How Many Follow-Up Emails Should You Send? (2024)

Most cold email campaigns should only contain two follow-up emails.

Sending too many follow-up emails can hurt your deliverability, since it increases the likelihood of recipients marking your emails as spam.

In this article, I cover the following topics:

• How many times should you follow up after no response?
• How many follow-up emails is too many in sales?
• Is it ok to send multiple follow-up emails?
• Final thoughts

How many times should you follow up after no response?

I recommend that you send only two follow-up emails.

You should wait at least four to seven days between each follow-up, otherwise you risk annoying your prospects, which will cause them to mark your emails as spam.

If after two follow-up emails, you still haven't received a response, then you should stop emailing the prospect.

Some people say you should keep following up until the prospect responds, but this is a bad idea since it increases your chances of being marked as spam by recipients, which will negatively affect your deliverability, causing your emails to go to spam.

Also, if you’ve already sent two follow-up emails, and the recipient still hasn’t responded, then you should take a hint that they aren’t interested.

I often only include one follow-up email in my cold email sequences; sometimes I don't include any follow ups. I discuss this strategy in the below LinkedIn post:

How many follow-up emails is too many in sales?

In my opinion, if you are sending more than two follow-up emails to a single prospect, then you are sending too many.

If the prospect has already responded, and you are engaged in an existing conversation, then you can send more than two follow-up emails over the course of the entire deal cycle.

However, if you send a cold email to someone, and they don’t respond, and you keep emailing them, still without a response, and you send more than three emails in total, then you are entering the realm of spam.

It should be quite obvious that someone doesn’t want your product or service if you send them three emails and they still haven’t responded.

I recommend that you check out the example follow-up email sequence that I share in my article How To Write A Follow-Up Email (+13 Templates & Examples). In this example sequence, I include a “break-up email” which is an effective way of ending your follow-up sequence.

Is it ok to send multiple follow-up emails?

Yes, it is definitely ok to send multiple follow-up emails.

In fact, I recommend that you do. You should send two follow-up emails to maximize your response rate.

I also recommend that you send your cold email campaigns with Emailchaser, since it allows you to send automatic follow-up emails to leads that don't respond.

Emailchaser automatically stops sending follow-up emails when a lead responds. This is important as it prevents embarrassing situations where your lead has already responded, but you accidentally send another automated follow-up email.

Frequently asked questions

Final thoughts

I recommend that you send two follow-up emails.

If you send more than two, then you will most likely be marked as spam by your recipients, which will negatively impact your deliverability.

You can see an example follow-up email sequence in my article How To Write A Follow-Up Email (+13 Templates & Examples).

I also recommend that you check out my other article How Long Should You Wait Before Sending A Follow-Up Email?