4 ways to get people to respond to emails by following up strategically

Sarah Doody [00:00:00]: Hey there. I’m Sarah Doody, host of the Career Strategy Podcast. Many professionals are seeking more impact, flexibility, growth, and let’s face it, getting paid what they’re worth. But how do you unlock this in your career? It starts with strategy. I’m taking you behind the scenes of what’s working for my career coaching clients. You’ll hear strategies and actionable, yet sometimes against the grain, advice for how you can be the CEO of your career and stop dreading Mondays. Ready to level

Sarah Doody [00:00:34]: up your career? Let’s get after it. Hey, friend. Welcome back to another episode. And today, I am going to share with you very practical tips to increase the chances people reply to your emails and messages by following up. So throughout your career and your job search there will definitely be times when you will be cold emailing people and sending cold messages maybe on LinkedIn or other platforms. And I think a lot of people shy away from doing this because they fear rejection, right? They are worried that they may offend people or might annoy them by sending these cold messages. However, that’s probably not true. So one thing I want to point out before we get to the tips is that it is okay if people don’t reply to your cold messages.

Sarah Doody [00:01:33]: People receive on average over 100 emails per day. Think about your own inbox, so your own LinkedIn messages. You’re probably a little bit behind in replying to people. And it’s not because you are mad at those people or you’re offended, you’re just busy. And the same applies to the people that you are messaging. Right? Maybe they are on holiday and forgot to turn off their out of office responder. Maybe their boss asked them to do something really last minute and they’re trying to get it out. Maybe they are dealing with some emergency in their team or with their family or who knows what.

Sarah Doody [00:02:18]: So don’t jump to conclusions and really just set expectations when you do send cold messages and cold emails that people are not going to reply and that is okay. Don’t take it personally. Just by the sheer numbers, you’re going to get a lot more noes than yeses, and that’s just the way it works. And if you send an email or a message using our 4 part GAIN framework, which I talked about in episode 68, you will increase the chances that people reply to your emails and messages because this framework has a very specific structure that is intended to catch people’s attention, get their interest, and get them to take action. So if you haven’t listened to episode 68, make sure you pause this episode, go bookmark that one, and then listen to it later. Alright, so, 4 tips for following up. I want to cover how often should you follow-up, what should you say, a little hack I have for you, and then what not to do. So, let’s dive into it.

Sarah Doody [00:03:29]: Number 1, how often should you follow-up after you send a message? I recommend 5 business days. I think a cadence of every single day is a little bit aggressive. I like 5, although use that as guidance and see maybe what works for you and the types of people you are messaging. The one thing I would recommend is play around with the day of the week that you follow-up. And, again, this might depend on your industry or niche, but I like following up on a Thursday or a Tuesday. So Thursdays I like because towards the end of the week maybe people aren’t as busy as they are on a Monday, let’s say, and maybe they set aside time on Thursday afternoon or Friday to clear out their inbox. So that’s why I like Thursday. I also like Tuesday because it’s a little less busy than a Monday and people might be kind of still in catch up mode when it comes to their inbox on a Tuesday.

Sarah Doody [00:04:32]: So you might wanna experiment with the days of the week that you send. However, I really like a 5 business day cadence, so try that out and feel free to experiment. Alright. Now, what should you say in your follow-up message? Keep it short, keep it simple because we don’t want to create more work and overwhelm for these people. So we will drop, this exact text in the show notes for this episode. Use this as guidance, but I would say something like this. Hey, name. I wanted to follow-up on my email below.

Sarah Doody [00:05:10]: Do you think you’ll be able to reply this week? Or let me know if a call would be more convenient. I know you’re busy and I appreciate you taking the time to let me know either way. So this message, number 1, it’s short. Number 2, it’s very direct. You’re asking them, do you think you’ll be able to reply this week? You’re also giving them an alternative and saying, if you don’t wanna email me and you’d rather do a call, let me know. And then you’re also telling them that you would like them to let you know either way so that you can kind of have some expectations set there. So feel free to use this as inspiration, but keep it short, keep it direct, and have clear action items for people. Alright.

Sarah Doody [00:05:55]: One thing I really recommend you do not do is to follow-up with someone in multiple places. So let’s say you initially emailed the person. Follow-up via email because as someone myself who receives a lot of messages, I’ve experienced a situation where people will send me an email and then they’ll follow-up an email and then they’ll dm me on Linkedin and Instagram and maybe even other communities like Slack communities that we are involved in. And from my perspective, that just kind of pushes that message down in the priority list because a, I’m a little annoyed and b, I’m now just like overwhelmed and feeling a little pressured. So I would just keep your follow-up to the place where you initiated that conversation. And as a reminder, don’t follow-up every single day. I know some people do this Being on the recipient end of this, it’s annoying, it’s overwhelming, and it just feels like you’re pressuring me to respond. Now, I wanna leave you with one really practical tip.

Sarah Doody [00:07:07]: Set up templates that you can reuse. And depending on which email tool you might be able to set them up right in your email tool. I like using a tool called TextExpander. And in that tool, you can set up little snippets that you can reuse not just an email, but you could reuse them on LinkedIn or on Instagram or even in text messages if if you were dealing with a situation that was using texting. But TextExpander saves me so much time and it’s really cool because you can set up variables so the message will pop up that you want to send and then it just asks you, like, for fields like first name or whatever you set up when you made the template. So if you make these templates, number 1, it’s going to be faster for you to follow-up. You’re not going to have to sit there and think, oh, what should I write to this person? And it’s gonna be a great leverage of your time. So to recap, how do you get people to actually reply? You got to follow-up.

Sarah Doody [00:08:09]: It’s not gonna happen if you don’t follow-up. Make sure you are following up every 5 days, and then I would say how often should you do this. I would try for about 3 weeks and then maybe the final message you send to them is just saying, like, hey, I’ve been reaching out to you for 3 weeks. You haven’t replied yet. Should I assume, you know, you’re not gonna be able to reply question mark and see what they say? That might be a good final message to send. I’ve done that with people and it’s surprising how often they reply back and say, oh, I’m sorry I’m busy, and then you actually get an answer. Alright. So follow-up.

Sarah Doody [00:08:47]: Number 2, you have your template of what to say to them. It’s very short. It’s very direct. It has a clear call to action, and you want to avoid following up in multiple places, and you wanna make this easy on yourself and create templates that you can reuse on whatever platforms you are messaging people on. Alright. I hope this episode was helpful. Don’t forget to give us a rating. Just a star rating means so much to us.

Sarah Doody [00:09:14]: It helps let the podcast platforms know that you find this valuable so that other people can find the podcast through recommendations. And if you have time, of course, we would appreciate it if you left a written review, but no pressure. I know you are probably busy. So that is all for today, and we’ll see you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to the Career Strategy Podcast. Make sure to follow me, Sarah Doody, on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn. If anything in today’s episode resonated with you, I’d love to hear about it. Tag me on social media or send me a DM.

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