Prompt · Follow-up
Follow-up after an event or webinar
Deliver what was promised, and give the interested ones one next step.
- Email type
- Follow-up
- Business
- SaaS
- Tone
- Friendly
- Length
- 90-130 words
The follow-up email prompt
Write a plain-text follow-up to [ATTENDED OR NOT] for [THE EVENT]. Words only — no HTML, no layout notes. Rules: - 90 to 130 words. - First line delivers [WHAT WAS PROMISED], with the link. That is what the email is for, and burying it under a thank-you is why these get closed unread. - Adjust the opening to [ATTENDED OR NOT]. Someone who came should not be told what they missed; someone who did not should not be thanked for coming. Getting this wrong is the most visible way an automated follow-up shows its seams. - State [THE ONE IDEA] in a sentence or two — the thing worth remembering. An attendee who never opens the recording should still get value from this email. - Give [THE NEXT STEP] once, at the end, as an ordinary sentence with the link inside it. If there is no genuine next step, leave it out rather than inventing one. - Do not include a feedback survey and a resource link and a sales call in the same email. Pick one. - Never invent a number, statistic, attendance figure or quote from the session. Where a figure belongs and I have not supplied it, leave a bracketed placeholder. - No exclamation marks. No emoji. Sentence case. Write a subject line under 45 characters naming what is inside. Return subject, preheader, body, sign-off.
What to fill in first
[THE EVENT]- The name, exactly as attendees saw it.
[WHAT WAS PROMISED]- The recording, the slides, the template, the answer you owed someone. Lead with it.
[THE ONE IDEA]- The single thing worth remembering from the session, stated in a sentence.
[THE NEXT STEP]- What an interested attendee does now. One thing, and only if there is a real one.
[ATTENDED OR NOT]- Whether this version goes to people who came or people who registered and did not.
When to send it
Within a day, while they can still remember the session. Two versions, split on attendance — the split takes minutes to set up and is the difference between an email that reads as written for them and one that visibly was not.
What to change first
[ATTENDED OR NOT]. It is the cheapest personalisation available and the one most often skipped.
Telling someone who sat through the whole hour what they missed, or thanking a no-show for coming,
is the tell that nobody was really on the other end — and it undoes whatever goodwill the session
earned.
What good output looks like
Subject: The Outlook recording and slides
Preheader: Plus the one thing worth remembering if you never open it.
Here is the recording from Thursday, and the slides as a PDF.
If you only take one thing from it: almost every Outlook break comes from a width set as a CSS property rather than an HTML attribute. Fix that one pattern and most of the rest stops mattering.
Someone asked about VML buttons in dark mode and I did not have a good answer live. I do now, and it is in the last five minutes of the recording.
If you want us to look at your own templates, that is here.
The prompt writes the words. Bring them here and the studio builds the campaign — branded, dark-mode safe, and ready to import.
Generate your ownIn the studio
A model writes copy. It does not write email.
Production HTML that survives Outlook, dark mode and a Gmail clip is a different job from writing the words. Describe the send once and export it to Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign or MailerLite.