↻Prospecting with a rhythm

The interval that has proven itself:

• First mail → 5 to 7 days → 1st follow-up
• 1st follow-up → 10 to 14 days → 2nd follow-up
• After that: a break. At the earliest after three to six months, with a new reason.

Why these intervals: shorter feels pushy, longer and the connection is lost. And anyone who follows up two days after the first mail is saying: I am watching your inbox.

More important than the exact days is regularity. A campaign whose second stage comes three weeks late because nobody thought of it works worse than one with a different interval.

That is exactly what campaigns in stages are for: the interval is fixed, and Aurora Hive Sales keeps to it.

After three contacts without any reaction — first mail and two follow-ups.

This is not about politeness but about effectiveness: the likelihood of a reply drops sharply after the second follow-up, while the recipient’s annoyance rises. And annoyance is expensive: it ends in an unsubscribe, a complaint or a spam flag, and that harms all your future mails.

You must stop immediately:

• on an objection, in whatever form,
• on a clear refusal,
• on an out-of-office notice reporting that the person has left for good.

What you can do afterwards: put the contact into a “later” category and approach them in six months with a new reason. Not with the same mail.

Deal with them within one working day — otherwise the whole campaign has been for nothing.

The procedure for each reply:

1. Interest? → Reply immediately, suggest a meeting, set a follow-up.
2. “Later”? → Follow-up on the date mentioned, note with the exact wording.
3. Refusal? → Note, adjust the category. Do not argue.
4. Objection? → Set the opt-out, confirm briefly.
5. Out-of-office notice? → Follow-up on the return date.

Point 2 is the most valuable and the one most often left lying. A “get back to me in the autumn” is an invitation, and in three months nobody will remember it if there is no follow-up in place.

Plan the time in before you start. A campaign to 500 recipients creates work; anyone who does not have that time should send to 100.

With a follow-up at the very moment the reply arrives. Not in the evening, not on Friday.

What belongs in the follow-up:

• The date mentioned, not an approximate one. “In the autumn” becomes 15 September.
• A note with the exact wording. On the next call you can pick up from it: “You said in May that the autumn would suit you.”

This is the contact base that carries a sales operation. Cold contacts are expensive; someone who has said “later” themselves is warm — and in six months they are the best call you make that day.

If this list is empty for you although you run campaigns, it is not being maintained.

As many as you can follow through on. That is the only sensible limit.

As a calculation: at a reply rate of two to five per cent, 200 recipients produce four to ten replies. Each one costs ten to thirty minutes — writing a reply, a note, a follow-up, perhaps a phone call. That is two to five hours, spread over two weeks.

For most small businesses this means: 100 to 300 recipients per campaign, one every two to four weeks.

What does not work: 3,000 mails once a year. That produces sixty replies in one week, half of which are left lying, and a sender reputation that suffers from it.

For new sender addresses, the following also applies: start small and increase.

Tuesday to Thursday, in the morning is the usual advice, and it is roughly right.

More important are the times that do not work:

• Monday morning. That is when the weekend inbox is cleared, and anything unfamiliar gets thrown out.
• Friday afternoon. Gets pushed to Monday and cleared out there.
• School holidays and bridge days. Half the staff, full inboxes.
• December from the middle of the month. Anything that is not urgent gets pushed into the new year.

But: the timing is the most overrated factor. A good text on Friday afternoon clearly beats a bad one on Tuesday morning.

And note: Aurora Hive Sales sends with a time delay in small batches. The exact time cannot be controlled to the minute anyway.

Narrowly enough that you can write a concrete sentence to the recipients.

The touchstone: can you phrase a sentence that is true for everyone in this group and not for others? If so, it is an audience. If not, it is several.

What you can slice by:

• Industry. The most effective cut, because it makes the text concrete.
• Size. A business with 5 employees has different problems from one with 500.
• Location. If you work regionally, proximity is an argument.
• Occasion. A tender, a move, a new business.

What is not a good cut: “everyone who has an email address”. That is not an audience, that is a contact base.

Better four campaigns to 80 each than one to 320.

From four sources, in order of quality:

1. Your own mailbox. Everyone you have exchanged mails with in the last two years. These are warm contacts, and you already have them. Aurora Hive Sales brings them to light when you connect the mailbox.
2. Existing customers. The cheapest revenue comes from someone who has already bought.
3. Recommendations. Ask five satisfied customers for one name each.
4. Research. Time-consuming, cold, but feasible — with the legal restrictions on first contact.

What you should not do: buy an address list. The consent it claims can rarely be proven, and if in doubt, you are liable.

The first hundred contacts are almost always already there. You just have to enter them.

Differently from cold ones — and far more effectively.

What works with warm contacts:

• Picking up the thread. “Two years ago we talked about the hall in Meissen.” That is the sentence that sets a mail apart from an advertising mail.
• A reason, not an offer. A change in regulations, a completed project in their industry, a new service.
• Personal instead of bulk mail, where the contact base is small enough. Twenty mails written one by one beat two hundred automatic ones.

And the classic that is underrated: just call. With someone who knows you, the hurdle is low, and a phone call brings more information than ten mails.

The notes from earlier conversations are the capital here. Anyone who does not have them writes cold mails even to warm contacts.

Find one — there almost always is one, you just have to name it:

• Something you have completed that is relevant to the recipient.
• A change affecting their industry: regulations, funding, deadlines.
• A change on your side: new service, new location, new capacity.
• A change on their side: new management, a move, a tender, a contract in the newspaper.
• The season, where it plays a role.

What is not a reason: “We just wanted to get back in touch.” That is the reason why you are writing, not the reason why someone should read it.

If you really cannot think of anything, that is often a sign: perhaps now is not the moment, and in six weeks there will be one.

Briefly, kindly and without renegotiating.

What you do:

1. A note with the reason, if one has been given. That is the most valuable information a refusal provides.
2. Adjust the category, so that the person does not turn up in the same campaign again.
3. Write one line back. “Thank you for letting me know — do get in touch if anything changes.”

What you do not do: ask why, or follow up with a better offer. Both turn a polite refusal into an unsubscribe.

And looking ahead: collect the reasons. If the same one comes up three times — too expensive, too far away, wrong time — that tells you something about your offer or your audience, not about the recipient.

Calmly, quickly and without justifying yourself:

1. Set the opt-out immediately. Before replying.
2. Reply briefly. Apology, done, no further mails. Without explaining why you are in the right.
3. Check where the contact came from. If the legal basis is missing, it affects more than this one person.
4. Make a note of what happened.

What you do not do: explain the legal position. Someone who complains does not want a lecture — and a discussion turns a complaint into a formal warning letter (Abmahnung).

If a solicitor’s letter arrives, that is a different matter: then do not reply, but note the deadline and get legal advice.

By doing it small and regularly instead of big and rarely.

What works:

• A fixed slot. Two hours every two weeks, in the calendar, like a customer appointment.
• Small campaigns. 100 recipients you can follow through on, instead of 1,000 you cannot manage.
• Preparation separate from sending. Write texts on a quiet day, send on another.
• Follow-ups as the engine. Whoever works through them is prospecting without it feeling like it.

What does not work: prospecting when there is time. There never is.

And the realistic expectation: the first three campaigns bring little. That comes down to the contact base, the text and the sender reputation — all three get better if you keep going.

From a cold campaign to 200 recipients:

• 190 to 196 delivered.
• 2 to 10 replies, half of them refusals.
• 1 to 3 conversations.
• 0 to 1 order — with a wide spread.

That sounds like little, and it is. The value builds up over time: from the “later” contacts, from the recommendations, from the growing contact base.

What clearly improves the figures:

• Warm instead of cold contacts — a factor of 5 to 10.
• A narrower audience with a concrete text — a factor of 2 to 3.
• Consistent follow-through — the biggest lever of all.

Anyone who stops after the first campaign has paid for the effort and not collected the return.