Email Scripts to Get Responses from Non-Responsive Clients
This article will address best practices and includes real-life examples to allow businesses to follow-up and get a response from non-responsive clients.
Do these scenarios sound familiar to you?
Scenario 1: You are in a text communication with someone, and all of sudden, absolute silence, no response.
Scenario 2: You are working on a deal with a potential client and... bamm! Without any warning, the client drops off the face of the Earth and stops returning to your emails.
Is there anything more frustrating than this? A big “NO”.
This is where your enthusiasm turns into confusion, and eventually, you become anxious. The worst thing you do after that (actually two worst things):
- Blame the client (don’t ever do that).
- Send emails saying, "Have you made a decision?"
What does it mean when a client doesn’t get back to you?
Absolutely nothing!
Woahh shocked? Well don’t be, because there are a million and one things going on in their world such as:
- Their business and all the different challenges there.
- Their home life, their wife, their husbands, their kids, their health, fitness and a million and one things.
So what you shouldn’t do is to interpret it, that it means:
- They don’t want to go ahead with you.
- They don’t like you.
- You are too expensive.
- You are not good enough.
This is where the problem begins when we start assigning meaning to the fact that they are not getting back to us, because then what we conclude is “I’ll leave them alone.” And that’s a fundamental mistake.
So if they are not getting back to you, it doesn’t mean anything.
What should you do about it?
You gotta keep going. That doesn’t mean constantly annoying them. In order to grow any and every relationship, you have to keep investing in it.
1. Dig deep
Like any other relationship, if a client doesn’t show much interest in responding to your emails, then it’s time to dig deep and understand the mystery.
The reason is not always related to you and your work. But, hey, you can still be the Sherlock Holmes and do a little detective work to find out that mystery.
How? Well, one of the ways is to go through the conversation thread. You can always find at least a single clue going through it.
- Was there any question that remained unanswered?
- Was there anything that caused a misunderstanding?
- Did you forget to respond?
These are just simple examples of what might go wrong. Afterall, we are human and mistakes are bound to happen, but what is more important is to own up to it in time.
2. Be Clear
Always be clear about what you want to convey. Most of the time, clients are unresponsive simply because they don’t understand what you are trying to tell them.
Being transparent and honest about your work is the simplest and easiest way to tackle this. Don’t confuse them with technical language and abbreviations (that’s the worst).
Instead, explain things in the easiest way.
3. Keep things to the point
You don’t want to go extreme in the process of taking the follow-ups with your client, do you?
Then why to send the unnecessary stuff that makes the scenario too complicated? This once again leads to confusion and that makes it even more difficult for a client to respond. So, make sure you write precise emails that simplifies the decision-making process.
4. Be patient
We all are familiar with the saying “Patience is a virtue”. But when we wait for a response from the client we don’t particularly follow the saying. Be become highly impatient and start interpreting the worst things.
The real situation could be different. The client might be interested in your sales proposal and carefully reviewing your proposal over and over again. In that case, getting the approval from all the heads can genuinely take time, meaning the slow response is totally understandable.
5. Find other ways to communicate
If clients are being unresponsive to your emails then, of course, there is no point in sending them again. But that doesn’t mean you should stop following up, you can always discover other methods to interact with them.
How about a direct approach? There is nothing wrong with calling directly. It’s not only effective but also quicker way to have personal communication.
Then, there is one more way of messaging privately on social media, that way you will get to know whether the client has seen the message or not.
6. Send sales proposal videos
Humans are visual creatures. Video is the way people prefer to learn anything new. You could create an interactive sales proposal video where you talk them through all the items and explain why you have included them.
It’s exactly similar to Visume (Video resume). We all know that video resumes are extremely interactive. Each minute in your Visume is worth a thousand words. You can convey a lot in a 3-minute Visume than what you could have with a 200-page booklet about yourself.
So, why not simply copy the same idea and create an awesome mp4 sales proposal. It is an excellent way to stand out from the competition and get a definite response.
P.S: Make sure you keep the video up to 5 minutes.
Follow up emails with real-life examples.
1. Personal connection follow-up
Below is an example of how investigation does wonders.
[1]
The sender did a little research about the prospect and found out that the prospect used to work for the Cowboys (the football club). So the sender ended the email with a question “Do you still root for the Cowboys?” and he immediately got back with a response and at the end he wrote “JETS JETS JETS!!!!”. That means he liked JETS (another football club).
[2]
2. News item follow-up
This is basically follow up on the news items, happy life events, successful achievements and congratulating on that. You can do this by going over the blogs, reading out a few articles and calling out some news if something big is happening with the company.
It is close to personal connection follow up but not entirely because it is something you can use if you can’t find any other information on them.
Here’s how:
[3]
[4]
3. Follow-up using images and videos
Cam Macduff is a director of Wonderlab, a creative agency based in New Zealand. While researching the follow-up email samples I came across his super-duper email campaign in which he used two personalised images in the first and the follow-up email.
If you use the images in the right way like Cam did it here:
A. First Email
[5]
B. Follow-up Email
[6]
[7]
4. Funny but effective follow-up emails
Instead of sounding robotic and formal all the time you can transform your follow-up emails into a fun game. Here is an example:
[8]
But you also need to be slightly careful with your humor as not all jokes are appreciated by everyone. Always always make sure that the joke you choose is not offensive and wrong.
Wrap-up
You should never underestimate the power of follow up emails. Hopefully, the above tips and real examples will help you draft the follow-up emails.
References:
[1][3] Alex Berman
[5][6] Lemlist
[8] Hubspot