Follow up cadence that gets replies, a 14-day multichannel sequence

Busy buyers miss most of what reaches them. Your first email arrives during a board meeting, gets read on a phone in a taxi, or lands on the day budgets are cut. None of that says anything about whether your offer fits. Following up gives the buyer several chances to notice you, each in a slightly different context. The cadence is the structure that makes those chances deliberate rather than random: it sets spacing so you never feel pushy, varies the content so each touch earns its place, and ends cleanly so nobody feels chased.

A cadence also protects your team. Without one, reps follow up whenever they remember, some contacts receive six emails in a week and others receive one in a month. With one, every contact gets the same considered experience and you can compare results across campaigns because the structure is constant.

• Every touch adds something new: a different reason, a useful resource, a sharper question, a relevant observation.
• Spacing widens over time. Early touches are a few days apart, later ones further apart.
• Channels complement each other. LinkedIn makes your name familiar, email carries the substance.
• Messages stay short. Follow-ups are rarely longer than the first email and often much shorter.
• Every reply stops the sequence for that contact, whatever the reply says.
• The last touch closes the loop politely and leaves the door open.

For cold outbound to business buyers, common practice sits around four to six emails over two to three weeks, supported by a few LinkedIn actions. Fewer touches leave conversations on the table; many more start to feel like pressure and raise unsubscribe and complaint rates. A 14-day window with five emails and three LinkedIn tasks is a balanced default you can adjust once you see how your own audience responds.

Keep the total in proportion to the value of the deal and the relevance of your message. A highly targeted message to ten accounts that clearly match your best customers can justify a longer, more personal cadence. A broad list should get a shorter one, because the chance that any given contact cares is lower.

The schedule below counts working days from the day the contact enters the sequence. Emails go out during business hours in the recipient's time zone. LinkedIn steps are tasks for the rep, done by hand, with a ready message to paste and adapt.

Start with a LinkedIn profile view in the morning, then the first email later that day. The profile view costs nothing and makes your name slightly familiar when the email lands. The first email carries the most weight: a first line that shows you looked at their company, a single sentence on what you do for companies like theirs, and a soft question that is easy to answer, such as whether this is on their radar this quarter. Keep it under about 100 words, in plain text, with no attachments.

Reply in the same thread so the buyer sees the original message underneath. Do not write "just bumping this up". Add a new angle instead: a different pain your product removes, a short line about why now might be a good time, or a narrower question. Two to four sentences is enough. Many replies arrive on this step simply because the buyer missed the first email.

Send a connection request with a short note or with no note at all, depending on your audience. Do not pitch. Reference something real about their role or company, or the topic you emailed about, in one sentence. A connection accepted here gives you a second channel for the rest of the cadence and a familiar face if they later reply by email.

The third email should be useful even if the buyer never buys. Share a short checklist, a relevant article, a benchmark method they can apply themselves, or a specific observation about their website, hiring or recent news. Close with a light question. This step often earns replies from people who were interested but not ready to say so.

If the connection was accepted, send a short, human message. Thank them for connecting and ask one question that relates to their work rather than your product. If the connection is still pending, skip this task rather than sending an InMail pitch. LinkedIn works best as a relationship channel in a cadence, not as a second inbox for the same pitch.

By now the buyer knows who you are. Make the fourth email concrete: describe how a team like theirs uses your product in one or two sentences, in category terms, without invented names or numbers. Tie it to their role. A head of operations cares about different outcomes than a founder or a head of sales, so the same product deserves different words.

The last email closes the loop. Say that you will stop reaching out, summarise the offer in one line, and leave an easy way back, such as asking whether you should check in next quarter or whether someone else owns this topic. Break-up emails often draw replies because they remove pressure: the buyer can say "not now" or point you to a colleague without committing to anything. Keep the tone warm and never guilt the reader.

Stop rules matter as much as the touches themselves. A cadence that keeps sending after a reply, a bounce or an unsubscribe damages trust and deliverability at the same time.

• Any reply stops the sequence for that contact, including negative replies and questions.
• A hard bounce stops the sequence and adds the address to your suppression list.
• An unsubscribe request, by link, header or plain text, stops everything across all campaigns.
• A meeting booked stops the sequence and moves the contact into your pipeline.
• A reply from a colleague of the contact usually stops the sequence for the whole company, so nobody receives a third pitch in the same thread.

An automatic out-of-office reply is not a no and not a yes. The right move is to pause the sequence and resume after the return date stated in the message, usually with a day or two of buffer so you are not the first email in a full inbox. If the reply names a colleague who covers the topic while the contact is away, treat it as a referral, not a reason to email the colleague the whole sequence. If the out-of-office says the person has left the company, stop and look for the new owner of the role.

Most replies are not meeting requests, and each type deserves a different answer.

• Not now: thank them, ask when to check back and set a reminder for that date.
• Wrong person: thank them and ask for an introduction to the right owner, then start a fresh, short sequence that mentions the referral.
• Interested but with questions: answer the question first, then suggest a time.
• Unsubscribe: confirm and add them to suppression. No further messages.

• Sending every follow-up as a new thread, so the buyer loses context.
• Repeating the same pitch with different words instead of adding something new.
• Following up daily, which reads as pressure and invites complaints.
• Continuing the sequence after a reply because nobody checked the inbox.
• Pitching in the LinkedIn connection note.
• Forgetting time zones, so emails land at night for the buyer.

Founders and small companies tend to read their own inbox and respond quickly, so a tighter cadence can work. Enterprise buyers sit behind assistants and calendars, so wider spacing and more value per touch help. Technical roles prefer specific, concise content; executive roles prefer outcomes. Change one variable at a time, such as the spacing between step two and three or the angle of step four, and compare results over several hundred contacts before deciding.

Look at replies per step rather than only total replies. If almost all replies come on step one, your follow-ups add little and need sharper content. If step five rarely draws anything but unsubscribes, shorten the cadence. Watch positive replies and booked meetings, not opens, because open tracking is unreliable and tracking pixels can hurt deliverability on first touches.