Why follow-up emails are important to increase ROI of your campaigns

When marketers send at least one follow-up email after the initial email, the response rate is around 27%, versus 16% on average when no follow-up email is sent.⁽¹⁾

Your audiences are not always on the lookout for emails from you, especially because pre-scheduled activities always take precedence. Thus, to expect them to respond to the very first email would not be fair. Yet, 70% of salespeople send only one email.⁽²⁾

While in the sales context, there may be many scenarios where follow-up emails would be needed, such as after a sales pitch, in this blog, read about follow-up emails for email marketing campaigns only.

How do follow-up emails boost the results of your email campaigns?

• Messaging stays on top of the audience’s mind -

  Your audience may read an email about an offer or a new product launch and plan to check out the offer later. A follow-up email makes sure that they don’t forget to do so. A gentle reminder with an additional offer or discount would keep them on track in the buyer's journey.

• Increased chances of having an audience respond -

  If someone does not reply to your first email, you may tweak it and send a follow-up. The audience may now reply. It has been found that the response rate is 27% when you send a follow-up email and 16% when you send only the initial email.⁽³⁾

• Audiences understand that you are invested in them - 

  They learn that you are making an effort to communicate something of value to them.

• Make messaging and its purpose clearer to the audience -

  While you may have planned a campaign for months and know the purpose inside-out, your audiences can’t make much sense of it in the first go. Subsequent emails help to make it clear to them as to what you are offering and why it is the best thing for them.

• Improved chances of conversion -

  Once the audience responds to your follow-up email and the engagement increases, so do the chances of conversion.

How to make follow-up emails more effective? 

A follow-up email need not be an exact replica of the previous email. When you begin an email campaign, you need to plan for the first email as well as the follow-up emails—when and how many do you want to send?

• Personalized and relevant subject line -

  As the subject line determines whether the email will be opened or not, make it relevant. If you are offering an additional discount or a free demo, then mention so in the subject line. Personalization is the #1 tactic used by email marketers for better engagement.⁽⁴⁾ You can also add a sense of urgency using words such as ‘Now, ‘Act’, ‘Last day’ etc.

• Set the context in the email - 

  Begin with the context of the previous mail or any action that has been taken by the prospect. For example, “Hi <>, We are eagerly awaiting your confirmation for the upcoming webinar. Here are 5 reasons why this webinar is a great fit for you”

• Keep it short -

  If a prospect hasn’t read the first email, they surely won’t appreciate a long email. Try writing a crisp message, getting straight to the point, so that it catches the reader’s attention.

• Include a clear CTA - 

This is one of the most important things. Keep the CTA right at the front, so that anyone who wants to take an action without getting deeper into the email can do so instantly with the given CTA button.

• Time it right -

  Over time, your marketing automation statistics may reveal the days when the email open rate is higher than other days. Leverage that while scheduling the emails.

• Send appropriate number of follow-up emails -

  Finding the right number of follow-up emails comes with a bit of experience, and it could also vary with each campaign.

   

Automate follow-up emails with marketing automation tool 

Once you have a schedule in place, you simply set up the workflow in the marketing automation tool you are using. The emails will be sent out automatically as needed. You can gather information from historical data as to which day and what time is best to send these emails.

Repetition and persistence are often the keys to making a message stick. Thus, if you haven’t been planning follow-up emails so far, you could begin now. If you are already sending them, then dig deeper into the data and see how you can improve the response rate further.

Reference and Citation-

1. https://woodpecker.co/blog/follow-up-statistics/ 

2. https://www.invespcro.com/blog/sale-follow-ups/

3. https://woodpecker.co/blog/follow-up-statistics/

4. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/data-personalize-marketing-li