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How To Write A Follow-Up Email That Gets Results

Do you like easy?

Effective?

How about affordable, scalable, and powerful?

If you’re into those concepts…

Then email marketing is the strategy for you.

eMarketer says, “Email marketing is a double win for customer acquisition and retention”. And according to Campaign Monitor, for every $1 spent on email marketing, $44 is made back in returns.

I’m no mathematician. But even I can calculate that’s a whopping 440% ROI!

Not to mention, all you need to send an email is a computer or a mobile device, an internet connection, and knowledge of the English language.

So what do you do with that opportunity? How do you write an email that actually gets results?

Keep reading to read the simple steps…

Before you write your email…

A great follow-up email starts with one simple thing: knowing your prospect.

You need to understand exactly what they want, need, and struggle with. Otherwise, how can you write an email that they actually care about?

Before you start writing, take a few minutes to get clear on who you’re speaking to. In the marketing world, we call this person your Customer Avatar.

Specifically, you want to understand 3 things:

Demographics
Goals and values
Challenges and pain points

Once you understand that, you can move on to the next steps to write a compelling email…

First things first: get people to open your email

Before you worry about what you say inside your email…

You need to get people to actually open your email.

That comes down to a compelling subject line.

Your subject line has one job, and one job only: to sell the click.

It’s not to summarise your email. It’s not to be the most beautiful or cleverest phrase in the English language. It’s simply to get someone to click!

Here are 4 simple proven subject line formulas that work:

How to [[benefit]]…without [[pain]]

This is why knowing your Customer Avatar is so important! Be straightforward in telling them exactly what they’ll get if they open your email.

E.g. How to sell your home fast without losing money

Ask probing questions

Our brains naturally answer questions we’re asked. Use that to your advantage and include a question in your subject line.

E.g. Where can I find the best investment properties?

Be specific

Specificity makes your subject line more interesting to readers. They’ll know exactly what they’ll get…instead of some vague, wishy-washy idea.

E.g. 4 ways to sell your home for 10% more

Tap curiosity

Get creative and use your subject line to pique interest and intrigue readers to open up!

E.g. Most financial planners won't tell you this…

The non-overwhelming way to write an introduction

Once you’ve gotten someone to click, you don’t want to cannonball straight into your email. First, you want to introduce your reader to the concept with a great introduction.

Your introduction should be a few paragraphs that welcome your readers and entice them to keep reading.

Your introduction doesn’t have to be complicated — in fact, short and simple intros work really well. Scroll up to the top of this blog to see how we did it!

Here are 3 surefire ways to break the ice, if you’re struggling with your introduction:

Ask a question
Share a quote
Include surprising statistics

…Then continue the story from there.

How to write effective body copy

There’s a saying in copywriting: “Your copy can’t be too long, just too boring.”

Some effective emails can be very short and some can be very long. But the most important thing is that every paragraph you write should be interesting and valuable to your reader.

When it comes to your email body copy, keep the following in mind:

Education

Old-school sales emails (where you pressure someone to buy from you) aren’t effective these days.

Know what is?

Genuine connection.

Use your email to come off as a real person who really cares about your reader. That makes a reader want to know more about you, want to keep reading your emails, and want to work with you.

The best way to build a connection while positioning yourself as an authority is through teaching. Use your email to educate your reader.

Don’t hold back! People will think, “If this is what they give away for free, imagine how great it will be to work with them!”

Share a tip or strategy to help them cure their pain and move towards their goals and they’ll love you…

…Plus, they’ll look at you like a trusted expert.

Through education, you prove that you’re an authority AND you’ll seem very generous because you shared that great information for free.

Authority + generosity + connection = a recipe for a future customer.

Storytelling

Persuasive copy focuses on emotion over logic. Instead of purely sharing the facts, tell a story to show your human side.

For example:

Let’s say you’re an agent who wants a reader to eventually work with you to sell their house.

You could write an email filled with stats and figures about your success rates, which would be dry and a bit boring. Or…

You could tell the story of a customer you recently worked with. You could talk about what that customer was struggling with, the unique challenges they had…and how you helped them sell their home for top dollar, regardless.

See how that story is much more engaging?

To write a good story in your email, think about what your reader is struggling with, what keeps them up at night, and what they want more than anything else.

Then think about stories you could tell to address those issues. You could share:

Times you struggled with something similar
A case study that relates to their pain points
How you eventually overcame
A customer who achieved your reader’s dream scenario, or
An analogy to help make a bigger point

Get creative! Think about how you can bring story into your email to make your message more memorable.

Write like a human

The most effective emails feel like they’re coming from a real person, not a faceless business.

So write like you’d talk to a mate!

Use a conversational tone
Speak in plain English
Avoid industry jargon, acronyms, etc.
Make it easy for a layperson to understand
Show some of your human side (mention personal tidbits like your family, interests, hobbies, favourite things, etc.)

Invite readers to ACT

After your body copy, you want to make it crystal clear what a reader should do next.

That’s where your call-to-action (CTA) comes in.

Your CTA is what you want your reader to do.

A few examples of a CTA are:

Reply to this email
Sign up for a consult call
Book in for an appointment
Call me at this number
Click this link
Refer a friend

An effective email only has one CTA. Not three, not even two, but ONE.

If you give a reader too many options, they’ll get overwhelmed. Instead, give them one clear next step to take.

Make sure every email has a CTA! Not everyone will be ready to say “yes” right away…but you always want to make it easy for those who are.

The power of the P.S.

The sad news is…

Most people won’t read your email word-for-word. (I know. It’s incredibly rude! 😜 )

Some people scan, others lightly skim, and others jump around from section to section.

Your P.S. is your chance to make a strong final impression.

The human brain remembers the beginning and the end of an experience the best. So your P.S. section is actually very important.

If a reader only takes away ONE thing from your email, what do you want it to be? Include a few sentences to summarise that in your P.S. section.

Your P.S. is also a great place to share your CTA. That way, a reader’s final thought will be about taking the next step with you.

How do you know if your email is successful?

One of the best parts of email marketing is that you can easily track its success through metrics.

Here are a few key metrics to evaluate how well your emails are working:

Open rate: % of people who open your email in their inbox
- Shows effectiveness of your subject line
- If your open rates are low: Brainstorm 10 subject lines for your next email, then pick the most compelling one.
Click-through rate: % of people who click a link in your email
- Shows effectiveness of your email body copy
- If your click-through rates are low: Work on injecting more emotion into your emails. Dig into problems and paint a clear picture of the solution to really motivate people to click.
Conversion rate: % of people who take action
- Shows effectiveness of your CTA
- If your conversion rates are low: Look at your CTA. Is it crystal clear? Are you asking a reader to do just ONE thing? How can you simplify your message and make it more compelling?

Instead of comparing yourself to industry averages, it’s more helpful to know YOUR average rates.

If most of your emails get 10% open rates but yesterday’s got 25%, you wrote a killer subject line! Study it and see if you can repeat the strategy in your next one.

Or if most of your emails get a 6% click-through rate but yesterday’s got 0.5%, take a look and try to see why. Did you share a story? Did you educate? What did/didn’t you do that made people not want to click?

You can learn so much by studying reader behaviour. So don’t forget to check in with your metrics!

Email marketing is incredibly powerful. And I hope this post shows you that good email doesn’t have to be complicated!

If you have a heart to help others and a head for simple strategy, you’ve got what it takes to write an effective, compelling email.

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