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Glossary

Follow-up

A follow-up is a later email in the same thread, sent to someone who has not replied to the first.

Updated · By Otman Ounana · How we research

Why it matters when you send from your own Gmail

Most replies to cold email come after a nudge, but a follow-up is also where politeness is tested. Honest Intros sends due follow-ups before new first emails, keeps them in the original thread, and stops the sequence when the person replies, opts out or bounces. An out-of-office notice pauses it until the person is back. Every follow-up needs a reason to exist: add something new rather than asking whether they saw the last one.

Example

Day one: first email. A few business days later: a short follow-up in the same thread that adds one more observation from their site. No answer: the sequence ends and nothing further is sent.

What to do

Keep the gap to a few working days, add something new each time, and stop after the last follow-up in your sequence, whatever the person's silence seems to mean.

Related terms

All terms are on the glossary.

Read next

  • Out-of-office repliesWhat to do when a cold email gets an out-of-office reply: pause the follow-ups until the return date, never count it as a reply, and how to treat a named colleague.
  • "Not interested"How to answer a 'not interested' reply to a cold email: one short reply or none, stop every follow-up, treat it as an objection, and do not write to their colleagues instead.
  • Bulk senderA bulk sender, in Google's definition, is any sender that sends close to 5,000 messages or more to personal Gmail accounts within a 24-hour period.
  • CAN-SPAMCAN-SPAM is the United States federal law that sets rules for commercial email: no deceptive headers or subject lines, a physical postal address, and an opt-out that is honoured.