One email is leavingmost of your replies on the table.
The majority of positive replies to a cold sequence land on emails two through four, not the first send. This planner takes your opener's reply rate and projects what a full cadence actually returns: total reply rate, the uplift over sending once, sequence length in days, and the extra replies you'd win per 1,000 prospects.
Your numbers
Replies you get from email 1 alone, as a percent of prospects.
How many emails come after the opener. Three to five is the typical sweet spot.
Each follow-up earns this share of the reply rate the step before it did. 60% is a sane default.
Wait between each email. 2 to 4 business days keeps you present without nagging.
The verdict
Total reply rate
6.5%
Uplift vs single
2.18×
Replies per 1,000
65
vs 30 from the opener alone.
Sequence length
9
3 follow-ups, 3 days apart.
Reply rate by step
Each touch earns 60% of the step before it. The replies decay, but they almost never hit zero — which is why the cadence still stacks.
Uplift over a single send
Reverse-solve · add more follow-ups
New total reply rate
7.2%
Extra replies / 1,000
6.2
Going from 3 to 5 follow-ups takes your total reply rate from 6.53% to 7.15% — about 6 more replies per 1,000 prospects, over a 15-day sequence. The earlier touches you add are worth the most; the curve flattens as decay compounds.
Sensitivity · where the curve flattens
What each follow-up is worth
| Follow-ups | Total reply rate | Uplift | Replies / 1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 + 1 | 4.80% | 1.60× | 48 |
| 1 + 2 | 5.88% | 1.96× | 59 |
| 1 + 3 | 6.53% | 2.18× | 65 |
| 1 + 4 | 6.92% | 2.31× | 69 |
| 1 + 5 | 7.15% | 2.38× | 72 |
| 1 + 6 | 7.29% | 2.43× | 73 |
| 1 + 7 | 7.37% | 2.46× | 74 |
At 60% decay, each added touch returns less than the last — but more than nothing. Watch the uplift column: the jump from 1 to 3 follow-ups is large, the jump from 6 to 7 is marginal. That's where you stop.
Your move
I'll find the replies your cadence is currently dropping.
3 follow-ups lift cold replies from 3.0% to 6.5% — a 2.18× uplift, 65 replies per 1,000 prospects.
Send me your current sequence and your reply numbers. I'll tell you where the curve is leaking — a weak opener, follow-ups that just bump, spacing that's gone cold — and rewrite the touches that are worth rewriting. Free, and the cadence is yours whether or not we work together.
Plain English
The opener gets the credit. The follow-ups get the replies.
A follow-up cadence is the planned series of touches you send after your first email goes unanswered. Each one revives a dead thread, catches a different moment in the prospect's week, and signals that you're a real operator and not a one-shot blast. Skip them and you're walking away from the part of the sequence that does most of the work.
Every additional touch earns less than the one before it, the easy yeses already replied, but it almost never earns zero. So the cadence stacks. A 3% opener that decays 40% per step still compounds into a meaningfully higher total reply rate across four or five touches. The math here models exactly that decline and adds it up for you.
This planner takes four numbers you can estimate, your opener's reply rate, how many follow-ups you'll send, how fast replies decay per step, and your spacing, and returns the total sequence reply rate, the uplift over sending once, how many calendar days the cadence runs, and the extra replies you'd capture per 1,000 prospects. It's the difference between guessing how many emails to send and knowing what each one is worth.
The formula
Step n reply = first × decayⁿ · Total reply = first × (1 − decay^(steps+1)) ÷ (1 − decay)
A 3% opener with 3 follow-ups at 60% decay returns 3% + 1.8% + 1.08% + 0.65% = 6.53% total reply rate — a 2.18× uplift over sending once. Across 1,000 prospects that's 65 replies instead of 30: 35 extra conversations from the same list, just by following up.
Your projected reply rate is thin. Where's the fix?
Opener reply rate under ~1%.
More follow-ups won't save a broken opener — they multiply a tiny base. Fix targeting and the first email's relevance before you add touches. The whole cadence is built on that first number.
Decay above ~80% per step.
That's unusually flat — either your follow-ups are genuinely excellent or you're overestimating. If it's real, lean into more touches; the curve barely drops, so each one still pays. If it's a guess, dial it toward 50–65%.
Big uplift but you only send 1–2 touches.
You're capturing the steepest part of the curve and stopping early. Adding a third and fourth touch is almost always the highest-ROI change you can make to an outbound motion.
Sequence runs longer than ~3 weeks.
Wide spacing lets intent go cold and your name fade. Tighten to 2–4 business days between touches so the cadence stays in working memory while the problem you solve is still top of mind.
How to make every follow-up earn its send
01Add value, never just 'bump'
A naked 'just following up' is the weakest touch you can send. Each email should carry a fresh angle, proof point, or resource — a reason to reply that the last one didn't give.
02Front-load your best follow-ups
Replies decay fastest after the opener, so emails two and three do the heavy lifting. Put your strongest angle and hardest proof there, not in a throwaway final nudge.
03Vary the angle, not just the words
Hit a different pain, persona problem, or use case each touch. Re-sending the same pitch louder doesn't lift decay — a genuinely new reason to care does.
04Keep spacing tight and human
Two to four business days keeps you present without nagging. Long gaps let the thread go cold; same-day double-taps read as desperate.
05Make the ask shrink as you go
If a call is a no, ask for a forward, a quick reaction, or the right person. A smaller ask late in the cadence converts the on-the-fence prospect who won't book yet.
06Write a real breakup email
The final touch — 'I'll close the loop' — routinely outperforms the middle ones. Loss aversion is a feature; give it a clean, low-pressure last send.
07Reply in-thread when you can
Threading your follow-ups onto the original keeps context and lifts deliverability versus firing fresh emails into a cold inbox.
08Cap it before you become noise
Past five or six touches with no signal, the marginal reply is tiny and the brand cost is real. Move non-responders to a long-cycle nurture instead of grinding the same cadence.
The vocabulary
- Cadence
- The planned sequence of outbound touches — opener plus follow-ups — and the spacing between them.
- Reply decay
- The share of the prior step's reply rate that each follow-up earns. Replies fall off but rarely hit zero, so the cadence still compounds.
- Total reply rate
- The cumulative share of prospects who reply across the whole sequence, not just the opener.
- Uplift vs single
- Total sequence reply rate divided by the opener's reply rate — how many times more replies the full cadence wins versus sending once.
- Sequence length
- Calendar days from the first email to the last follow-up: spacing × number of follow-ups.
- Breakup email
- The final, low-pressure touch that signals you're closing the loop. Often the second-best performer in a cadence.
Follow-up questions, straight answers
Three to five follow-ups (so four to six total emails) is the range most strong outbound lands in. Positive replies cluster on emails two through four, so stopping after the opener leaves the bulk of them uncaptured — but past five or six touches the marginal reply shrinks while the brand cost climbs. Use this planner to see where your own decay curve flattens.
Keep going
A calculator tells you what. A call tells you what to do about it.
Send me the account behind these numbers. I'll tell you straight where the money's leaking and what I'd fix first — free, and you keep it whether you hire me or not.