Follow Ups

The Marketing follow up is often an awkward evil of small business marketing. Very few people really like receiving follow-up letters, phone calls, or emails and even fewer people enjoy making them. But, as awkward or painful as they may be, they are absolutely necessary. Whether you are following up with current and/or former customers or exploring new leads, marketing follow-ups help shorten the sales cycle by driving action. There are a couple of different ways to go about making a follow-up, each with their own pros, cons, and approaches suited best for different target audiences, demographics, and even business types.

Method: Direct Mail

In this digital world, direct mail is an often overlooked method of communication. Unlike an email, once your letter is received just for a moment the recipient is physically connected with your business and is completely focused on you. Plus, the personal touch helps make you more memorable.

Method: Phone Call

Cold calls with leads can be really tricky. Depending on your target audience, phone calls can vary in effectiveness. Phone calls are also a good method to a marketing follow up with leads and customers because for a short window of time you have the recipient’s undivided attention to make your pitch.

Method: Automated Email

Automated email campaigns are by far the easiest, and often most effective, method of marketing follow up tactics. Because emails are easy to ignore and even unsubscribe from, be thoughtful about your approach. For a fresh lead, maybe someone who went to a seminar downloaded something or someone you had a quick chat with, a couple of emails over the course of 30 days is a good approach. You can use the opportunity to present additional resources and links to try and potentially close the sale, offering something different every time.

The 3 Levels of Follow-Up

• Manual follow-up.This nonautomated type of follow-up consists of an email to a newsletter recipient that is not triggered by a specific action, but sent manually after assessing how a recipient engaged with the newsletter content. If a recipient clicked on a lifestyle article about “the country’s best road trips” in an email newsletter from an auto dealer, for instance, a manual follow-up might just be an email that says, “Hi, I noticed you read an article we had in the newsletter on the country’s best road trips. It’s a good time to think about preventative maintenance,” and then pair that with some kind of relevant offer for service.
• Follow-ups within email newsletters. In-newsletter follow-ups are automatic emails generated after a consumer clicks on a specific article or link within an email newsletter. By clicking through a link, the consumer has indicated interest in the topic, providing an opportunity to continue the conversation. If an email subscriber clicks on an article about the benefits of wheel alignment, for example, the follow-up may direct him to a scheduling page to book an appointment, along with an offer for that service.
• Marrying email newsletter behavioral data with other insight. There is a wealth of data at marketers’ fingertips, and merging information for multiple sources can allow for more effective and targeted marketing campaigns. For instance, in the automotive industry, dealers rely on their dealer management systems to manage finance, sales, parts, inventory, and administration data. Using tools that marry this data with behavioral data in the newsletter, dealers can set up queries that say “Give me all the people who clicked on the article on new convertibles, who also serviced with us in the last six months, and are nearing the end of their lease term,” and then create a campaign based on that query that results in a much higher conversion rate.

How to write a follow-up email

Tip 1. Never send a business follow-up email too fast. Sending an email before the weekend and following up on Monday, expecting some result, is a bit absurd. Even if recipients are interested, they can’t process the message that fast. Put yourself in a prospect’s shoes and imagine if it’s OK to get the follow-up a day or two later. Try to set up your mailout frequency with at least 4-5 days between the messages.

Tip 2. Choose the right time. The time you send your email matters. Because of bad timing, your clients might simply miss your email and leave it unread. Consider their time zone and avoid messaging them on the weekend – fewer people now dedicate their free time to emails.

Tip 3. Begin with a short reminding note about your last conversation. Don’t start directly with marketing. Your contacts are sure to get piles of similar follow-up emails every day, so they may not instantly recognize you from the crowd and might fail to read your email. Remind them of the last connection in the first line, right after your greeting. 

Tip 4. Don’t beat around the bush. No matter the reason you are writing, try to avoid starting your follow-up email with phrases like “Just checking back.” On the one hand, they show you’re not selling or pushing readers into anything. But the disadvantage is that you’re decreasing the value of both your email and the reason you are reaching out.

There are four primary goals of writing a follow-up email:

• You want to get some information
• You need to arrange a call or a meeting
• You have to catch-up
• You wish to thank clients for something

Tip 5. Be specific and add a distinct CTA to your follow-up email. To boost your email conversion, write a distinct call-to-action (CTA) at the end of your email. Common phrases like “Hope to hear from you soon” are considered weak, especially in the business sphere.

Tip 6. Keep it short and simple. Shorter emails consisting of 50-125 words result in quicker response time and show a higher response rate, leading to higher overall productivity. Our advice is to keep your emails below 200 words.

Tip 7. Segment the audience and use lead magnets. Although your email is a marketing follow-up, it unquestionably must bring some value. You can’t simply ask for something throughout the whole email. Be certain you’re helping the contact in some way, too, especially in the B2B sphere. Moreover, if you plan to send your follow-up email to a long contact list, make sure to segment the audience. Know your buyer personas and come up with relevant content that will prove contacts that you’re focused on them — not just on the demands of your business.

Tip 8. Use social proof. When it comes to making decisions, people want to see or read about others using and enjoying a product or service before committing to it themselves. This is why you should use social proof to its full potential.  You can also include:

• Names and logos of well-known brands that have used your product
• Awards you’ve won
• Celebrity endorsements
• Ratings, reviews, and shares
• Testimonials, case studies, and more