ManyRequests is a client portal and client requests management software for creative services.
How to follow up with clients who have gone silent (7 ways):
- Create follow-up triggers
- Be clear about what you need
- Personalize your communications
- Pick up the phone
- Provide value in every follow-up messages
- Send out customer surveys
- Send a personal handwritten note
See in the article below for more information on these.
Are you wondering how to efficiently follow up with past clients or new prospects who went completely silent after just a few back-and-forths? I feel you...
Knowing how to follow up with customers can be tricky, especially if they got excited during an upsell or new deal process and went cold right after.
Yet, following up is critical as it will help you demonstrate the value of your offer and company and stay front of mind. It will also allow you to establish yourself as an authority, gain customers’ and leads’ trust, and eventually better reconnect with them.
Some of the best ways to follow up with clients that went silent include:
- Creating re-engagement emails
- Giving clear and concise instructions in your communications
- Personalizing your messages
- Following up with phone calls
- Providing added value in your follow-up emails or texts
- Sending out customer surveys
- Sending handwritten personalized notes
How to write a great follow-up email to reactivate customers, you ask?
Let's dive in.
Follow-up tip #1: Create follow-up triggers
Email marketing can be an efficient technique to reactivate dormant leads and customers. These specific email series or triggers can be called re-engagement emails, reactivation emails, or win-back emails.
They’re usually sent as part of an email drip campaign based on a user’s specific behavior.
For example, if a customer or prospect downloads your latest eBook, you could automate the process so that they’re instantly placed on the newsletter list for content around the same topic.
Then, in one of the next follow-up emails, you could make a time-sensitive offer, providing a free consultation to discuss their projects, for instance. The idea of this email will be to highlight how your solution can solve their pain points based on the content they’ve previously downloaded.
Note that you’ll need to use a compelling CTA to encourage them to reach out.
Re-engagement emails are critical in rekindling the relationship with inactive prospects or clients
By creating email sequences (or triggers), you’ll be able to nurture your inactive leads and existing clients over time. It’ll show that you’re here for them even though they aren’t actively engaging and allow you to demonstrate your value. But creating re-engagement emails is also important because your previous emails might have simply come through at the wrong time or have been buried in their inbox.
Re-engagement email examples
I’ve listed below some re-engagement sample emails to reconnect with your customers:
- ‘’We miss you’’ emails: the idea is to trigger emotion by using tools such as a sad GIF, for instance, to show your inactive customers that you care.
- Time-triggered emails: these emails can be automatically sent on an anniversary, birthday, or special occasion, and they're a good way to engage prospects.
- Welcome back email: this is particularly efficient when a former client or a dormant prospect clicks on your CTA and you know they've interacted with you before.
- Thank you emails: you can send these to a client or prospect even though they haven’t been engaging with you for a while. For instance, thank them for showing interest or purchasing from you in the past.
Find more email samples showing you how to follow up with clients and some great samples of follow-up emails after your prospect went completely silent during the sales process.
Follow-up tip #2: Be clear about what you need
When creating your email sequences and communications, be clear, concise, and give your leads and clients direction. Here are some best practices to follow:
Email subject lines
We receive, on average, 121 business emails every day.
Now, that’s a lot of emails!
So, if you want to stand out from the crowd and grab your client or prospect’s attention, you’ll need to craft a clear, compelling, and direct subject line.
Keep it short & to the point
In the spirit of being clear and concise, here are 3 things you can do in the your email body:
- Quickly get to the point and explain precisely what it is that you need from your clients or prospects for them to succeed using your product or service. For example:
- Are you following up on your proposal?
- Do you need more information to send them the proposal?
- Highlight why it is in their best interest to respon
- Set deadlines and emphasize the consequences of missed deadlines
For instance, let’s say you’ve done a demo of one of your services and offered a special discount if the company was to sign up by a certain date.
Make sure to remind them about the deadline before your offer expires in your follow-up message.
Also, emphasize what the consequences of missing a deadline would mean to them.
If they need your services, knowing that their project won’t be completed if they miss the deadline will most likely prompt them to respond.
Add a very specific call-to-action
There is nothing worse than a clunky email with a confusing call to action. Not giving your leads or customers a clear direction on what they need to do will almost always end up with them ghosting you.
Therefore, make sure to craft a clear and strong call to action.
This will allow them to quickly grasp what steps to take and help you get a response. As a good practice, pay attention to the color and placement of your CTA and let them know where they need to click.
Make it as easy as possible for them to spot the CTA and take action.
Follow-up tip #3: Personalize your communications
In 2021, personalization is key to engaging with customers. 71% of consumers say that a personalized experience would prompt them to interact with emails. What’s more, 75% of consumers feel that the emails they receive aren’t tailored to them.
As a result, using targeted communication can be a fantastic way to stand out from the competition and re-engage with cold prospects or clients.
Some of the main ways to grab their attention include:
Tailoring special offers
What better way to rekindle a relationship with clients or old prospects than offering them a special offer tailored to their needs? For instance, you can harness the power of foot-in-the-door offers to demonstrate the value of your services without necessarily giving them away for free.
The idea with a foot-in-the-door offer is to provide your clients with an exclusive discount on a specific service for a limited time. This way, they can trial your tools or products and assess how valuable your offer can be to them.
Some of the most efficient foot-in-the-door offers include:
- Providing a unique service tailored to your clients’ specific needs for a flat fee
- Offering a 30-minute training session on a tool
- Agreeing to provide a subscription-only service as a one-off for a flat fee
- Offering a heavily discounted paid trial for a few days
- Providing an SEO, marketing, or website audit at a low price
As mentioned before, personalization is critical to converting leads and re-engaging with clients.
Therefore, always ensure that you’re providing them with an irresistible offer by specifically designing it to answer their particular needs. If your services answer their pain points, the irresistible personalized offer will prompt them to get back to you!
Send useful content about their personal interests
While sending business-related proactive content is an excellent strategy, sometimes people would rather connect with you on an emotional level.
And to engage on a more personal level, sending valuable content revolving around your clients’ personal interests might be a great strategy. You can also send them thoughtful messages if you know something big is happening in their lives.
If you had an interesting conversation with them a few months back and they told you they were getting married around now, send a follow-up email to ask how the preparations are going.
Or if they told you that they would love to visit Mexico one day and you come across a great offer, don’t hesitate to send it across. Now, it’s harder to ignore a thoughtful email providing something useful for your personal life than it is to ignore a sales email.
Remember to always log into your CRM anything a client or prospect tells you during your chats. This will allow you to easily access and leverage the data for future conversations.
Use personalized follow-up strategies
Personalization is key to standing out in a sea of same-ish content and websites claiming to be "industry-leading" or "the next big thing in [enter industry]." People are looking for more human approaches to purchasing business solutions online, so you should try one of these 3:
Personalized follow-up tactic #1: Personalized video
Sure, sending a personalized email is always a great idea. But what if you took things a step further and recorded a short video specifically for prospects or clients?
You could, for instance, use this unique opportunity to ask them how they are and how their business is doing while reminding them of how your services could help them grow. This personalized video message will make them feel as though you care and genuinely want to connect with them on a deeper level.
Besides, this strategy will also dramatically increase your odds of them opening your email. After all, videos can increase email open rates by up to 19% and click rate by a whopping 65%!
Personalized follow-up tactic #2: Dynamic landing pages
These days, many marketing tools can be personalized to a granular level. Dynamic pages have a higher conversion rate (up to 300%) because they deliver a different message based on each users’ behavior.
These can be highly tailored to each individual’s needs, including:
- Your clients’ logo and the name of their company
- An eye-grabbing headline based on their keyword search
- Which one of your services can help their company specifically
Personalized follow-up tactic #3: Retargeting campaign on social media or texts
Besides designing general email marketing campaigns, a great way to reignite the spark is to create targeted ads on social media and via text messages. And, for a better outcome, make sure to segment your target based on their past behaviors and actions.
Follow-up tip #4: Pick up the phone
Most business professionals communicate via email these days. That’s because it allows them to respond when they’re available and carefully craft their answer. But, sometimes, there is nothing better than a good old phone call to break the ice and ignite the spark once again!
After all, 41% of salespeople report that phone calls are the most efficient sales tool.
Yet, almost half of salespeople give up after one follow-up attempt. While you might think you’re being pushy, following up with a phone call can actually show that you care.
And as such, it can help you create a genuine connection with your prospects or clients. Plus, it’s easier for a client to ignore or miss an email than it is to ignore several phone calls.
How to start a phone conversation with clients who went silent
To establish trust, I’d recommend that you start the conversation with something that doesn’t involve business. For instance, you could use industry news as a talking point.
It can also be a good idea to ask them how they are and how the business is doing and see how you can help. Make it all about them, not you or your company.
The key is to let the conversation mature and naturally lead into how your offer is still relevant to them.
However, if you feel like they’re in a rush when talking to them over the phone, ask them when the best time to discuss their projects is. This will show them that you value their time and you care about them.
Follow-up tip #5: Provide value in every message
This is another instance where having a CRM is critical. With a CRM, you’ll be able to input any information about what got the prospect or client excited in the first place.
You can then use that to your advantage. Being proactive and sending free content and tips can really help re-engage with silent customers or prospects.
Not only will they appreciate the additional information you’re providing, but they’ll also see that you care about their business. Plus, this will allow you to stay front of mind.
Type of content formats and messages to share
Some of the proactive content you can regularly share includes:
Format #1: Blog articles and newsletters around a topic they’re interested in
Always make sure the content you send answers their pain points.
This will increase your chances of getting a response.
Format #2: Updates about your new features and their benefits
Make sure to clearly highlight how these new features can help them.
Format #3: Exciting industry news and trends
Time is a rare resource these days. That’s why customers or prospects might appreciate you sending them critical industry updates without having to look for it themselves!
Format #4: Helpful business tips and ideas
You’ve been working in your space for a while, and you’re an expert. So why not drip some useful tips or even suggest ideas to help your clients or prospects.
This might encourage them to reach out to discuss your tips or ideas!
If you’re consistently providing added value for free, it will be harder for your prospects or clients to forget about you. They’ll see you as an expert on the topic and will be more likely to touch base with you so that you can help them with their projects.
Follow-up tip #6: Send out customer surveys
Creating and sending out customer surveys is a great way to re-engage with former clients as well as prospects. Customer surveys give them an opportunity to make their voice heard and show them your company values their opinion.
You could send them a simple customer satisfaction survey or be more creative and ask them to select the product or service they find the most interesting.
You can also ask them what they would like you to tackle in your next blog post or eBook. Lastly, you could craft a multichoice questionnaire asking them to choose the topics they’re most interested in.
To make it fun and increase the chances they respond, turn your customer survey email marketing campaign into a competition. For instance, every person that completes the survey gets to automatically enter a prize draw:
- A discount or exclusive personalized offer
- A free one-month subscription
- Any other appealing deals you can offer
Try to be creative and think out-of-the-box when crafting your customer surveys to turn the campaign into an exciting and memorable event.
Follow-up tip #7: Send a personal handwritten note
As a best practice, you should always send a thank you email to your clients or prospects after meeting them even though they haven’t reached out as they said they would.
However, there is something else you can do.
Very few people take the time to browse and purchase a nice card, sit down, grab a pen, and write a thoughtful and genuine thank you note. And you know what?
That’s what makes handcrafted thank you notes such a powerful marketing tool!
However, you don’t need to focus on thank you notes only. If you haven’t heard from a company or client for a while, you can simply send an old-fashioned handwritten personalized note.
For instance, you could send them a short message on their birthday or before Easter or Christmas.
Or you could just let them know you appreciated working with them in the past and hope you’ll work together again in the future. This will allow you to:
- Stand out from the competition
- Show them that you care and think about them
- Stay front of mind
- Create a deeper relationship
Find some great examples of handwritten notes scripts you can use to impress clients.
Follow up with clients who went silent - today
Rekindling an old client relationship can be challenging but rewarding if you put the effort in. To achieve deeper customer engagement, you’ll have to make sure you’re delivering outstanding customer service. Besides, you’ll need to thoroughly track data and do your research to personalize your communications.
Whether talking to existing clients who have already gone through the process with you before or potential customers, having a seamless automated management process in place is key.
ManyRequests helps service professionals looking to streamline their clients' experience, ensuring smooth communication and control over the entire customer lifecycle.
This will lead to higher retention and conversion rates, and a lower churn rate.
Now, that will definitely be worth a little bit of extra work ;)
Originally published May 17 2021
Frequently asked questions
What is the best way to follow up with customers? There are a few different ways to follow up with clients. Some of the most efficient methods include: creating follow up triggers or re-engagement emails, being clear and concise about what you need, tailoring all of your communications, calling them, sharing proactive content to provide value, sending out customer surveys, or creating & sending personal handwriting.
How do you write a follow-up email to a client? The number one rule is to be clear, concise, and give direction to your clients or leads as to: 1) What you need from them; 2) Acknowledge their needs and reiterate how you can help, and; 3) Show your appreciation for their time. You should also use a direct and compelling subject line and a strong call to action for them to get hooked in the sales process.
How do you politely follow up? Make sure you include an intro that triggers your client or lead’s memory by reminding them of your discussion. Thank them for their time and for sharing their pain points with you the last time you spoke to them. Then, offer something of value before incorporating a strong call to action.
How do you follow up after a meeting with a client? A good practice is always to thank your contact for their time and the conversation. Then you can recap the key points you discussed together and list the next action steps.