Following up... Without looking and feeling like a dirt bag

Mike Taber

Founder, Bluetick.io

Entrepreneur: MicroConf, Startups for the Rest of Us, Moon River Software, http://t.co/3fhJflkN8u & Author of http://t.co/i0vvCpPFhr

Massachusetts

You'll learn:

1. Mike's communication strategy that can get a 30% reply rate.
2. How to know what someone is thinking when they haven't replied to you.
3. A sample followup email sequence you can use to get your customers to do anything.

Mike Taber

Mike is the cohost of the Startups for the Rest of Us podcast, the author of The Single Founder Handbook, the cohost and cofounder of Microconf, and (most recently) the founder of Bluetick.io - a SaaS that automates followup emails.

Why follow up?

Following up with someone gives you more information and insight into your recipient's internal state. When you follow up, you can push someone forward on a decision.

There are four things you want to know when following up:

1. Was your message received?
2. Did they understand it? Do they know what they're supposed to do next?
3. Did they make a decision?
4. Did they inform you of that decision?

The purpose of following up is to close that loop.

You're really trying to figure out what you need to do to help them get to the next step. If they've already made a decision, you need them to tell you or your email gets sucked into the black hole.

If you're not answering these questions, your email is getting sent into the void - the email black hole.

What happens on the Other End

https://twitter.com/patio11/status/966283826686144513

There are three main reasons why people don't reply to emails even if they're important. The only way you can know is if you email them to follow up.

The email wasn't received

Mail server issues (which are surprisingly common) might have blocked the email from going through, you might be sending to the wrong email address, the recipient might have aggressive spam filters on their inbox, or they might not be checking their email.

The email was received, but dismissed

Your recipient's inbox might have received your email but saw it as irrelevant.

Inbox filters might have automatically deleted or archived it, a human gatekeeper might have scanned the subject line or email and thought it was unimportant, or your recipient might have been scared by too much information.

If you CC'd other addresses, your recipient might also think the email doesn't need an action from them.

The email was received with best of intentions, but not acted upon

Perhaps your recipient meant to reply but couldn't. They could be traveling, or working remotely on a mobile device.

If it's been a few days since they think a reply was expected, they may feel guilty or anxious for not replying right away. In that case, followups give them permission to reply.

If your recipient's inbox is flooded, they may have declared email bankruptcy and can only deal with tasks that are on fire.

Why don't we follow up?

Psychologically, it can be difficult to push yourself to send followup emails. There are four main causes behind followup email resistance.

You want emails to look like they were personally sent.

Incorrect value association

A followup email is valuable if it does something valuable for the sender or recipient. Even if followup emails generate valuable results for you, if a long time passes between hitting "send" and getting the value, it can be difficult to associate sending the followup email with getting the valuable result.

The longer it takes to get a response in this delayed feedback loop, the harder it is to associate the value you got with sending followups.

Time constraints

Sending emails can feel like busywork, especially if followup sequences are growing exponentially.

If you start a daily followup campaign with five new people per day, you could be sending out 50 emails on day 10.

Your emotions get the better of you

Sending follow up emails can be emotionally painful. If you get a negative response to a followup email you sent, even if you've also gotten positive responses your negative emotions disproportionately outweighing the positive ones.

You're afraid

You don't want to be lumped into the category of dirt bags that relentlessly send spammy followup emails. It's easy to feel fear of the public shaming of sending bad emails.

Follow up strategies that actually work

https://twitter.com/SamNeter/status/968090271421534208

Mike Taber's SaaS app, Bluetick.io, helps automate sending followup emails. Over 70,000 emails, he's helped his customers achieve:

• open rates between 26.7% up to almost 100%
• an average reply rate of 5.9%, and a top reply rate of almost 30%

This data is skewed by blocked tracking pixels. Between 0% and 62.5% of recipients block email tracking, depending on the audience.

How have Mike's customers gotten such great numbers? By focusing on closing the reply loop and optimizing their followup emails.

Here are four specific followup strategies for getting higher response rates.

When is a followup worth it?

Select the situations where it makes sense and the schedule to follow up. After you've first contacted someone and immediately after you've done a demo work well.

Have you already followed up with a cold lead five times with no response? At that point, it probably isn't worth the effort of following up anymore.

Personalization

Make it appear that your followup email was sent only to your recipient.

Using their name and sending emails from your own domain make emails feel more personal.

Replying to previous emails you've sent proves you've sent previous emails, which shows that you're working to get a response, and adds personalization.

Clearly define an Action

Clearly define the single action you want the person to take. Do you want them to schedule a call? Hit reply? If you're not clear, your recipient will likely get confused and take no action.

Automate your sequence

Templates, software, reminders, Zapier, and outsourcing done in a way that doesn't appear to be automated ensure your followup emails get sent.

Be careful not to start an email with "Hi ," or "Hi $FNAME" - that makes it clear you're not actually personally replying.

Example email sequence

Below is an example email sequence sent to a Bluetick lead to close the loop on scheduling a demo.

Email 1:

Hi Lori,

I saw you heard about us on the B2B Growth podcast and were interested in using Bluetick for job searches.

Would you like to hop on a short call to get a quick demo of Bluetick and ask any questions about how to integrate it into your process? If so, here's a link to my calendar to set up a call: LINK

Thanks and I'll talk to you soon.

Email 2:

Hi Lori,

Have you had a chance to look at your calendar and see if there's a good time for us to chat about Bluetick?

Let me know and we'll go from there. Thanks!

Email 3:

Hi Lori,

Are you still interested in taking a look at Bluetick to see if it will fit into your current followup process?

I'd like to get on a call and discuss it with you if you have a few minutes. Thanks and talk to you soon.

Email 4:

Hi Lori,

I'm sure you've been busy but I wanted to touch base to see if automating your followups was still on your radar. Based on the survey you filled out about how you're doing things, it seemed to me like Bluetick would be a good fit for you.

Has something changed or are you still interested in taking a look? Let me know either way.

Questions

How do you send breakup emails?

A typical breakup email comes at the end of an automated sequence and says "hey I've sent you several emails, I can see you're not interested, so I'll never email you again". This closes the door to emailing them in the future.

A better reply is "hey, I can see this isn't a good time for you. I'll followup again in 6 weeks" because it shows your recipient that you're committed and keeps the door open to email them again.

I'm worried about an automated system following up when I've already followed up manually. How often do automated reply systems go awry?

Automated systems can go awry a lot. If your call to action doesn't apply if you've had another interaction (ex: "let's schedule a call" when you've already had a call), you should trigger those followups manually.

Once the illusion of personal responses has been destroyed, your response rates go way down.

Do you legally have to have an "unsubscribe" link in automated emails? Is that a tell that you're not personally sending the emails?

It is a tell, and you're toeing the line legally either way. You can still break the law even if you have an unsubscribe link. Bluetick doesn't include them by default.

Legally, there are three categories of email:

1. Transactional: you just bought something, so I sent you a receipt
2. Commercial: I'm trying to get you to buy something. This is where CANN spam laws come into play.
3. Other (good job naming this one, government)

Most email providers make you include an unsubscribe link so their entire server doesn't get IP blacklisted, not for legal reasons.

What's the best communication channel to followup: phone, text, email, or social?

All of them - multichannel marketing! There's a lot of value following up in different channels.

Bluetick is working on more channel integrations.

Contact Mike at mike@bluetick.io and check out the free 6-part Learn How to Automate Your Followups email course from Bluetick.