--- name: copywriting-follow-up description: >- Writes the follow-up emails after no reply, each one carrying a new angle rather than a reminder. Use when someone asks for a follow-up, a second or third email, a bump, a breakup email, or what to send when a prospect has gone quiet. Use before sending anything that begins with just checking in, because the position in the sequence decides the angle and this file sets both. license: MIT metadata: based_on: https://github.com/l3mpire/claude-skills/blob/f3a97eae61b12b77d09a72d605087f76f8e19ba3/copywriting-follow-up/SKILL.md upstream_repo: l3mpire/claude-skills upstream_author: l3mpire upstream_license: MIT adapted_by: TheCold.Ai adapted_on: "2026-09-18" changes: - British English throughout; dashes and emoji removed - A section added on why the number of steps is a capacity decision before it is a copy decision - The postscript rule rewritten so a named resource is offered on reply rather than linked - Word limits aligned with the rest of the library - The accuracy rules rewritten as four plain categories rather than coloured markers --- # Follow-up after no reply The follow-up is where most sequences are lost. Not because people are annoyed by them, but because most follow-ups contain nothing that was not in the first email, and the reader learns that the sender has nothing else to say. Every email here carries a new angle. If it does not, it is a reminder that you want something, and a reminder is worse than silence. Answer in the language the person is writing in. ## Before anything else: how many steps The number of emails in the sequence is a capacity decision before it is a copy decision, and it is usually made by accident. Every person added to a campaign consumes one send for each step. So the number of new people a mailbox fleet can take each day is its daily sending capacity divided by the number of steps. A fleet sending 240 emails a day sustains 48 new people a day on a five step sequence, and 80 on a three step one. Illustrative figures, not measured from any account. The shape is the point: two extra steps cost you roughly a third of the people you will ever reach. They are worth having only if each of them carries something genuinely new, which is what the rest of this file is about. If you cannot write a real new angle for email four, that is not a writing problem. It is the sequence telling you it should be three steps long. ## Phase 1: gather the context In one message, ask for what is missing: - What email one said, and the angle it used. - How long ago, and what has been sent since. - The prospect: title, seniority, sector, company size. - Which position in the sequence this email is. - Whether anything has changed since email one: a new signal, a new hire, news. - What data exists per prospect. If the angle of email one is unknown, ask for the email itself. Writing a follow up without seeing what it follows produces the exact repetition this file exists to prevent. ## Phase 2: why follow-ups fail | Mistake | Why it fails | |---|---| | "Just checking in" | No new value, and it announces that there is none | | Repeating email one | It was ignored once; repetition confirms the decision | | "Did you get my last email?" | Reads as passive aggression, and costs the reply | | Longer than email one | If the short version did not work, a longer one will not | | More features | The wrong direction entirely. Nobody is buying features here | | "I have been trying to reach you" | Guilt, which is the fastest route to an unsubscribe | | A vague bump | "Wanted to follow up on my previous message" is an empty email | ### What a follow-up has to do **Carry something new.** A different cause of the same problem, a different consequence, a different person inside the company who feels it, a resource they can use whether or not they ever buy. **Never apologise for sending it.** You are writing because you think you can help. Treat it as a continuation, not an interruption. An apology invites the reader to agree that it was one. **Escalate in specificity, not in pressure.** Each email is slightly more direct than the last. More specific, not more desperate. ## Phase 3: what each position is for ### Email 2: go one layer down Take the problem from email one and name its cause rather than its symptom. Do not quote email one. Pick the story up where it left off. Diagnose why the problem keeps happening. The ask can be slightly more direct than the first one's. Openings that work: - The cause: "That usually comes from one thing: the handover is verbal." - The consequence: "When that persists, the quoting backlog is what shows it." - The reframe: "Most managers fix the symptom. The lever is one step upstream." ### Email 3: change the entry point A different pain, a different person's pressure, a market or timing trigger, or the cost of doing nothing over a year. Do not reference emails one or two. This is a fresh start. The reader has no memory of the earlier ones, and reminding them of two ignored emails is the opposite of a fresh start. Openings that work: - Another pain: "There is a second problem that usually sits alongside that one." - Another stakeholder: "The board sees the number. What drives it is further down." - Timing: "With the year end coming, this is usually when it surfaces." - Risk: "The current way works, right up until somebody leaves." ### Email 4: the last real attempt High value, low pressure. Acknowledge that they may have this solved, or that you may have the wrong person. The ask is the most direct of the sequence. Only write this email if it has something to say. A fourth email that repeats the third is where a sequence turns into a nuisance, and the capacity arithmetic at the top of this file says what it costs you. ### Email 5: close it cleanly Three to five sentences, the shortest of the sequence. One final useful thing, then a line that makes it easy for them to answer "not now" or "wrong person". The closing line is not optional and it is not a guilt trip. "Assuming this is not a priority, which is fair enough. If it becomes one, you know where I am." A clean ending is worth more than a fifth angle. People remember how a sequence stopped. ## Phase 4: the rules for every follow-up - Shorter than the email before it. Every time. - One hundred and fifty words at most in the body. - One ask, and it is answerable in a word. - No links. If something is offered, it is sent on reply. - No apology, no guilt, no reference to how many times you have written. - One new angle, named in the output so it cannot be reused later. - No invented number, result or customer outcome. ### The postscript A postscript in emails two and three is the most read line in a cold email and the best place to give something away. Format: one sentence naming a specific, real thing, offered on reply. "P.S. Wrote a page on how three firms handle the handover without adding headcount. Want it?" It must exist. If it does not exist yet, either write it before the campaign sends or drop the postscript. A postscript offering something imaginary is how a warm reply gets wasted. ### Angle discipline Keep a list of the angles already used. Each email spends one and cannot spend it again. When you run out of genuine angles, the sequence is finished, regardless of how many steps were planned. ## The angle bank **Pain.** The root cause, the second-order consequence, the cost of the workaround, the thing that breaks when somebody is on holiday. **People.** The person above them who sees a number, the person below them who does the work, the person who leaves and takes the process with them. **Timing.** Year end, the planning cycle, a renewal, a season in their trade, the month the volume arrives. **Risk.** What the current way costs on a bad day rather than a normal one. Key person dependency. What an auditor or a client would ask. **Resource.** A specific thing you wrote, named precisely, offered with nothing attached. ## Phase 5: what to output **The email.** Position in the sequence, the angles already used, the new angle in one sentence, the target, any new signal since email one, and the variables. Then the subject line and the body. **Why this angle.** Three bullets: what is genuinely new, why it suits this position, and why this ask fits. **Word count** against the limit, and a note if it is longer than the previous email, which it should not be. **The updated sequence map.** Every angle spent so far, and what is left. If nothing is left, say so and recommend ending the sequence rather than filling it. ## Accuracy Four categories. Only the first two may appear as stated fact. 1. **Verified.** Use freely. 2. **A reasonable inference** for this role or sector. Use it, phrased as an observation rather than a claim about them. 3. **Unsupported.** Remove it, or turn it into a question. 4. **Invented.** A metric, a result, a customer outcome. Never, under any framing, in any email. ## Not for you if - You want a five step sequence because a template said five. Read the capacity section again. - You want to re-send email one with a new subject line. That is the thing this file is built to stop. - Nobody replied to any of it. Then the problem is the list or the offer, and another angle will not find it. --- ## Credits Adapted by TheCold.Ai, a B2B outbound agency in Middlesbrough, England, from `copywriting-follow-up` in the l3mpire/claude-skills repository (github.com/l3mpire/claude-skills), published under the MIT licence as stated in that repository's README. What changed is listed in this file's frontmatter under `metadata.changes`. The upstream notice is reproduced in the LICENSE file of the download bundle at thecold.ai/claude-skills/. Not affiliated with Anthropic, or with the authors of the upstream files.