The short answer
- Follow up twice: once after three to five working days, once a week later. Then stop.
- Keep every follow-up under four lines. The first email made the case; the follow-up is only a nudge.
- Add one new thing each time: a detail, a link, an answer to something they may have wondered about.
- Make it easy to say no. 'If this is not for you, tell me and I will stop' gets more replies than a clever closing line.
- Track who you sent what, and when the next date is, or the sequence falls apart at the second send.
The three-line follow-up that works
- Line one: the role or the thing, in their words. 'You mentioned the spring catalogue.'
- Line two: one sentence of value - the specific thing you can do about it.
- Line three: the ask, small and clear. 'Is it worth fifteen minutes next week?'
- Sign with your name and one link. Not a signature block the size of a paragraph.
- Send it at a normal hour on a working day, and never twice in one day.
Before you send anything
Do ten minutes of reading per target. A message that shows you looked at their actual situation outperforms a hundred identical ones, and it is the only version that is not spam.
Know what you are worth before the first reply lands. Pricing a small job from the work it involves is arithmetic, and doing it in advance is what stops the panic discount mid-conversation.
- One ask per message. Two asks split the attention.
- No attachments on the first contact.
- Write the subject line last, and keep it plain.
- Never buy a list. A cold email to a person you chose is outreach; a blast to strangers is a complaint waiting to happen.
Where this goes wrong
- Following up daily, which reads as pressure rather than interest.
- Copying the same message so exactly that the reader recognises it from a friend's inbox.
- Apologising for writing. Confidence is not rudeness.
- Stopping after one email and calling the channel dead.
The free tool for this
A project price from the work you actually listed - A project price from the work you actually listed. It runs in the page, asks for your own numbers, and sends nothing anywhere.
If you would rather not build it yourself
Outreach Kit is the sequences, the follow-up dates and the reply handling written out, with the tracked sheet that keeps the second send from being forgotten. Outreach Kit is $16. See it on the shop, and there is a plain page about it here: what it holds.
Questions people actually ask
How many cold emails should I send a day?
As many as you can genuinely personalise - for most people that is five to fifteen. Sending more than you can read for turns the exercise into spam.
What if they say no?
Thank them, ask if it is a no for now or a no forever, and stop either way. A clean no now is worth more than three months of nothing.
Read next
How to tell whether your cold email is working, without guessing, How to find the right person to email at a company.