Sales Follow Up Email: What To Send and When

Key Takeaways

• Send four emails over 14 days on a lead who went quiet. Day 1, day 3, day 7, day 14.
• Write the subject line like a person, not a campaign. Lowercase, three or four words, no pitch.
• Put the ask in the first two lines. If they read nothing else, they read the ask.
• One question per email. A wall of questions gets nothing back.
• The last email is the shortest one you send, and it gets the most replies.

Table of Contents

• Why Your Follow Up Email Gets Ignored
• What Should the Subject Line Say?
• What Are the Four Emails?
• When Do You Send Them?
• When Do You Stop?
• What Do You Do Monday Morning?
• FAQs

Why Your Follow Up Email Gets Ignored

You quoted Dale three weeks ago. Roof, tear-off and replace, he asked for the number and you gave it to him. Then nothing.

So you sent the email. Subject line: Following up on our conversation. First line: I hope this email finds you well.

Now go open your own inbox and scroll. Every unread message in there looks exactly like the one you just sent. Same subject. Same opener. Same shape.

That's the problem. Your email is in the pile.

A homeowner who asked for a roof quote is not ignoring you on purpose. They asked, they got busy, and now your message is sitting in a stack of forty other messages that all look the same from the outside. They're not reading. They're scanning. And a scan only catches the thing that doesn't match the pile.

So the whole job of a sales follow up email is to not look like the pile. Everything after that is easier than people make it.

What Should the Subject Line Say?

Write it the way you'd text a friend. Lowercase. Three or four words. No pitch, no urgency, no punctuation stunts.

These get opened:

• quick question on the roof
• still want the quote?
• you around this week
• the number we talked about

These land in the pile:

• Following Up On Our Conversation
• Checking In!
• Don't Miss Out On Your Free Estimate

Look at the difference. The first group reads like a person typed it on a phone. The second reads like software sent it, because usually software did.

And drop "I hope this email finds you well." Nobody has ever said that out loud to another human being.

What Are the Four Emails?

Here's the actual sequence. Copy these, change the details, send them.

Email 1, the same day.

subject: the number we talked about

Hey Dale,

Good talking to you. The number on the tear-off and replace is $14,200, and that holds through the end of the month.

Do you want me to put you on the schedule for the 12th, or would later be better?

Drewbie

Short. Carries the number. Ends on one question with two doors, and both doors are a yes.

Email 2, day 3.

subject: still want the quote?

Dale, no pressure either way. Are you still looking at the roof this fall, or did that get pushed?

If it got pushed that's fine, just tell me when to check back and I'll leave you alone until then.

That second line is the one that works. You gave him an easy out, and the easy out is still an answer.

Email 3, day 7. Give him something he can actually use.

subject: the thing I forgot to mention

Dale, one thing I should have said on the call. If the decking underneath is soft, that's another day and about $900. I'd rather you hear that now than on a Tuesday when the crew is on your roof.

Still happy to get you on the calendar if you want it done before the weather turns.

You just told him something that costs you money to tell him. That's the email that builds trust, and it's the one almost nobody sends.

Email 4, day 14. The shortest one. This gets more replies than the other three combined.

subject: closing your file

Dale, I'm going to close this out so I stop cluttering your inbox. If it comes back around, you know where I am.

Two sentences. No guilt, no last-chance nonsense, no fake deadline. People answer this one because it's the first message that doesn't want anything from them.

It takes about a minute to send. Send it to every dead lead sitting in your CRM and some of them will answer, because you finally sent the one message that wasn't chasing them.

When Do You Send Them?

Day 1, day 3, day 7, day 14. That's it.

The gaps get wider on purpose. Every email you send at the same interval trains them to expect it, and anything expected gets scanned right past. Widening the gap keeps you off the pattern.

Two rules on timing that matter more than the days:

Send between 7 and 9 in the morning, or after 6 at night. A message that lands at 2pm goes into the pile with everything else that landed at 2pm.

And send from your own address, typed by you, one at a time. The second you blast four hundred of these from a sequencing tool, they all read like the pile again, because they are.

If you want the same sequence for text, I broke that out separately in the follow up text templates. Text and email do different jobs and the cadence isn't the same.

When Do You Stop?

After four. Then you move them to a list you touch once a quarter.

I get asked all the time whether four is enough, and the honest answer is that four is where the math stops paying. I went through the actual numbers on how many times you should follow up with a lead, and the short version is that most reps quit at one or two, so getting to four already puts you ahead of nearly everybody working the same list.

A lead who ignored four emails isn't cold because you did it wrong. They're cold because the timing was wrong. That's a different problem and it has a different fix, which is the re-engagement message you send three months later.

And if you want the deeper version of what to do when someone goes silent mid-deal, that's the no-BS guide to following up after no response.

What Do You Do Monday Morning?

Open your CRM. Filter to everyone who asked for something in the last 90 days and never got an answer out of you.

Send them email 4. The closing-your-file one. Not the whole sequence, just the last one.

You're going to be uncomfortable doing it because it feels like giving up on them. It isn't. It's the only message in the stack that asks for nothing, and that's exactly why it gets answered.

Then start the full four-email sequence on every new lead from that day forward.

That's 100/10/2 doing its job, by the way. 100 attempts, 10 real conversations, 2 closed, every single day. The emails are attempts. The replies are conversations. And you cannot hit the third number without stacking the first one.

If you want the whole follow up system written out, sequences, scripts and the CRM setup behind it, I put all of it in Closing The Loop. It's the same process I ran for years, minus the part where I figured it out the slow way.

Send the fourth email tomorrow. Count the replies by Friday.

FAQs

How many follow up emails should I send?
Four, spread over 14 days, on any lead who asked for something and then went quiet. Most reps stop after one or two, so four already puts you ahead of nearly everyone working the same list. After the fourth, move them to a quarterly touch list instead of continuing to email.

What is the best subject line for a sales follow up email?
Three or four lowercase words that read like a text from a friend. "still want the quote?" or "the number we talked about" get opened. Title Case lines like "Following Up On Our Conversation" get skipped, because every automated message in the inbox looks the same way.

How long should I wait between follow up emails?
Day 1, day 3, day 7, then day 14. The gaps widen on purpose. Sending on a fixed interval trains people to expect you and anything expected gets scanned past. Send early morning or after 6pm, when the inbox is quieter.

What do I write in the last follow up email?
Two sentences saying you're closing their file and they know where to find you. No deadline, no guilt, no last chance. It gets more replies than the three before it combined, because it's the only message in the sequence that isn't asking them for anything.