Messages: Schedule No-Reply Follow Ups
🆕 New to RocketReach! March 2025
When sending an email message with RocketReach, you can optionally include follow up emails that will automatically send if you haven't received a reply. By leveraging this automation, you can improve your rate of engagement without added effort!
Key Takeaways
- The option to set auto follow ups is available only while preparing the first email.
- You must have email templates prepared prior to scheduling a follow up.
- "Set it and forget it" – follow ups are managed automatically: sends per schedule, or cancels if the recipient responds to one of the email steps or if the email bounces.
- Follow ups are threaded with the first email and will retain the subject line of the first email.
- Daily email limits apply.
Best Practices for Follow Ups
Whether you call them drips, sequences, schedules, or campaigns, sending follow-up emails is a must for generating the most email responses. In studies that RocketReach reviewed, one or two additional follow ups spaced ~3 days apart each generated as many replies as the first email, effectively doubling or tripling the total results.
Built from consensus findings, you can use our simple follow-up automation to effortlessly leverage best practices and increase the effectiveness of your work.
Getting Started
📩 If you haven't yet, connect your email mailbox to RocketReach's integrated Messages tool. It's as easy as logging in, and it provides the tightest integration so recipients see your emails exactly the same as if you had sent them from your usual email app.
📝 List out as many details and variations as possible describing who you want to connect with. Also list out their problems/motivations and what you have to offer them. Be specific! The key to cold outreach is highly relevant messages, so you need these details.
👥 Divide your audience ideas into micro segments to better enable relevant messaging. For example, consider a software used by both sales teams and marketing teams. The application and benefits for each team will still be different, so you'll get the best results by sending a sales-focused message to sales and a marketing-focused message to marketing.
🔍 Search contacts one narrow segment at a time, tagging and emailing as you go. While it may seem convenient to stuff all your criteria into one search, doing so makes it harder to organize and send a well-personalized email message. Research suggests hyper-focused campaigns of about 100 recipients generate more engagement. If your searches are returning very large volumes, look again for options to make further meaningful segments.
How it Works
Once you have identified your contacts, it's time to send emails! You can send emails from any platform, but using RocketReach Messages is the easiest way to begin engaging your RocketReach contacts.
When you click any "Send Email" action button, at the bottom you'll see the option to add follow ups:
| 💡PRO TIP: Use Variables in your Templates to automatically insert personalized names for each recipient. This is especially important for Templates that will be used as follow ups. (Learn More) |
RocketReach will send the first email immediately. Even with multiple contacts selected, each recipient receives an individual email that looks like you sent it to them directly:
Replies and bounces are automatically tracked and acted on, saving you from any additional effort.
- If the first email did not bounce and the recipient has not replied by the time of the scheduled follow up, the next email will send automatically.
- Conversely, subsequent follow ups are canceled if an earlier email bounced or received a reply.
Follow ups are threaded with the first email:
Recipients can see your previous message(s) in the thread, so it's not strictly necessary to repeat yourself. In fact, you may find it more useful to diversify each email with a slightly different value prop, question, or call to action.
Expert Tips
A few more suggestions from RocketReach's expert team:
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Adopt a consistent naming convention
If you include important and helpful references like the date, project, goal, and/or method (Example: "25Q1, Marketing, Pets - 2nd flup"), you'll always know which email templates to use. And while you're at it, use the same names across your email templates, saved searches, and tags. – Addison, Sr. Product Manager
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Keep it short and sweet
Resist the temptation to info dump! No one wants to read an essay, they just need to know what's in it for them. Pick one or two core points per email, and use as few words as possible to highlight the potential value for your recipient. It's ok to leave them wanting more, that's their incentive to reply! – Madi, Customer Success Manager
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Specific call to actions get more engagement
Avoid generic closing lines. You'll get more replies with a clear, direct, action-driven prompt ("claim your free trial") or open-ended question ("what option makes most sense for you?"). – Christopher, Sr. Growth Marketing Manager
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Invite them to forward your email to a better contact
Immediately before or after your signature block, you can include a line like "If you're not the best person, I'd appreciate if you can forward this to whoever is." You just increased your reach with zero extra effort. – Paul, Sr. Account Executive
How to Enable Follow Up Emails
If you're already sending an email, it only takes 5 more seconds to schedule one or two follow up emails.
1: Prepare Email Templates
In order to set a follow up, you'll need a saved email template. We recommend that you use Variables to automatically insert the recipient's name.💡Reminder: Since the follow up(s) are threaded to the first email, the recipient will see only the first email's Subject Line. Please refer to the Best Practices section above for more tips & recommendations.
🔗 Learn More: Save and Use Email Templates | Messages
2: Select Your Recipients
You can send emails to contacts that you have looked up. Find the desired contact or contacts from either My Contacts or directly on the Person Search page. You can use the filters to drill down to the audience based on common criteria (such as Tags), and/or use the checkboxes on the left to select multiple specific contacts.
🔗 Learn More: How do I create a contact list?
3: Click a 'Send Email' Button
Send to one contact using the blue "Send Email" button on the right side of the page, or send to multiple contacts using the "Email Contacts" option at the top of the page.
On the Person Search page:
On the My Contacts page:
4: Choose Follow Ups
After you prepare the first email but before you hit send, choose the desired follow up step(s) at the bottom of the compose window:
You have three options for the auto follow up:
- Send only one additional email at least 3 days after the first email sends
- Send only one additional at least 7 days after the first email sends
- Send an additional email 3 days after the first email sends AND an another email 7 days after the first email.
*The timing will be at least 3 or 7 days because the system may queue and send later if you have reached the daily email limit (Learn More).
5: Review Results
Email messages that you send in RocketReach are tracked on the Messages Activity page. Click on the 'Sent' tile to focus the view on recently sent email messages. You can also see a breakdown per template on the Messages Template page.
Follow Up Emails FAQ
❓ Can the follow up timing be changed?
The timing of 3 days and 7 days is fixed based on overall best practices. You can always send additional emails manually in order to suit your own preferences. We recommend using Tags to easily email groups of contacts, track next steps, and stay organized (Learn More).
❓ Is there a limit on how many emails I can send?
Users with paid subscriptions can send up to 500 emails in a 24-hour window. This limit exists only to help you stay inline with Google's and Microsoft's enforcement for bulk email sending. Users of the free service may send up to 5 emails per day.
❓ What time of day are follow ups sent?
For emails that you schedule to send on future dates, the RocketReach system batch processes these at fixed times for simplicity. If you'd like the ability to set specific times for sending emails, please let us know! We'd love to know about emailing tools that you would value: success@rocketreach.co
❓ Can I see emails that are scheduled?
At this time, our app does not include a place where you can see a queue of scheduled emails. We are still in the process of building out functionality around email messages, and we appreciate your feedback! Please let us know how you would use this functionality: success@rocketreach.co
❓ Can I cancel follow up emails?
Follow ups are automatically canceled and not sent if your email account indicates a reply or a bounce on the email thread. Otherwise, follow up emails cannot be canceled once you click 'Send & Schedule Email' from the compose window. We are still planning and building more features around email messages, and your feedback makes a difference! Please let us know how this ability would impact your work: success@rocketreach.co
🔗 Additional FAQ available here: Messages FAQ
Additional Resources
How can I get more email replies? | Messages