Mastering Cold Email Follow-Ups: Strategies and Best Practices

Cold email is fast, versatile, and allows you to connect directly with decision-makers in nearly any industry.

However, most professionals send one email and move on, hoping that the next email they send to will be “the one.” In fact, 48% of salespeople give after just one attempt, despite 55% of all replies coming from a follow-up email.

A well-crafted cold email follow-up strategy can be the difference between a sent email and a signed contract. If you want to ramp up your reply rates and close more deals, you need to understand how, when, and why to follow up.

This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about:

• Why follow-up is critical
• Best practices (backed by data)
• Optimal sending times
• Common mistake that sink campaigns.

Let’s jump in.

Why Follow-Ups Matter

Prospects are busy people. Your initial email might have landed at an inconvenient time, gotten buried in their inbox, or simply been forgotten. A well-timed follow-up serves as a polite nudge, bringing your message back to the top of their mind and increasing the odds of a response.

The statistics speak for themselves. According to Woodpecker, campaigns with at least one follow-up see significantly higher reply rates. In fact, Woodpecker’s research found that the average reply rate jumps from 9% (first email) to 18% (one follow-up), and sometimes higher with two or three.

Yet, despite these numbers, Martal reports that over 50% of cold email campaigns don't include any follow-ups at all. This means that the bar is low—sending a single follow-up email actually puts you above the norm.

Follow-ups work because:

• You show that you’re serious
• You’re attentive and committed
• You’re confident
• It takes most people a few times seeing a name or brand before wanting to connect.
• The first email may have shown up on a busy day or landed in a spam folder.

Best Practices for Your Cold Email Follow-Up

To make your follow-ups effective, you need a strategy rooted in data, respect for your recipient’s time, and a genuine desire to help.

Timing is Everything

A good rule of thumb, highlighted by Warmup Inbox, is to wait 3-7 days to send a follow-up email. This gives the recipient enough time to see and consider your message without feeling pressured. Some experts recommend waiting 2-3 days in fast-paced industries, while a week might be better for executives who only check email periodically.

Sending too often or too soon can feel aggressive, while waiting too long (like 10 days or more) has the opposite effect. The key is to be persistent without being annoying or overbearing.

Know When to Stop

Response rates typically peak with one or two follow-ups, but drops significantly after that. Subsequent emails can still produce results, but it might not be worth the effort if you’re time-strapped or don’t use an autoresponder.

In fact, excessive emails can result in your email being marked spam, hurting your sender reputation.

In our experience, sending three follow-ups (four total, including the initial send) is the sweet spot.

Joyful Group, which oversees a family of companies in Eastern Canada, including a used vehicle and equipment dealership, shares that sending semiannual emails is one way they make use of a “finished” list. 

They send these prospects a value-oriented email newsletter every 6 months to stay top of mind for their commercial buyer prospects that would otherwise have fallen off from their marketing efforts.

While stopping at 2 follow ups is what we recommend, it’s not always the end of the story for the list you’ve built. Look for ways to circle back in a relevant fashion like they do for their lists. 

Make it Personal

Finding ways to make the recipient feel like you’re not sending bulk emails is key to good reply and close rates. According to Campaign Monitor, simply personalizing the subject line raises open rates by 26%. 

Going beyond the subject line, tailoring your content to fit the recipient makes a massive difference. Of course there are degrees to this. If you’re sending bulk email, then you’re limited to what information you can include with merge fields, perhaps job title, company, and a few others.

You’ll see the most success if you’re able to create one-off emails that actually solve specific problems. This takes the most time, but reply rates skyrocket.

For example, if you can point out specific suggestions in their market (perhaps with a Loom video), that puts you above 99% of cold email senders.

Then, with follow-ups, you can reference those suggestions or add new custom touches, such as mentioning a recent social post.

The bottom line: make every touch feel as if it were written for an individual, not a mailing list.

When to Send Emails

Getting your timing right is just as important as your content. Even well-written cold emails are far less likely to get a reply if sent at the wrong time. 

Timeline for Sending Follow-Ups

Here’s a sample timeline that incorporates industry best practices and real-world data:

• Day 1: Initial email
• Day 4: First follow-up (wait 3 days)
• Day 8: Second follow-up (wait another 4 days)
• Day 12-14: Optional third follow-up

This spaced approach keeps your message fresh in the recipient’s mind without becoming pushy.

Best Days and Times to Send Emails

Data points to clear patterns for optimal send times:

• Best Days:
  • Tuesday: Consistently ranks as the best day for email reply rates.
  • Thursday: Also a top performer, often seeing high engagement as professionals are settled into their workweek but not yet winding down for the weekend.
  • Wednesday: Generally safe, though slightly behind Tuesday/Thursday.
• Days to Avoid:
  • Monday: Everyone’s inboxes are stuffed, plus many professionals are busy with checking in with the team and doing weekly reporting.
  • Friday: Recipients are winding down and may put off replies until next week (and then likely forget).
• Best Times:
  • 9:00-11:00 AM: This is after most people have put out immediate fires at the office and are settling down to work.
  • 1:00-3:00 PM: A secondary window when people tackle inboxes after lunch.
  • Avoid sending late in the day or very early morning. Both of these times result in your email getting buried before people check their inboxes.