There’s much, much more to developing a strong, personal relationship with your customers than a good video chat session. A great video chat session will always include personalized communication aspects like using your customers’ first names, setting up action items and taking notes. However, a lot of the magic behind relationship building happens after you’ve finished interacting with your customer, when you send a follow-up email.

This powerful method of staying top of your customers’ minds doesn’t require a lot of effort, but the impact it provides goes a long way. Research shows that 91.5% of all emails are ignored, but that same study shows that just one follow-up email will increase the chances of getting a response by almost 65.8%. 

Sending out a follow-up email after you’ve finished your video chat session serves two main purposes. Firstly, it should summarize the main points discussed and include any action items relevant to you or your customer. This ensures that your next video chat session will start exactly from where you left off the previous one, with no time wasted reviewing previous points. Secondly, it displays a level of professionalism that keeps your brand’s service provision positively imprinted within the overall customer experience provided.

Tips N’ Tricks for Writing Effective Follow-up Emails

Perhaps the most important aspect of your follow-up email is your subject line. According to LinkedIn, longer subject lines get more responses and personalizing them can increase response rates by as much as 30.5%. Subject lines should grab your readers’ attention and generate a strong desire to open the email to read its content. Check out this list of highly effective subject lines compiled by HubSpot, who definitely have the data to determine what works and what doesn’t. 

Using our own data, we’ve managed to put together a few best practices that you should keep in mind whenever you're composing an after meeting follow-up email.

Keep your eye on the prize. Your follow-up emails should always have a clear goal. Like we mentioned above, this can be a summary of your meeting, the distribution of action items or it could be thanking the recipient for their time. Whatever your goal may be, make sure you keep it in mind when composing your email and spell out any expected actions very clearly. This will help you to better frame your content and increase the chances that your email will achieve its goal. Remember, if you're just writing up the follow-up email with no goal, it’s better to not send anything at all.

Personalize, personalize, personalize.  While crafting a generic follow-up email that can be blasted away after every meeting may sound like a good idea, it’s not. Personalization goes a long way, especially in a digital reality where individuals can receive hundreds of emails a day. Your best bet for engagement is to show real interest in the person you’re writing to by highlighting specific elements from your meeting. Try referring to the specific subject you discussed or mention a shared interest you discovered during the meeting. The important thing is to show that you care about the person you’re writing to.

Don’t waste their time. Business emails should always be short, concise and to the point. Any word that doesn’t support the end goal you’ve set out to achieve with your email should be eliminated. Do away with lengthy introductions, superfluous details and long-winded explanations and put all the important information at the beginning so that it’s the first thing that’s read. The shorter your email is the more likely it will be read and acted upon.

Follow-up quickly. Your follow-up email should always be sent promptly, while you’re still at the top of the customer’s mind. Do your best to send your follow-up within no more than 24 hours after the meeting has ended.

Copy-editing.  No matter how well-crafted your follow-up email may be, if it has punctuation, grammar and/or spelling errors it won’t leave a good impression. Review your email, at least once or twice, so that it’s error-free. 

Follow-up emails are a great habit to form. They help you display professionalism and ensure that any and all action items have been distributed to the relevant parties. Start sending follow-up emails after your live video chat meetings to deliver an optimal customer experience that will keep your customers coming back for more.