Following up with buyers is a crucial part of any salesperson’s job. But how many follow-up sales or marketing email sequences should you send before you call it quits?
Rarely will a new prospect you find get back to you after your first cold email, and even your best clients often need multiple touches to draw them back into a sales conversation. Both situations take time and persistence.
Buyers want to know that you care about them and their needs, and following up is a way to show that you care.
At some point, following up too much will annoy your prospects and customers, and it will be a waste of time that you could have otherwise spent on buyers who are actually interested in your product or service.
To uncover the perfect number of follow-up emails to send, we’ve compiled the available research and reached out to a few sales experts to help us solve this riddle.
Factors impacting how many follow-up emails to send
There are an infinite number of factors that could affect how many follow-up emails you send to prospects or customers. But these are some of the most prominent ones you and your team should bear in mind:
Decision-maker preferences: You’ll come across prospects who prefer regular updates and others who would rather you give them some room to breathe. It’s up to you to adjust your follow-up approach according to how your prospect responds and how often they prefer to communicate.
Nature of the industry: Sales cycle lengths vary from one product or service to the next, making it harder to pinpoint a one-size-fits-all follow-up email number. Consider that longer sales cycles, such as those experienced in the B2B sector, may warrant many more touches to reach the conversion stage than a shorter sales cycle.
Sale value and complexity: The higher the price tag, the more complex the sales cycle is likely to be. This typically requires more stakeholders to participate in the decision-making process, which often means more calls, meetings, and demonstrations before a final decision is made.
Prospect’s purchase process: Whether you sell in the B2B or B2C space, if your prospect needs time to process a purchase request or make a decision, you must recognize and appreciate that. If possible, ask your prospect when it would be best to follow up with them and use the time to develop a deeper connection while you wait.
What do the stats say?
Everyone has their own opinion on how many emails to send, but let’s look at some data first.
On the importance of email communication (and how difficult it can be to break through the noise):
There’s no denying that email outreach is an effective way to create awareness and get your message across to your target audience. Here are some stats related to the importance of email communication:
Email marketing generates an ROI of $36 for every dollar spent (Litmus).
However, at any given time, only 3% of your market is actively buying—56% are not ready, while 40% are poised to begin (Vorsight).
The average person deletes 48% of the emails they receive every day (Boomerang).
44% of salespeople give up after only one follow-up. (Marketing Donut).
Additionally, 92% of salespeople give up after four “no’s,” but 80% of prospects say “no” four times before they say “yes” (Marketing Donut).
Sales teams make an average of 8–12 touches per prospect before receiving a response (Outreach).
In one study by Woodpecker, campaigns with 4–7 emails per sequence received 3x more responses than campaigns with only 1–3 emails in the sequence (Woodpecker).
Looking at this data, it’s clear that following up is importMaant, but many of us either don’t make it a priority enough or give up too soon. However, data and stats can only tell us so much. Keep reading for some real-world advice.
However, data and stats can only tell us so much. Keep reading for some real-world advice.
Write less email, get more replies.
Are you falling off your prospects’ radars? With Nutshell’s personal email sequences, we’ll remember the follow-up for you.
“If you’re cold-emailing, an average of three sales emails sent over the course of a couple of weeks is usually enough to get a good idea whether a prospect is ever going to be interested in what you’re offering.
“Any more than that, and you’ll probably just be wasting your time.
“My strategy is to send an initial sales email that’s concise, relevant, and makes it easy for the customer to get in contact with me if they’re interested. If I don’t receive a response within seven days, I’ll send a follow-up email, and if I don’t receive a reply to that one, I’ll send another one.
“If you net a customer who’s interested, the total amount of emails you’ll send before closing the deal will obviously vary. Usually, expect around 5 to 15, though—especially if a lot of questions are asked.”
Nurturing through automation
Andrew-Marcel Tit Customer Success & Product Marketing at Paymo
“Since Paymo is an intuitive, self-service product that can be set up in a couple of minutes (as opposed to an enterprise platform), we deal with a high volume of accounts.
“Throughout our 15-day free trial, we first nurture our users with a set of activation campaigns (five to six emails) depending on the actions they take in the app.
“Once they perform a certain number of actions, they get into the next phase: an automated sales campaign (three to four emails). If somebody replies in any of these campaigns, we pull them out and talk 1:1.
“I usually send up to three to four direct emails, so I don’t spam someone who already went through our campaigns. It might look like a small number, but we value our client’s privacy and let the product speak for itself.”
“Our customer life cycle can be as short as a week and as long as a year. The frequency and consistency of our email communications are dictated by the position of a prospect in our funnel, and the intensity of that cadence increases in tandem with a prospect’s interest.
“The whole point of email communication for any sales and/or marketing team—at Nutshell, we call it our Growth Team—is to build a story of value. If you provide value with each communication, then each of those emails is an opportunity to convert.
“Today’s buyers can’t really be forced into making a decision—they’ve become much smarter than that. What you can do as a sales team is simply be there, demonstrating the value of what you’re selling at every step of the way.”
“Since we buy houses from homeowners, we have a low-volume business. We get three leads per day from our websites, and we call each lead and meet with most of them in person. Our focus is to build a good relationship with homeowners. This allows us to understand their problems and solve them better.
“Most of the time, we get a ‘no’ when we provide an offer to the homeowner. This initiates the follow-up process.
“A ‘no’ means that the seller is not ready to sell at this moment. Any property that causes enough pain will get sold by some means. For this reason, we don’t stop following up until they sell the property or they tell us to stop contacting them.
“We bought a house from homeowners who were in our follow-up email campaign for 19 months one time. We send an email every three days in our follow-up campaign. These are content articles, videos, and follow-up questions.”
“In the initial sequence of cold outreach, we like to send four to five emails (the outreach can also include reaching out via LinkedIn, phone, and physical mail, but not always).
“But leads who don’t answer aren’t always gone forever.
“After a period of time (like three to six months), we may try cold outreach again. You never know when a potential client begins thinking about changing solutions. Sending another sequence round could catch someone in the right place at what is now the right time.
“We recommend always sending at least four emails in one outreach sequence.
“Sometimes people open every email, waiting for something to entice them. Email one may not do it, but emails two to four may. In fact, in the last email, we always use some form of ‘break up.’ Basically, we say something like, ‘Looks like you’re satisfied with your current solution. If you’re ever looking for something else, let me know!’ We get a lot of responses from our break-up emails.
“Another thing we do to shorten the sales cycle is to include a meeting link in our emails. A meeting scheduler link is either in our signature or a call-to-action within the email.
“It’s usually subtle so as to not scare off more timid prospects, but it’s there for those who are ready to talk.”
Connect with your future buyers and spend less time doing it!
Define your ideal customer and ProspectorIQ does the heavy lifting, so you can add new contacts to your CRM and start making more sales!
Jeff Kear Co-Founder / Head of Sales & Marketing at Planning Pod
“Our sales reps send at least six emails per lead before giving up, with the average being seven to eight emails sent before we close the file on the lead. In addition, we also call those leads twice on the phone, as some prospects would rather talk with a live person than engage in back-and-forth emails.
“On average, it takes three to four emails to hear back from a lead, whether they are interested or not, and it takes about six emails and three phone calls to close an interested prospect.”
“First of all, it’s necessary to see who opens your emails, so you should use an email tracking tool like YAMM that lets you know who’s opening and clicking.
“If someone doesn’t open our first eight emails (one per week), we just delete them from our database. On the other hand, if someone opens our emails, even if they do not respond, it’s a good idea to keep them in your database.
“We have also tried calling our contacts after they have opened or clicked our emails, and it has given us excellent results.”
“Every sale is different, so it’s impossible to say that ‘x’ amount of calls or emails will translate into a deal. The volume of emails very much depends on how far along in the process the lead is, and how strong that lead is in the first place.
“To a large extent, it comes down to the discretion of the sales rep, but typically, a hook email will have a conversion rate of one in five, warranting follow-up emails to the four recipients that you didn’t hear back from. Again, strength of the lead and benefits of the deal can affect this.”
“We follow up a maximum of four times before dropping the lead.
“Generally, if we do hear back, about 50% of those responses are on the first email, and 50% when following up. From start to finish, it takes us about seven emails (with responses plus reminders) to get to a demo, and we close 75% of demos.”
How many follow-up emails should you send?
According to the data, sending five emails appears to be the magic number. The feedback from the sales professionals quoted in this article backs this up, too, with many citing three to five as the number of follow-up emails they send.
However, some stated that they never give up and will continue to follow up until the prospect explicitly tells them they’re not interested or asks them to stop emailing.
Ultimately, the magic number for your business will depend on your specific product or service, your customer’s life cycle, and potential buyers’ interest. In any case, crafting a follow-up email sequence and continuing to test your strategy will be the key to closing more deals.
How to tell if you’re sending too many follow-up emails
Worried you may be crossing that invisible line and overdoing the follow-up emails to your prospects? Here are a few telltale signs you should slow down:
Your prospect has expressed frustration: This could be in the form of irritable behavior, such as curt responses, or they’ve outright requested that you please refrain from contacting them.
You feel you may be overstepping: If you have any doubt regarding the number of email follow-ups you’re sending to a prospect, trust your gut and back off to be safe.
Your prospect is avoiding you: If you suddenly experience radio silence from a previously engaged prospect, they could be ignoring you because you’ve just sent them one too many email follow-ups.
Curtail these possible issues by ensuring your follow-up emails offer prospects added value and spacing out your communications to avoid overwhelming them.
Level up your email follow-up game with Nutshell
While email quantity undoubtedly plays its part, you’ll also want to ensure that your email outreach is of the best quality and reaches the right audience. That’s where Nutshell’s sophisticated email marketing tools come in.
Leverage top-notch marketing tools integrated seamlessly with your CRM software to segment and target audiences. Use your CRM data to understand prospect behavior and preferences and personalize your email messaging for better results.
Nutshell’s email marketing tools offer you an easy drag-and-drop editor and a range of designer templates to choose from. This ensures you have the tools to create high-quality follow-up emails that engage and compel your prospects to take action.Not a Nutshell customer yet? Give our award-winning CRM platform a try by signing up for a free 14-day trial—no credit card required.
See Nutshell in action!
Try Nutshell free for 14 days or let us show you around before you dive in.
