Heather here 🙂

It’s 2021. The festivities are officially over. The trees are outside on the curb, the decorations are back in their boxes and I’m STILL vacuuming up random pine needles weeks after Christmas.

But it’s 2021. And with a new year comes new hope for a fresh start…

Or in my case, hope that I can catch up on all the emails piling up in my inboxes over the holidays.

The great thing about the festive season is that most people are also taking a break from work to eat, drink and be merry – at least, that’s what the myriad of canned ‘out of office’ messages I’ve been receiving seem to imply.

But now the party’s over and it’s back to work for everyone! 

As I attempt to come out of the food coma I’ve been comfortably steeping in for the last few weeks, I’ll try and pick up where I left off in terms of writing successful email copy for outreach campaigns.

How to Write Follow-Up Sequences for Cold Email

In my last post, I demonstrated steps 2 and 3 of a follow-up sequence. Sometimes, that’s as far as your follow-up needs to go. This is especially true if you’re writing for clients who might be concerned about appearing too eager (or offending that ONE PERSON that we talked about last time lol).

However, if you’re launching your own campaign and you want a decent shot at getting that REPLY (the first general objective of a cold email campaign), the more steps you add to your sequence, the better!

Of course, you want to avoid being repetitive. Some of the campaigns we’ve written have been on the quirky side. For example:

 

Hey, Liz!

I’m starting to panic now – I promised my boss I’d get you on board with this and he’s just seen you’re not replying and is freaking out lol!

They’ve just wheeled him out on a gurney in fact…

Any chance you can help me out before he kicks the (metaphorical) bucket :D?

 

Now I know you might be cringing (or chuckling, depending on what type of recipient you are). To be fair, this particular style of writing is a bit like marmite – people tend to either love or hate it. But it’s certainly one way to stand out and DEFINITELY guarantees you a reply at some point!

If you’d rather play it safer, a more demure campaign is perfectly acceptable as well. For example:

 

Hey Liz!

Heather here (yes again lol). Not sure if you caught my previous email regarding being interviewed for Pearl Lemon? (see below thread)

If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll send over the details. Alternatively, if there’s a better time to get in touch about this, that’s no problem!

 

You can then follow this up with:

 

Hey Liz!

Any final thoughts about being interviewed for Pearl Lemon? Would be SUPER awesome to have your insights 😀

Or something to this effect. I’ve found this approach works pretty well for getting that coveted reply.

At the end of the day, it’s all about shooting your shot (whether that’s with PR, marketing, lead gen or anything else)! And there’s nothing wrong with following up – in fact, I’d go as far to say it’s vital!

In my next post, I’ll touch on writing canned responses and how they can help you manage your campaigns in a much more efficient way!