fun to talk to people who care about similar stuff.

    3. 1

      I have some thoughts, but honestly most of the good stuff is in this blog post from Close :)

  3. 1

    Writing one cold email — 20 mins
    Chance of first time response — 33%
    Effort per response = 1 hour

    *******

    Following up — 30 secs
    Chance of reply on follow up — 20%
    Effort per response = 2 mins 30 secs

    _______________

    Numbers are very rough. But given you taken the time to right the
    initial cold email, following up always always makes sense.

  4. 0

    I hate follow-ups (as a user). They are so annoying, irrelevant in 95% and require some useless actions from me. The biggest problem is there is no possibility to unsubscribe because they are not automated emails. And I don't feel good if I just sent "leave me alone" back.
    So, if you want good, loyal customers, don't do that.

    1. 0

      You make some good points here about follow-up emails done badly.

      There are definitely useful lessons to be learned for people doing cold emails/follow-up emails...

      1. Make it really easy to unsubscribe with one click from the email (I do this, most good cold emailers do too)

      2. Only send emails which aren't annoying, irrelevant or require useless actions

      One point I do want to make absolutely clear though...

      So, if you want good, loyal customers, don't do that.

      This is, empirically speaking, definitively and utterly false.

      If you are a founder selling software to consumers or businesses, you'll almost definitely make more sales from people who need at least one follow up email to buy, than from people who buy from the first email.

      Follow ups work. it's simple as that.

      As for the 'quality/loyalty' of customers, I've never noticed a difference between first-time/follow-up customers.

      I don't have data here across sales funnels other than the ~30 I've been really close to, but I'd be willing to bet you $loads-and-loads that the average business doesn't have a significantly lower LTV from follow-up conversions than from first time conversions...

      1. 3

        And to piggyback off of these great points ☝️...

        They are so annoying, irrelevant in 95% and require some useless actions from me.

        It sounds like in most cases you are not the ideal customer being targeted. However, for the ideal customers that get that follow-up, they won't be annoyed because their pain points are being solved (i.e. they see the value) and the follow-up is successful.

        You being annoyed doesn't say anything about their ability to create loyal customers.

        1. -1

          This comment has been voted down. Click to show.

      2. 0

        Ok, now seriously.

        If you are a founder selling software to consumers or businesses, you'll almost definitely make more sales from people who need at least one follow up email to buy, than from people who buy from the first email.
        It would be true if you as a founder would know for 100% that the person you send a follow-up really need it. And there is no way to check it except sending follow-ups. And yes, you will make some sales - for example from 5% of them. But the rest 95% will curse you. If it's what you really want...
        May I ask you, are you a founder? If so, which product do you sell? Do you send follow-ups to your customers? If so, can you give us an example of it? Because personally, I feel so tired of them that I can't believe it works somewhere.
        Thanks!

        1. 0

          So what I meant is - if you send 1 cold email followed by 3 follow-up emails to 100 leads, you'll make more sales from emails 2-4 than from email 1.

          ~50% of people won't open your emails at all (heck, ~50% of people don't open my newsletter each week, and they opted in to receive it!).

          You should include an unsubscribe link which is easy to use. If you send good content to a well targeted audience, you shouldn't expect more than ~5-10% to unsubscribe.

          That leaves ~40% who will either buy, or will open your emails and find them interesting enough to not unsubscribe (perhaps because it just isn't the right time for them to buy your product/they don't have the money right now etc).

          But the rest 95% will curse you. If it's what you really want...

          I hope the breakdown above makes it a bit more clear. There definitely are people who react the same way as you do to a well targeted, well written cold email campaign. But in my experience they are 0.1-1% of email recipients at most.

          May I ask you, are you a founder? If so, which product do you sell? Do you send follow-ups to your customers? If so, can you give us an example of it? Because personally, I feel so tired of them that I can't believe it works somewhere.

          Yes I am. You can find some of my previous projects/companies in my profile.

          Right now, I'm not sending any cold emails for my new project. So no follow ups either.

          But I have before. And the average sale we made came from ~2.7 emails sent (so it took, on average, 1.7 follow-up emails to convert a customer).

          I don't have a great example of a follow-up sequence to hand right now, but I'm putting some together for a blog post I'm writing. Will @ you in the post when I share it on IH - look forward to hearing your thoughts on it.

      3. 0

        This is, empirically speaking, definitively and utterly false.
        How I love your categorical, maximalists claims!

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    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    1. 1

      Works only with Gmail and Gsuite?

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        This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

        1. 1

          thanks, keep us updated :)

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            This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

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              This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

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    This comment was deleted 5 years ago.

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