Simplify Your Client Email Follow Up Sequence

Today, your friendly creatives at Ashore learned a fun fact that will either make you feel very old or very young: the first email was sent in 1971 – that’s fifty years ago! Of course, for most people, email wasn’t a common fixture in our daily routines until the 90s, complete with dial-up internet and the creation of spam emails (did you know they got their name from a Monty Python sketch?).

If only those were the only issues we had to deal with when it comes to email these days. Now, we have email spoofing, email bombing, phishing scams, overfull inboxes, and general information overload. And you can’t forget the anxiety many people now associate with email.

We, as a people, hate composing emails. Almost as much as we hate reading them. This makes developing an email follow up sequence that will actually yield a response in a timely fashion pretty difficult.

Getting the Greenlight

During the proofing process, getting a response from your clients is absolutely mandatory to complete a project. Their insights and feedback help you iterate on your current designs, and their approval is the greenlight you need to move to production or implementation. When clients won’t respond to your emails, it brings everything to a screeching halt.

It’s stressful to say the least when your emails fail to elicit any response from your clients, but what are you going to do? Emails are a fixture of any business’s activities, so perhaps it’s about time you craft a simple email follow up sequence that helps you do your job and get paid.

The Fundamentals

For an email sequence to reach the recipient, be read by them, and then (hopefully) replied to, you need to get a couple of things right.

The Frequency

Per the name, follow up emails are usually sent following a previous email. However, you can also send them following a phone call, Zoom meeting, or simply a long period of no communication.

Most emails are opened on the day they are sent, so you might think that if you don’t get a response, you could send a follow up email the next day, right? Bad idea.

Wait a few days (at least three) before beginning your email follow up sequence. You want to give your clients time to prepare a response, especially if you’re asking them to do something like review a proof and give you their feedback. For each subsequent email in your sequence, wait a little longer before sending the next one.

The Day

Many believe Tuesdays and Thursdays are the best days to send emails, but this is not set in stone. Avoid weekends, Monday mornings, and Friday afternoons when possible.

The Time

Aim for mid-morning, between 10am and 11am (their time). Too early and you risk getting lost in the initial inbox shuffle; too late and productivity drops. The absolute worst time? Noon.

Proper Email Etiquette: No Frills, No Fuss

The Tone and Formatting

Avoid styling elements that send the wrong impression.

• Caps: DOESN’T IT FEEL LIKE SOMEONE IS SHOUTING AT YOU RIGHT NOW? Don’t shout at your clients.
• Exclamation Points: Enthusiasm is fine, but overuse looks anxious or unprofessional.
• Bold, Underlining, and Italics: Use sparingly or you’ll come across as condescending.
• Emojis: Keep them out of professional emails.

For clarity’s sake, stick to a single, straightforward message.

The Recipient

Consider your relationship with the recipient:

• Clients: Be polite, informative, and professional without being overly casual.
• Team members: You can be more succinct, but avoid being passive-aggressive.

The Subject Lines

Craft subject lines that are:

• Direct and clear
• Short but descriptive
• Free of alarmist language like “urgent” or “important”

Examples:

• Website Mockups: Feedback Requested
• New Brochure Design for Review

Have You Asked Yourself Why You’re Using Email?

If — even after simplifying and streamlining your email follow up sequence — you’re still not seeing high responsiveness, maybe it’s time to ask if email is the best medium for soliciting feedback. Especially since responsive people’s comments still end up buried in long email threads.

For a fast, dependable proofing process, online proofing software streamlines approvals by taking valuable feedback out of email threads and placing it in context with the files being reviewed. You simply upload your files and send review links to your approvers — it only takes seconds.

Automate Your Email Follow Up Sequence With Ashore

Ashore’s automatic reminders are the secret to success for many users:

• Customize reminders down to the day and time to fit your schedule and your clients’
• Set account-wide defaults or custom settings for individual approvers
• Customize the emails Ashore sends to approvers, with templates for different workflow stages
• Use template variables to autofill details like the approver’s name or proof name

Automatic reminders take the burden off you to manually manage follow ups while improving proof approval rates by 50%.

For Ashore users, it’s a win-win.

Sign up for free today to start simplifying your follow ups.