Who do you call after an email?

Call the few who acted

Last spring, Julia, the marketing manager at [company], sent the newsletter with four news items and six links. She gave Felix, one of the sales reps, the list of everyone who opened it. Over a week he called 140 of them and reached 52, and most of them asked him the same thing: "Which email?" By the end of the week he had booked 2 trials. [company] rents drinking-water dispensers to offices on a monthly plan, with the filter change every three months included. In this post, [company], Julia, Felix, Laura, the campaigns and the counts are an example, not real data.

If you run email marketing for a company that sells to other businesses, you have probably handed over a list like Felix's. An open on its own says little about who wants to buy. Follow up only the few contacts whose action answers a buying question, the ones who replied with a question or clicked the page with your plans and prices. Answer the questions by email the same day, call the ones who clicked within one working day, and when you call, talk about the email, not about what the report showed you.

Everyone else on the list gets the next email. Anyone who asked to be removed hears nothing more from you. And for a click to mean anything, the email has to be written for it, with one offer, one link and one question the reader can answer by reply.

What does the report really tell you?

This time Julia's email campaign went out on Tuesday at ten to 2,400 contacts, people who asked [company] for a quote in the past two years or signed up on the website. On Wednesday morning the report showed 1,006 opened, 91 clicked a link, 31 of them on the plan page, 9 replies and 6 unsubscribed.

The open count is the number people look at first, and it is the weakest signal in the report. Some mail apps open every email on their own, before a person has seen it, and a person can open an email and close it a second later. The report cannot tell those opens from a careful read.

So Julia sorted the list by the strongest thing each contact did, counting each contact once, in the first row of her table that fits.

Two rows of Julia's table answer a buying question. The 5 contacts who replied wrote to [company] with a question, and the 31 who clicked the plan page went to see what a plan costs. Together that is 36 contacts out of 2,400.

The 60 who clicked another link, the article about filters or the photo of the team, showed some interest in [company], with nothing yet that points to a purchase. They get the next email, along with the 900 who opened without a click and the 1,394 who never opened. Of the 9 replies, 2 were out of office messages, and those contacts get the next email once they are back.

The other 2 replies asked to be removed. With the 6 who unsubscribed, that makes 8 contacts who get no more email and no call. Write only to people who agreed to hear from you, and stop as soon as someone asks you to.

Who gets a call?

Felix's call list is the 31 contacts who clicked the plan page, a small part of the 91 who clicked anything at all.

The 5 who wrote a question get an answer from Felix by email the same day. They chose to write, so they get a written answer, and at the end of it Felix offers a call if they would like one. Nobody else on the list gets a call from this campaign.

Felix calls within one working day of the click. A person who opened the plan page on Tuesday afternoon had a reason to look, maybe a dispenser that runs dry or a rental contract that ends soon, and on Wednesday that reason is still on their mind. A week later they may have found an answer somewhere else, or moved on to other work.

Calls to 31 contacts fit into one working day for one rep. Last spring's list took Felix his whole week.

People who fill in a form on your website and ask for a quote are a different case, and the first call to them is a subject of its own. Our post on why B2B lead generation doesn't bring sales covers it.

What do you say when you call?

Felix opens with the email. "We sent you an email on Tuesday about ..." gives the contact a reason for the call that they can place. He never says "I saw you looked at our prices." Even when it is true, it makes people feel watched.

The call with Laura Hill went like this. She is the office manager at an architecture firm of about 25 people.

Felix: "Hello, is that Laura Hill?"

Laura: "Yes, speaking."

Felix: "Hi Laura, this is Felix from [company]. We sent you an email on Tuesday about our dispenser plans for offices. I'm calling in case you have a question about them. Is now a good time?"

Laura: "Yes, I looked at it. Is the filter change included in the price?"

Felix: "Yes, every three months, and the technician brings the new filter. How many people are in your office?"

Laura: "About 25. Our old dispenser runs out every afternoon."

Felix: "For 25 people we usually put in the larger one. We can bring one for a two-week trial, free. Would that help?"

Laura: "That would be good."

Felix: "We can bring it on Tuesday or Thursday next week. Which suits you better?"

Laura: "Thursday morning."

Felix: "So the trial dispenser comes on Thursday morning, and I'll call you at the end of the two weeks to hear how it went."

Laura: "Great, thanks. Bye."

Felix: "Thanks, Laura. Bye."

Once Felix knows he has the right person, the reason comes before anything he asks, and each of his turns ends with one question at most, so Laura always knows what she is answering.

When she asks about the filter, he answers first and only then asks how many people work in her office. He offers two days for the trial, lets her choose, and says goodbye after she does.

Not every contact remembers the email. If Laura had said she didn't, Felix would tell her in one sentence what it was about and offer to send it again, without reading it out. Some contacts are interested but busy, and say "not now, maybe in March". That is a callback for March, so Felix writes the month down and calls then.

If several reps make these calls, agree on the opening sentences together; our post on how to write a call script shows how to write them so they sound like people talking.

How do you write an email worth a call?

Felix's calls work because of the way the email was written. Put the spring newsletter next to Tuesday's email and the difference is easy to see.

With six links, a click can mean almost anything. Someone who clicked the team photo in the spring newsletter and someone who went to the prices both counted as "clicked". The new email has one link, to the plan page, so a click tells Julia that the reader wanted to know what a plan costs.

The subject says what the reader gets, in the words an office manager uses. An office manager may not know how much water the office drinks, but knows how many people are in it, and whether the dispenser keeps up with them by the afternoon.

The question at the end can be answered by reply with one number. "Contact us for more information." leaves the reader to work out what to ask, while a number is easy for Felix to answer, because he only has to name the plan.

Felix signs the email himself, and he is the one who calls. That gives the call its reason, so "We sent you an email on Tuesday" comes from the person who signed it.

What came of the calls?

Felix called the 31 contacts on Wednesday and reached 19. On Thursday he tried the other 12 again and reached 6, so he spoke to 25 of the 31. The 6 he could not reach get the next email.

Of the 25 he reached, 7 ended with a trial dispenser on its way, like Laura's. Another 9 wanted a quote in writing, which Felix sent the same day, and 6 said "not now" and gave a month, so each has a callback booked for that month. The last 3 had only wanted to see the prices.

Of the 5 contacts who wrote a question, 2 booked a trial by email after Felix replied. That makes 9 trials from Tuesday's campaign, 7 from the calls and 2 by email, and nobody spent a week on the phone to get them.

Julia changed several things at once between the spring newsletter and this email, so she cannot say which one made the difference. In the next email she will change only the question at the end.

Where does DRING come in?

The 31 contacts who clicked the plan page are a list, and Reach can call a list like that. You bring the contacts in by upload or CRM sync and place them into a campaign. An AI agent then holds the conversation Felix held, within the windows and caps your team sets, so the list is worked on a schedule instead of being left to whoever has time.

When a contact says "not now" and names a time, Reach calls at the time the contact asked for. A do-not-call flag or a withdrawn consent removes a contact from every future attempt, in every campaign, so once the people who unsubscribed or asked to be removed carry that flag, they are not called. Every attempt and outcome lands in your CRM, and your marketing team can see which email led to a trial. To hear how those follow-up calls would run, request a callback and tell us about your last campaign.