How to gently remind a potential customer

Don’t worry if it’s been a while since you’ve heard from a prospective client. A gentle reminder email can make all the difference between turning a prospect into a customer and letting them slip away. Let’s take a look at how to send a reminder email when a client isn’t responding to help you increase sales.

When should you send a follow-up email?

The last thing you want to do is spam your lead, and there’s a big difference between politely reminding a prospective customer of your presence, and spamming their inbox. So when’s it justified to send an email?

When your prospect goes quiet after a meeting

If you’ve delivered a pitch or had an initial exploratory call with a prospect, and they then go quiet on you, take the opportunity to send a follow-up message to ensure you’re still on their radar. Do this soon after your previous email – sending an email a day or two later will keep you at the top of their inbox.

When you meet someone at an event

If you’re introduced to someone at a conference or networking event, take the time to send an initial email the day or two after your meeting. This will ensure they remember who you are and what you offer – but add a reminder to your email, just in case they’ve forgotten.

When a trigger event occurs

Did your prospect do something to suggest that they’re interested in your product or service? Have they subscribed to your newsletter or did they open an email from your company? Now is a great time to reach out with an email.

Although it’s an initial email to the customer, their previous interactions with your brand mean it’s a follow-up email in terms of sales – and as they’ve demonstrated an interest in what you have to offer, there’s a good chance they’ll want to hear from you.

When you send a quote

If you sent a quote to a prospect and haven’t heard anything back, it can be an anxious wait. Once you’ve waited a decent amount of time (24 hours if you gave the quote over the phone, and a day or two longer if it was sent via email), send a polite follow up to check-in and nudge them towards a response.

Key parts of a friendly reminder email

There are four key components to any email message: the subject line, opening, body and call to action. It’s important to take the time to hone the messaging in each of these components to increase the chances of success. Let’s look at them in turn.

Email subject line

Although the main body of your email contains the meat of your message, your subject line is what’s going to ensure your prospects open your email, so it’s crucial to get it right. When it comes to subject lines, 47% of email recipients will decide to open an email based solely on the subject line, and 69% will report a message as spam, also based on the subject.

When you want to send a gentle reminder to a prospect, the subject line you use will depend on the reason for your email.

If you’ve previously spoken to a prospective client and haven’t heard from them since your initial meeting, you should aim for a light and friendly tone that pushes your prospect towards action without putting any pressure on them. You could try:

• Next steps

• Any updates?

Alternatively, you could take the opportunity to add more information for your prospect, related to something you discussed in the meeting. For example:

• Found an answer for you

• I forgot to say…

• Found that stat!

For emails following a trigger event, you’ll be sending a cold email so you should take a tone that’s slightly less familiar. You could use something like:

• Can we help?

• Looking for more information?

• Want to know more about [x]??

Opening

This should be one succinct line, but it should be as meaningful as possible. Try to avoid clichés here – pick out something personal that will resonate with your prospect.

If you’re following up after a meeting, you could simply say “I loved chatting to you today about [x]”. Or if you’re reaching out after someone downloaded an item on your site, you could say “I noticed you downloaded…”

Email body

For the main chunk of your email, you need to get your point across whilst not taking up too much of your prospect’s time – after all, the average business professional spends 28% of their workday reading and replying to emails. You don’t want to add to that figure with an overly lengthy follow-up message.

Try to include something significant about your prospect in your email body, helping to forge that human connection that’s so important in sales. If your prospect mentioned at your meeting that they were about to launch a new product, remember to ask how it went when you follow up with them.

On a more personal note, if they said they were planning a trip to the Lake District, you could say something like “I hope you had a fantastic time in the Lakes – and didn’t get rained on too much!”.

You should also keep track of the pain points of each of your leads, and tailor your message around this. Focus on how your product or service can solve the issues they’re having, and remind them of why they need to get you on board. Show how you can offer them value – this could be in the form of a blog post or video that addresses their issues or a limited offer for them to trial.

That might sound like a lot to include in your email, but you should try to do it all in around 5-10 lines. Remember to keep it brief – if you have more to say, you can always encourage the prospect to book a follow-up call, which brings us to the next part of the email.

Call to action

Don’t forget that the reason you’re following up is to get the prospect to do something – so it’s crucial to include a call to action. Offer a clear indication of what you’re looking to get from this email. You could try:

• Do you have 30 minutes to discuss [x]?

• Book a slot in my calendar if you have any questions.

• Have you given any thought to our proposal?

• Does that make sense as a next step?

Reminder email samples

Are you ready to craft your perfect reminder message? We have a selection of polite follow-up email samples for you to use, organised by type of email. So, go ahead and use our email templates – and our Sale CRM – all designed to help you secure that sales win.