The Forward Followup Formula – One Email That Will Increase Your Response Rate
Yes, just one email can help you increase your response rate. I’ll explain…
Over the last 6 months the team at System.ly has been helping our clients develop sales funnels and implement marketing automation in order to grow and scale their businesses.
That’s resulted in a wide variety of marketing automation campaigns.
Campaigns that delivered a lead magnet, drove people to show up to a webinar, followup with those that didn’t buy or didn’t show up, and even take subscribers through free video courses that launch a product.
Since I’m always looking for new strategies to help our customers, I’ve signed up for and subscribe to see what others are doing.
Specifically, I opt-in to webinar funnels and lead magnets from some of the top online entrepreneurs.
Then I sit back and study. I often do this from two different email address.
With one…I don’t engage at all.
The other…I click, engage and show up.
Guess what happened?
I started getting a lot of emails.
You’re probably sitting there and saying “well, duh Greg, you just signed up for all this stuff.
But here’s what’s funny…and interesting…and maybe even a bit obvious…
I got overwhelmed with all the emails.
I was registered for 3-4 webinars a week and getting free video lessons from these entrepreneurs who had a lot to teach, but I couldn’t keep up. I couldn’t engage. (Remember, I was doing this to study too!)
But then I realized that most people take in too much content. They drink from the content firehose which leads to overwhelm and little action.
Does this sound like you?
It’s hard to keep up isn’t it?
I’d look at my inbox and see emails that started to look and sound alike.
- “7 figures selling online courses? Look at this”
- “How to SELL without feeling all “salesy””
- “5 Ways to Get More Traffic With Content Marketing”
…and the list goes on…
But, then I noticed a few marketers were able to break through the clutter and get my attention.
And I mean really get my attention.
Not only did they got me to open the email but they got me to respond.
Let’s look at this tactic a bit closer.
This one email will get more of your subscribers to open and respond to your emails.
Do you feel like sometimes the emails you get just aren’t speaking to you?
They just don’t feel personal right?
That’s often a problem with how some people leverage the power of automation.
While marketing automation is powerful, if used incorrectly and you don’t consider your subscriber, you can feel a bit like a robot.
But what’s worse, if you’re marketing to other marketers or other savvy folks, they probably expect that you’re using tools like Infusionsoft, or Active Campaign.
If they expect the email to come from a tool like that OR that you’ll always send the replay of the webinar, you could subconsciously be training your subscribers to consume on their own time.
Well that doesn’t help when you have a time sensitive announcement now does it?
Use The Forward Followup Formula to break through the email clutter, get your email seen and a response. Tweet this.
The Forward Followup Formula – The Simple Email Tactic That Will Get Your Subscriber’s Attention
The best way to break down the Forward Followup Formula is with an example.
This example was executed by my friend Lewis Howes to perfection.
Lewis was hosting a webinar that my client was registered for.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to attend the webinar. While many marketers would just move on, Lewis did something brilliant that got my client’s attention.
In fact, she is now implementing The Forward Followup Formula in her email business.
Here it is in action.
Do see what happened here?
Melissa received an email with the subject “Fwd: Why did Melissa miss the webinar?”.
But it came from Brittany, someone from Lewis’ team.
Not only was the subject a Fwd: which will stand out and catch your subscribers attention, Melissa’s name was in it about the webinar she clearly registered for.
Lewis is using this tactic to have her sign up for the next available webinar.
So, he obviously missed the opportunity to pitch Melissa on his webinar because she didn’t show up.
So, why not invite her again…but in a way that is far less likely to be ignored.
The Forward Followup Formula can also be executed with a Reply.
I personally think the forward is more effective as you’re likely to see “RE:” at the beginning of an email in your inbox vs a “Fwd:”, but the result can be just the same.
Here is another example from John Lee Dumas for his launch of his Freedom Journal.
Sidenote: if you haven’t checked out the Freedom Journal yet you should do so here.
Here you can see the email is a reply. Actually this was a reply of a reply as they leveraged the tactic twice.
First, the subject line starts with “Re:” and has my name in it, along with John’s name whom I’ll obviously recognize.
Second, the email came from someone on John’s team and is super short and right to the point, making it even more easy to respond and engage with.
Something to consider.
In the first example with Lewis you can tell it was sent through his marketing automation tool as the opt out links were buried way at the bottom as you can see here.
Most people won’t recognize that but I love that The Forward Followup is being delivered via automation so Lewis can go about working on his business.
But, you can also send these emails manually similar to the second example.
For the record, I’m just assuming this was manual as I didn’t see any opt-out language anywhere in the email or even at the bottom of the thread to indicate that this was automatically sent, however, you could use a tool like Outreach to automate a tactic like this if you’re using cold email as a part of your outbound sales process.
So what are the keys to making The Forward Followup Formula successful?
The 5 Keys to Implementing The Forward Followup Formula:
1. The right email subject line
The email should start with “Fwd:” and include the subscriber’s name if you have it. The subject line should be relevant and ideally something the subscriber will recognize…like “Why did Melissa miss the webinar”?.
Questions are always great but you can visit here for some inspiring email subject lines.
2. Send it from someone on your team
While at first glance this makes the email seem less personal….if you think about it, it’s really powerful.
For example, Melissa now feels important enough to Lewis that he’d have his assistant reach out on his behalf.
While I’m not a psychologist or play one on tv, there is definitely some psychological wizardry going on here.
3. Keep it short and casual
In both examples you can see that the emails were short and very conversational or casual. It leaves the door open for the subscriber to feel welcomed to respond and most likely won’t be a novel of a response.
4. Leave a way to take immediate action.
Again, in both emails there is a clear call to action and place for the subscriber to visit.
With the first, it’s being able to register for the next webinar.
In the second, it’s to visit the site to learn more about the launch of the Freedom Journal.
5. Make it realistic
I’d actually forward an email to my assistant or someone on my team and then use that actual email to leverage in my marketing automation tool of choice.
That’s it!
As you can tell, The Forward Followup Formula is simple to execute but can be extremely powerful in generating a response from your subscribers.
Are you going to give it a try?
Use The Forward Followup Formula In Your Next Webinar
If you’re doing webinars, you can replicate this formula exactly how Lewis did. In fact, I created a free webinar funnel blueprint for you to help speed up the process.
This is the exact same webinar funnel that our clients use to generate five figures per webinar.
It will be a perfect way to start using The Forward Followup Formula.
Download it for free right here!
