Rémi Kokabi | Updated September 4, 2026 | 9 min read
Rémi Kokabi | Updated September 4, 2026 | 9 min read
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4 Follow-Up Email Templates That Actually Book Meetings (76% Open Rate on Template #1)
So, you’ve sent your initial email. Nobody scheduled a demo or interview with you.
That’s normal. I’ve seen it hundreds of times across lemlist campaigns. The first email opens the door. The follow-up walks through it.
Whether your goal is booking a demo or scheduling an interview, these four follow-up email templates will help. This guide is for sales, recruiting, and BD teams building multichannel follow-up sequences to schedule meetings. If you’re a candidate following up after your own job interview, this isn’t the right resource for you.
I’ll walk you through the exact templates, the stats behind them, and how to write follow-ups that get replies instead of silence.
What are follow-ups and why are they important?
Follow-ups are the emails you send to your prospects after the initial email.
Not everyone will answer your initial email. That’s completely okay. Maybe they didn’t have time, or never saw the email. All circumstances are possible and highly probable.
Here’s what the data actually shows: according to the Optifai Sales Ops Benchmark (939 companies, Q2 2025–Q1 2026), the first follow-up gets a 21% response rate, the second 17%, the third 13%, and the fourth and beyond drops to 9% . The pattern is clear: every follow-up still pulls replies, just fewer of them.
To improve reply rates for cold email campaigns, we’ve got follow-ups. As proof of this, here’s the average reply rates you can get per follow-up email:
This data came from our analysis of millions of lemlist cold email campaigns.
Of course, this depends on your prospect list, initial sales email templates, and the follow-up email templates you’re sending. But you get the point. The percentage holds across campaigns.
Based on your initial cold email and goal, there are various types of follow-up email templates you can send.
The timing angle most teams miss: instead of guessing when to follow up, use intent data to trigger your follow-ups at the right moment. lemlist’s Intent Signals track job changes, LinkedIn engagement, and website revisits so you can send your second or third touch when a prospect is actually paying attention, not on an arbitrary schedule. That’s the difference between a follow-up that interrupts and one that arrives right on time.
In this article, we’re going to look at four follow-up email templates for scheduling an interview or demo.
1. Schedule a meeting for a role
This template achieved a 76% open rate and a 15% reply rate, based on a lemlist campaign run by a recruiting agency in early 2025.
This template is a perfect example for recruiting agencies trying to get a meeting with a hiring professional. The sequence starts by adding value in the initial and second emails, then goes in for the meeting.
This template works well for recruitment professionals and headhunters offering their services to growing companies.
After the initial email, we’re going to include two follow-ups.
In the first follow-up, we’ll be adding even more value than in the initial email.
The link is added separately which will make it stand out even more.
Forgot to add the link to the Notion document, you have all the info here: {{profile_notion_link}}
After this, we go in for the big ask: the meeting.
We’ve offered value, and now we just want the lead to guide us toward their specific needs.
What do you think of the profile?
Would you be against briefing me about the role?
{{signature}}
Why do I like this follow-up email template for scheduling an interview?
- It’s personalized.
- This email centers the prospect’s needs, not your pitch. The main purpose is to build a relationship with your prospect and to bring them value.
- Follow-ups do not guilt the lead into responding.
Now a couple of notes about this follow-up email template for scheduling an interview:
- When creating follow-up emails in lemlist, just leave the subject line empty and it will be the same as in the previous email.
- You don’t actually need to create videos for everyone 🙂 lemlist’s AI-powered personalization lets you record one video and automatically customize the visual layers for each prospect at scale.
2. You’re the expert
This sequence achieved a 72% open rate and a 16% reply rate, based on a lemlist campaign run by a SaaS sales team in 2025.
This follow-up email template for scheduling an interview is perfect for sales consultants and business development professionals.
The best part is that it works if you have the leads’ email and if you only have their LinkedIn profiles.
To make the email feel unique, include a hyper-personalized video that references your target. This will make the email stand out in any inbox.
In the initial email you present a pain point, and a direct solution.
In the first follow-up, add exclusive and additional value. Once you’ve proved you have resources to back up your proposal, you can offer a meeting to discuss further.
Didn’t include it in the playbook but you can also add video personalization like this:
This is the template a hiring agency is using:
Another video thumbnail a SaaS I know is using (most relevant for you)
In similar campaigns, teams using hyper-personalized video book meetings with a meaningful share of their prospects.
I can free up some time to show you how to set up a picture like this to match the SaaS you sell.
Down to try?
Take care, {{signature}}
3. After a website revisit
This template is built for the moment a prospect revisits your website or pricing page after going quiet. It’s one of the highest-converting follow-up triggers I’ve seen, because the timing is based on real intent, not a calendar reminder.
lemlist’s Intent Signals can detect when a lead returns to your site, so you’re reaching out while their interest is live.
Hey {{firstName}},
Noticed you were checking out [specific page] again. Figured it might be worth picking up where we left off.
Happy to walk you through [specific benefit relevant to their role] in 15 minutes. Would {{day}} or {{day}} work?
{{signature}}
Why this works:
- You’re referencing real behavior, not guessing at interest.
- The prospect already did the hard work of coming back. Your job is just to make the next step easy.
- The short time ask (15 minutes) lowers commitment friction.
When you combine intent-based triggers with personalized follow-ups, the conversion math changes fast. According to Infraforge (via Martal Group’s 2026 B2B Cold Email Statistics), campaigns with advanced personalization see reply rates of up to 18%, compared to roughly 9% for generic templates (B2B Cold Email Statistics 2026: Benchmarks & What Works Now). That gap widens even further when you add behavioral timing.
4. After an objection
Sometimes the prospect replies but says “not now,” “too expensive,” or “we’re already using something.” Most reps treat that as a dead end. It isn’t. An objection is the beginning of a real conversation, if your follow-up acknowledges it honestly.
Hey {{firstName}},
Totally get it. {{Objection acknowledgement, e.g., “Switching tools mid-quarter is a headache.”}}.
One thing I didn’t mention: [specific proof point or case study relevant to their objection]. It might change the math a bit.
Would it make sense to revisit this in {{timeframe}}? Either way, no hard feelings.
{{signature}}
Why this works:
- You validate their concern instead of bulldozing past it. That builds trust.
- You introduce one new piece of evidence, not a five-paragraph essay restating your pitch.
- You give them a graceful exit, which, paradoxically, makes them more likely to stay in the conversation.
This template works especially well as a third or fourth touch in a sequence. By that point you’ve already added value, and the objection follow-up shows you’re listening, not just automating.
How to write a follow-up that actually books the meeting
Templates are a starting point. Copying them word-for-word won’t get you results. Here’s what I’ve learned from watching thousands of lemlist campaigns:
1. Know exactly what you’re offering before you write a word. “Let’s hop on a quick call” is not an offer. “I’ll show you how [Company X] cut their hiring time by 40% using this approach” is an offer. The more concrete your meeting pitch, the higher your conversion.
2. Every follow-up should add new value. If your second email is just “bumping this to the top of your inbox,” you’ve wasted a touch. Share a resource, a data point, a case study, a relevant insight. Each email should give the prospect a reason to engage that’s independent of the previous one.
3. Match your timing to intent signals, not arbitrary schedules. The old playbook says “follow up on Day 3, Day 7, Day 14.” That’s better than nothing. But the best-performing teams I’ve seen time their follow-ups to actual prospect behavior: a LinkedIn profile visit, a website return, a job change. lemlist’s Intent Signals let you automate this so your follow-ups land when the prospect’s attention is already on you.
4. Keep it short. Two to four sentences per follow-up. No walls of text. Your prospect scans emails in seconds. If they can’t get your point in one glance, they’ll archive it.
5. Use personalized visuals to stand out. A custom image or video thumbnail does something plain text can’t: it stops the scroll. Personalized visuals show effort, build familiarity, and give your email a visual anchor that makes it memorable. lemlist lets you personalize at scale with dynamic image and video layers, so you’re not manually creating assets for every prospect.
Over to you
Follow-up email templates are an important part of every cold outreach strategy, especially if your end goal is to schedule interviews or demos with your prospects.
If you’re selling tools or digital services, you will need follow-up emails. They will improve your reply rate and help you schedule more demos and interviews each month.
The four templates above give you a real foundation. But the real advantage comes from personalizing them, timing them with intent data, and sending them through a system that handles the repetitive work for you.
lemlist has been rated 4.6 stars by 1,424 verified reviews on G2 (lemlist Products | Read 1424 Reviews on G2). The templates in this article are live campaigns you can duplicate and launch in minutes.
Start your 14-day free trial with lemlist, no credit card required, and start booking meetings this week.
Hi there, I’m Rémi, co-founder of the GTM Club powered by lemlist & Claap. If you believe Go-To-Market is the new moat in this AI-era, you should apply: https://www.thegtmclub.com/
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