For once there’s a simple and easily understood suggestion for email marketing; you should send follow-up emails as often as possible. There it is, nice and clear. There are some caveats of course, but these are minor and rather obvious. 

The only prerequisite is that there must have been some kind of contact between you and the addressee, one where a response via email might be the expected next step. There is no requirement for email marketing list ticked boxes. You are not going to sell at this stage.

Typical instances include: contact at a trade fair, a download of a gift, signing up to an email marketing list or email subscription, an unanswered voicemail, a customer’s online query about a product, and even a subscriber not opening emails. As you can see that ‘some kind of contact’ covers a lot of ground.

The type of email will vary according to the type of contact you had with the person, but there is one overriding condition; you will have a reason to contact them. It might be to reassure a new subscriber. If so, then it will be a thank-you, perhaps with the offer of a free download of a pdf.

Tread carefully though. Our main reason is to sell, but this is not the time to do so. It will possibly breach the GDPR. It might also come over as a bit pushy and could generate the email, with your address, ending in a spam folder. Not good. 

Be clear in the subject line why you have sent the email. ‘Thank you for purchasing a whatever’ is good. Better still, ‘A free gift for purchasing . . .’ will encourage opening. If someone has given you their contact details but is not returning your calls, then they might be away from their desk, so an email ‘Further to my voicemail yesterday’ might give it a chance of being opened.

It’s the email marketing mantra again; always get as much detail as reasonable on first contact and personalise the email.

The one essential with a follow-up email is that there should be some contact to follow-up.