How to Write a Follow-up Email That Gets a Response: 7 Action Tips

If only the people you emailed would answer every time. Unfortunately, many of your emails are destined to go unanswered. The average email user receives ninety-two emails per day (seventeen of which are likely to be spam) and opens only about one in three. If you want to make yourself heard in a noisy digital world, being able to write a compelling follow-up email is an essential skill.

Although a follow-up about a job application will look quite different from one asking for a charitable donation, here are seven tips that apply no matter what sort of email you’re crafting.

1Take time to create an attention-getting subject line

Half the battle when it comes to getting a response is getting your email opened in the first place. The average open rate for emails is 34 percent. Although the odds are stacked against your lowly digital missive, you can improve them by investing extra time into creating a subject header that’s difficult to ignore. While there are exceptions to every rule, these strategies are known to get results:

• Keep it short. Forty percent of emails are opened on mobile. Short subject lines are less likely to get cut off.
• Use concise language. Get your inner Hemingway on and don’t waste words. Cut weasel words and filler.
• Ask a question. Emails with questions in their subject lines can impel readers to open the message, either to search for the answer or to provide one.
• Don’t get salesy. Create interest without resorting to hyperbole. Would you want to open an email you suspected was nothing more than a sales pitch?
• Try a headline analyzer. While tools like CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer are meant for article headlines, they work well for checking email subject lines, too.

By the way, it’s important that your subject line reflect your email’s objective, which brings us to our next tip.

2 Know your objective, then stick to the subject

What are you trying to accomplish with your follow-up email? It’s important to have a desired outcome in mind so you can keep your email focused on achieving it. Are you writing to ask for a meeting? Request a status update? Ask a favor? Say thanks? Whatever your goal, everything from your subject line to your message body to your sign-off should help you reach that goal.

Don’t stray off on any tangents before you’ve gotten a response to your email and engaged in a conversation, even if, ultimately, your request will have lots of moving parts.

For instance, let’s say you’re following up on a job application. Your brain may be turning over all sorts of big-picture issues like your salary requirements or availability. But before you can talk about any of those things you have to accomplish just one—get an interview. That means your follow-up email should be laser focused on providing only the information that will convince a potential employer to offer you an interview. Don’t throw in side notes that will muddy the waters.

3 Use the right salutation

When you’re writing a prospective employer to follow up on your application, always use:

Dear [Name],

In fact, in any sort of formal email it’s appropriate to begin with “Dear” rather than “Hi.” “Hey” is arguably the most informal salutation of them all, so save it for when you’re corresponding with someone you know and have a friendly relationship with.

Here’s a tip: When you’re writing a formal business email, it’s traditional to follow “Dear” with a colon rather than a comma.

4 Open with some context

Even if your follow-up email is threaded and contains your original email, it’s still a good practice to include a sentence or two of context.

Dear Bob,

The upcoming mobile app, Awesomest Thing Ever, is in beta. I wrote last week to ask whether you’d like to be one of the first to take it for a test drive.

It’s not necessary to reiterate everything; just highlight what’s crucial. Ask yourself, “What’s the bare minimum my recipient must understand so that the rest of my email makes sense?”

5 Personalize it

Add a personal touch to your emails whenever you can. If you met the recipient at a conference, say so. If you read an article they’ve written, mention your favorite takeaway. If you’ve interviewed with them for a job, reference a highlight from the interview.

I was inspired by what you said about Excellent Company’s branding strategy. Not only does your vision closely match my own, but I feel I could learn and grow as a part of your team.

The key is to sound friendly but not smarmy. Personalization shouldn’t involve random name-dropping. It should help establish your connection with the recipient. Don’t force it.

6 Don’t be vague

Your first email might not have gotten a response because you didn’t clearly state its purpose. Your follow-up email affords you a chance to correct that.

Journalists receive a ton of pitch emails daily from PR representatives who want them to cover a story. One of their pet peeves, and the thing most likely to cause them to delete an email, is having no clue what that email is actually about. As Matthew Hughes wrote for The Next Web:

The best pitches I get are the ones where I can understand the product or story after reading just one paragraph. Drop the jargon and the braggadocio – just keep it short and simple.

Whether you’re following up on a pitch or a request for a meeting, be specific and state clearly what you want to happen.

I wish to discuss collaboration perspectives with you.

You’d like to what, now? What does “collaboration perspectives” even mean?

I’d like to write an article for your blog, and I hope you’ll write one for mine in return.

Oooh! Now we get it.

7 Include a call to action

If you want the recipient to respond to your email, in most cases you’re going to have to ask for it. That request is called a call to action.

CTAs are a marketing tool, but they’re important in email follow-ups, as well. They point your recipient toward the next step, which in turn prompts a response. Here are a few examples.

Request a meeting

I’d like to meet for lunch and ask you a few questions about Mega Corp’s email strategy. Would Tuesday at noon work?

Ask for feedback

I know you have great insight to offer when it comes to [topic.] Would you take a few moments to share your feedback?

Solicit a sale, donation, or subscription

Reveal your mystery coupon

Donate by [date] and [Company] will match your donation!

Subscribe today to stay in the loop!

After a job interview

I thought I’d pass along links to the clips I mentioned yesterday. Is there anything else you’d like me to send?

Keeping it simple isn’t always simple

Now that you’ve learned some of the tricks to writing a great follow-up email, you face one more challenge—keeping it short and sweet. (A study by the email app Boomerang showed that emails between seventy-five and one hundred words have the best response rates.)

The more concise your follow-up email, the longer it will probably take you to write it. Crafting emails that stick to the subject, clearly state a purpose, and include a compelling call to action is trickier than it seems. Practice makes perfect! Invest time into fine-tuning your follow-up emails and you’re sure to earn more replies.

How Should I Use There, Their, and They’re?

• There means the opposite of here; “at that place.”
• Their means “belongs to them.”
• They’re is a contraction of “they are” or “they were.”

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There, their, and they’re are the big trio of commonly confused words. All three of them are pronounced the same, and the spelling differences don’t seem to do a good job of stopping people from mixing them up.

What Does There Mean?

There can be used in a couple of ways. As an adverb, there is the exact opposite of the word here and means “at that place”:

He asked me to go there and check on his fish while he’s away.

There is also often used as a pronoun. In that case, it’s role is usually to introduce a word or a clause:

There is something strange going on with Sydney today.

What Does Their Mean?

Their is the third-person plural possessive pronoun:

All of those kids with their contagious laughter really made my day.

They didn’t want to see all of their hard work go to waste.

What Does They’re Mean?

They’re is what you get when you contract “they are” or “they were.” It’s the same kind of thing that happens when you contract “we are” into “we’re,” or “you are” into “you’re”:

They’re going to a party tomorrow.

You should meet my work friends; they’re a real hoot.

Examples

There is, however, one way to save this policy.

The Guardian

There are lots of ads that encourage you to buy things at stores or eat at restaurants, but how many actually encourage you to physically go there at that exact moment?

Forbes

Here are some of their own stories, their experiences at the camp and their reasons for joining the protest — in their own words.

NPR

This act of sportsmanship and brotherhood had a profound effect on a nation that already adored them for their talent and toughness.

The Daily Telegraph

This time, it’s about an alleged issue with subscribers—suddenly, they’re disappearing.

Kotaku

Altogether vs. All Together

• Altogether means “completely,” “all things considered,” or “on the whole.”
• All together means “everyone together” or “everything together.”

It’s often said that the whole isn’t necessarily the sum of its parts. That maxim applies when you turn “every day” into “everyday,” and it’s the same when you turn all together into altogether—you get something completely different.

The Difference Between All Together and Altogether

All together refers to all the members of a group. It can mean “everyone or everything together,” or simply “in a group”:

We went all together to the party.

It’s not uncommon to see a noun or a verb between the elements of the phrase:

They put all the tickets together in a wallet.

After the reception, you should all come together to the garden.

Altogether is altogether different from all together. It’s not a phrase—it’s a single-word adverb that means “completely,” “all things considered,” “on the whole,” or “all in all”:

Some of the professor’s lecture is altogether impossible to understand.

Altogether, we can say that our team couldn’t have gotten a better result.

It’s less expensive to buy a computer part by part; you can save a few hundred dollars altogether.

More Examples

Still others have gone out of business or closed their trucks altogether.

Chicago Tribune

Altogether, North American sales gained 3.3 percent to $2.66 billion.

Bloomberg

Prior to that they were all together for the opening of Stockholm’s ‘Mama Mia! The Party’, which was held on January 20, but they didn’t perform on that occasion.

Independent OnLine

Through it all, through the dark times of seemingly daily bereavement and the angry political debates and the bitter divisions of Brexit, we had a television show that brought us all together.

CNN

5 Reasons to Have Someone Else Proof Your Resume

Guest Post from Brie Weiler Reynolds

It’s tempting, especially for those in writing professions, to assume you can proofread your own resume just as well as anyone else. After all, you know your work history, the message you’re trying to convey to employers, and how you want to convey yourself, right? There are, however, some very good reasons to have someone else proof your resume.

5) You may be too industry-centric. If your job is technical or includes lots of jargon, your resume may not make sense to general recruiters or human resource professionals who are often first-in-line to screen resumes before hiring managers will see them. Ask someone outside of your profession to read your resume and point out anything that they don’t understand. This may include abbreviations, certifications, or industry-speak.

4) You’re burying the lead. As the amazing professional you are, you probably think everything on your resume is very important, but few employers will see it this way. They expect the most important information to be at the top, just like in a news article. A Summary of Qualifications is where you should be writing your resume as an answer to the job description. Another set of eyes can help you pinpoint what’s important in that top area, and what can be shifted downward or removed.

3) Form is just as important as function. You may have a very well-written resume, but if it doesn’t look nice, you’ll lose valuable points with employers. Ask your more organized friends to help you clean up your resume. Remove unnecessary formatting, reorder information so it flows better, leave lots of white space, and wow employers with your easy-to-read, impressively simple document.

2) You just don’t know what else to cut. You may have a hard time keeping your resume to one page, and two pages can be acceptable provided all of the information is highly-relevant to the specific job for which you’re applying. But if you need to cut your resume to one page, yet you can’t choose anything to get rid of, a friend with a critical eye will help you separate the wheat from the chaff, concentrating the best parts of your resume onto one page.

1) You’ll never catch everything. It never fails–you’ve read your resume hundreds of times, but there’s always that one tiny, or sometimes not-so-tiny, mistake that falls into your blind spot. Other proofreaders will catch that one mistake you’re overlooking, saving you from countless employment rejections.

Having someone else (or many someones) proofread your resume is a valuable exercise for any professional. Make a list of your friends, family, and colleagues who can be counted on to be honest with you, and who have an excellent eye for detail and design. As with most parts of the job search, this important step is all about who you know.

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Brie Weiler Reynolds is the Director of Online Content at FlexJobs, the award-winning site for telecommuting and flexible job listings. FlexJobs lists thousands of pre-screened, legitimate, and professional-level work-from-home jobs and other types of flexibility like part-time positions, freelancing, and flexible schedules. Brie provides career and job search advice through the FlexJobs Blog and social media. Learn more at www.FlexJobs.com.

Warning: If You Don’t Know These Top 11 English Expressions, Your Life Abroad Could Be Really Hard

Guest Post By Akmal Akbarov at EnglishClubPro.com

Have you ever been in this situation? You meet with your friend, start the conversation, and suddenly stop because you can’t remember a certain word.

Or here is another situation. You may be abroad. You go to a shop and either don’t remember or simply don’t know the exact the word for this “tool you need for that certain thing that you have to do with the other thing.”

So what you do? You usually end up mimicking. If you are happy with mimicking all the time, this may be fine. What if you are on the phone? What if different gestures mean completely different things in other cultures? In the worst cases, you may end up insulting the person for no obvious reason.

Today, I am going to give you 11 language expressions you may find very useful to explain what you need and to enjoy using English.

1. It’s one of those things you … 2. It’s long and thin and … 3. It looks like … 4. It’s the stuff you … 5. It’s used for … 6. They’re made of … 7. It’s a kind of … 8. It’s something you use when … 9. You know! It’s got a … 10. I need one of those things you use to … 11. I’m looking for some of that stuff you use to …

Still confused? Wondering how to use? See these examples below.

1. It’s one of those things you use to put an announcement on the information board. – answer: thumb tacks or tacks

2. It’s long and thin and you use them to eat Chinese meals. – answer: chopsticks

3. It looks like a mobile phone. – answer: a remote control

4. It’s the stuff you wash clothes with. – answer: powder or detergent

5. It’s used for covering body injuries. – answer: bandages

6. They’re made of metal. – answer: nails

7. It’s a kind of ruler. – answer: tape measure

8. It’s something you use when taking hot meals out of the oven. – answer: kitchen gloves or pot holders

9. You know! It’s got a round metal bit at one end. – answer: padlock

10. I need one of those things you use to make dresses. – answer: knitting needles.

11. I’m looking for some of that stuff you use to correct mistakes on paper. – answer: correction liquid.

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Hi, my name is Akmal. I’m an English language enthusiast, blogger, writer, and entrepreneur. In addition to being the founder of EnglishClubPro.com, I’m also a teacher of English with more than ten years of experience. I love helping aspiring English learners to master their English.

Post adapted from original post.