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Comment by LAC-Tech | Hacker News Reader

A lot of peoples reaction to getting sent 3 follow up emails is to mark them as spam.

I do a ton of cold outreach, and in my experience, the difference is in the way you communicate.

In each of my follow-ups, I mention that I am reaching them because I did not hear from them the previous time, and ask them to reply one way or the other.

It communicates to them that if they just reply a 'No', I would stop,

Also, I do not persist forever. My follow ups are always 4 levels deep, and in the final mail, I make sure I tell that it's the last one and I won't send another one.

So anyone like OP who's delaying it simply because they are busy tend to reply.

Again, I am not sure if these are ideal tactics, but they seem to work for me.

This is intriguing. I don't want to reply (in b2b situations) because I feel the salesperson might try to 'use me' to get to some other key decision maker within my org. I don't want that process taking up my limited time. So, if I say no, it opens the door the more discussion, as it acknowledges I at least had some time to think about it.

Same boat here. Since sales are a big part of my job, I occasionally read them to gauge how effective they might be (if I were the target audience). I used to reply to the more well-crafted ones with a polite “thanks, not interested” but in almost every case where I engaged, it seemed to lead to an attempt to reach someone in my org who might be interested. Now I just delete them.

Interesting. I typically hit the decision maker or their boss - so when I get a no, I know there is no one else to seek.

Some people also reply with a sterner 'no, don't reply again'. To them, I do not even reply with a 'Thanks, no problem' message since I'm scared they will mark me as spam!

Perhaps it's just me, but I find those follow-up extremely annoying and if I'm getting at least one, that guarantees blocking of recipient.

We live in high turnover of information, and if I received your first email (which I did) and didn't respond, it does mean I am not interested. Sending a follow up would just spark frustration.

Again, perhaps it's just me and this approach works for most people, but it may be useful to know it does not for all.

I guess the problem here is the ambiguity of not responding -- it could mean you're not interested, but it could also mean you are too busy to reply. Without additional information, the salesman doesn't know which case it is.

From his perspective though, he doesn't lose anything by sending the follow up, and if it is the second case, may gain a sale.

There is no ambiguity in non-responding - if I am not responding, the subject is of no interest to me. That's pretty simple thing to understand.

Of course it doesn't work for non organised individuals and people who succumb under pressure.

Email providers in general, and GMail in particular, is not as sophisticated as we like to believe. There have been so many instances where people I have been talking to for several years get randomly thrown into the spam folder.

It goes without saying that some of my outreaches get thrown there too by default.

So, as the sender, I don't really know if you saw the message and didn't want it, or if you were too busy to reply, or that you did not receive my message in the first place.

There are, of course, many email tracking tools available. I do not use them though.

My own personal stats is that half my successes came from following up.

You do have to be really careful and get intent right. I don't want to sell something to someone uninterested (they're usually the bad clients that need 80% effort, 20% returns anyway).

A lot of sales people are just manipulative with this and it'll show. It comes across as impatient, pushy, or insulting.

If I know that the other person read it and is interested but evaluating other options, an email could be along the lines of, "So what do you think? I'm happy to answer any questions you have."

If it goes into a void, I'd say, "Sorry to follow up, but I'm not sure if my last email was lost in your inbox or if you've got other things on your mind. To reiterate, (brief pitch on product). I'll probably send one more follow up later for your convenience. If you're not interested, just let me know and I won't bother you."

Many people are afraid of rejection, but IMO it's a very good thing. Encourage them to say no. You know what doesn't work - wrong target market, wrong pitch, or some cases it's just not good enough. We've had situations where we were told, "It's interesting but not being able to log out of all devices is a security hole and dealbreaker." It could be a polite excuse, but it was a feature angle we didn't think of and also a hint when it's okay to try again.

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