The last thing you want to do is overwhelm your prospects with cold emails.

How many cold emails should you send? We have the answer.

In this article, I’ll break down exactly how many follow-ups to send, how long to wait between each one, how to write messages that actually get replies, and how to automate the whole sequence across channels so you’re not doing this manually for every prospect.

A cold email follow-up is an email sent to a recipient who has not responded to your initial cold email.

The purpose of the follow-up is to re-engage the recipient and hopefully spark their interest in what you’re offering.

People are busy, and your initial email might get overlooked.

A follow-up email reminds them of your initial message and gives them another chance to connect.

In cold sales outreach, you should send between 4-9 follow-up emails.

According to our analysis of millions of cold emails, your overall reply rates increase with every follow-up. But after 9 or more follow-ups, the benefits are negligible, and you could be marked as spam.

Let’s dive deeper into the analysis. To test this, we measured the average reply rates of the individual emails sent in lemlist cold outreach campaigns. Unsurprisingly, the first email gets the best average reply rate, and after that, the reply rate per email decreases steadily.

Of course, seen individually, reply rates below 2% don’t seem that impressive. But when you look at the cumulative effect of each follow-up, you’ll see the combined reply rate rises above 20%.

If you send one email, you’re looking at an average reply rate of just 4.5%. But if you go up to 10, your total reply rate reaches as high as 22.37%.

Let’s break it down into more concrete numbers. Say you send a cold email campaign to 300 prospects. If you stop after the first point of contact, with an average reply rate of 4.5%, you might get about 14 replies. But if you continue, you can get an average of 4-10 replies per follow-up, leading to a total of 60+ replies at the end of the campaign.

So don’t give up after the first or second email. Many prospects just need a reminder or an extra detail or two before they’re ready to reply.

Now that you know how many follow-ups to send, let’s get into how and when you should send them.

According to a USC Viterbi School of Engineering study of email behavior, 90% of people respond within a day or two if they’re going to reply at all.

So leave at least 2 days between your first and second point of contact, then give them a bit more time in between emails as you continue to follow up.

Here’s the frequency we recommend:

Depending on how many messages are in your sequence, aim for a total duration of 10-25 days.

The key here is to be persistent, but polite. If they’re not responding to your first email after 2 days, don’t expect them to respond faster after your 3rd or 4th. And, of course, if they respond saying that they are not interested, do not continue to follow up.

When writing your follow-up email, keep these best practices in mind:

→ Add value with every new email (i.e. don’t just say “checking in!”)

→ Avoid guilt-trip phrases like “I’m busy too,” or “just wondering if you got my last email…”

→ Keep your messages short (around 120 words), while maintaining enough context for the prospect to understand why you’re emailing them.

Here’s an example of a follow-up email that got an 86% open rate and a 71% reply rate:

This follow-up works because it references the previous step to make a quick transition, and because it adds value. If you want to use this template, do your research and replace the {{strongArgument}} custom tag with a sentence that will be different and personalized for every prospect.

Remember to focus on the prospect, not you, which means a lot of “you” and no “I” in your cold email copywriting.

Here’s another example:

This follow-up got a 67% open rate and a 33% reply rate. Here’s why it worked:

Want more examples for your follow-up emails? Check out these 10 cold email follow-up templates to get more replies.

Email is still the backbone of most follow-up sequences. But it’s not the only channel that works, and treating it that way is a mistake.

The reps I see hitting quota are mixing channels based on where their prospect actually lives. LinkedIn adds profile visits, connection requests, direct messages, and voice notes. It works especially well for decision-makers who are active on the platform but buried in email. Adding WhatsApp to your sequence reaches over 2 billion users and, according to lemlist data, sees around 98% open rates and reply rates above 30%. It’s ideal for re-engaging prospects who’ve gone quiet or ghosted you entirely. An SMS step works best as a warm follow-up: after a missed call, before a scheduled call, after a no-show, or as a meeting reminder. About 1 in 5 SMS messages gets a reply, per lemlist’s internal data. And in-app calling lets you trigger a call automatically when a lead engages, so you’re catching them in the moment.

Yes, more channels sounds like more work. Fair. But here’s the thing: you swap some of those 4 to 9 email follow-ups for steps on other channels instead of piling extra touches on top. The total stays around 10 or 11 touchpoints, spread across the places your prospect actually checks.

SuperOffice data backs this up: social sellers create 45% more opportunities and are 51% more likely to hit quota. The key is running all these channels from one sequence. That’s what makes it manageable instead of chaotic.

So, you should be sending 4-9 points of contact per campaign, spaced apart by 2 to 5 days, with personalized messages that address your prospects’ pain points.

You can of course do this manually, but writing out every single email and following up at the appropriate time will take hours out of your week. Plus, you’ll have to be careful to keep track of your prospects and follow-ups so that nobody falls through the cracks.

Another option is to use a sales automation tool like lemlist. With lemlist, you can set up an automated multichannel sequence, including email, LinkedIn profile visits, messages, and connection requests, and manual tasks like cold calls and voice messages. There are text, image, and video variables to personalize to every prospect, and you can stop the sequence automatically when prospects reply.

Here’s how to set it up:

Step 1: Sign in to app.lemlist.com. If you don’t have an account, you can create one here for free.

Step 2: Create a new campaign, and pick the steps you would like to include. Edit the number of days to wait before sending each new step.

Step 3: Fill in the content of each step. You can use preset templates and variables to customize your message for each prospect.

Step 4: Import your contact list.

Step 5: Go to campaign settings to stop the sequence when a lead replies, books a meeting, or clicks on a link. This way they won’t continue to get follow-ups when they’ve already gotten back to you.

Step 6: Review your contacts and messages, and send!

You don’t have to build the whole sequence by hand anymore.

lemlist’s AI assistant, lemAgent, can take a plain-language goal and your ICP description and generate a full multichannel sequence. That means steps, timing, branching logic, and every message drafted for you. In most cases, it’s ready in under 15 minutes. If you’d rather describe the campaign than build it, let lemAgent build the sequence and start from there.

To be clear: nothing sends without your sign-off. You review, tweak, and launch. The AI does the setup; you stay in control.

Some reps worry this is the start of AI replacing them. I get it. But the data tells a different story. According to a 2024 Gartner survey of B2B sellers, those who effectively partner with AI tools are 3.7 times more likely to meet quota than those who do not. The keyword is “partner.” The AI handles the research, the sequencing, the first drafts, and the busywork around them. You handle the judgment calls and the closing.

If you’re still building every sequence step by step, you’re spending hours on setup that could go toward pipeline.

Here’s a quick reminder of what you should know about cold email follow-ups:

And if you’re looking for a tool that will help you book meetings with 17% of your leads, try lemlist for free.

How many cold email follow-ups should you send?
Between 4 and 9 follow-ups. Reply rates continue to climb with each additional follow-up, but they flatten after the ninth. Going beyond 9 also increases your spam risk.

How long should you wait between follow-ups?
Wait at least 2 days between your first and second email. Stretch to 4-day gaps through your fourth follow-up, then 5 or more days after that. A USC Viterbi study found that 90% of replies arrive within a day or two, so give prospects time before your next touch.

What total reply rate can follow-ups get you?
lemlist’s analysis of millions of campaigns shows a single email averages around 4.5% reply rate. A full sequence with up to 10 touches can reach as high as 22.37%.

Can you automate cold email follow-ups?
Yes. A tool like lemlist can send multichannel follow-ups on autopilot and stop automatically when a prospect replies, so you’re not spamming people who’ve already engaged.

Start a 14-day free trial or book a demo.