In short
- Check your first email arrived before you chase it: look for a bounce or an out-of-office reply.
- Wait about a week, and send one follow-up, not a sequence.
- Each email should give the reader something new, not the first email again.
- Reply in the same thread so they see your first email underneath, and only use "Re:" on a real reply.
- The Spam Act applies to every follow-up: consent, your business details and an unsubscribe you honour within 5 working days.
What no reply usually means
When another business doesn't answer your first email it's tempting to read it as a no, but usually the reason is more ordinary. Most of the time the person was flat out that week and meant to get back to you. A shared enquiries inbox often has nobody in charge of it, so a polite email can sit there for days. Some emails land in junk, and some arrive at exactly the wrong time of year. Now and then it really is a no and they didn't feel like saying so.
You can't tell which of these happened, so a follow-up has to work in every case. It should make sense to someone who never saw the first email and it shouldn't make a busy person feel told off. It should also be easy to answer with a no. Our follow-up email template has wording you can copy, and this guide is about the judgement around it. If the business asked you for a quote and then went quiet, that's a different conversation and following up a quote covers it.
Check the first email before you chase it
Spend two minutes making sure the first email had a fair chance. Look in your inbox for a bounce message, because a mistyped address or a closed mailbox means nobody has read anything. Check that you used the address the business publishes on its own website and not one you guessed from the pattern of other staff addresses.
If you got an out-of-office reply, read it properly. It might say the person is away until the 14th, or that they've left and someone else now looks after suppliers, and either of those changes what you do next. If emails to other businesses are going unanswered as well, the problem may be delivery and not your wording. Our guide on why business emails go to junk covers what to check.
How long to wait
About a week suits most first contacts. Two or three days reads as pushy to someone who hasn't had time to think about your email yet. Leave it a month and they've forgotten it, so the follow-up has to do all the work over again.
Adjust that week to what you know about their work. If an out-of-office says they're back on Monday, give them a few days to clear the pile and write midweek. A school business manager may not be reading email in the school holidays, so wait until term is back. If your first email gave a reason tied to a date (a new function room opening in March, say, or a building's AGM coming up), the follow-up needs to arrive well before that date or it has lost its reason for being sent.
How many follow-ups is reasonable
One is enough for a first contact. A single follow-up about a week later is ordinary business manners, because busy people do miss things. A third and fourth email in the same fortnight looks like a sequence somebody set up and forgot about, and it gives the reader a reason to report you as spam instead of simply ignoring you.
The exception is when they've given you a reason to write again. An out-of-office saying the person is back on the 14th is one. A reply that says "try us again after the end of financial year" is another, as long as you then write when they said and not before.
Months later you can approach the same business again, but only if something has genuinely changed. That later email is a fresh introduction with its own subject line, not a third follow-up, and it has to stand on its own.
Say something different each time
Each email should give the reader something they didn't have before. Sending the first email again with "just bumping this up" on top tells them nothing new, so it tends to get the same answer as the first one.
| When | What's new in it | |
|---|---|---|
| First email | Day one | Who you are, why you're writing to them, one reason to talk and one small ask |
| Follow-up | About a week later | One new fact or a smaller ask: a job nearby, a day you're already in their suburb, a document they can file, or a question about who else to write to |
| Later approach | A few months on, only if something changed | The change itself: a new service, a new licence, work for a business like theirs, or a new person in the role |
A smaller ask is often the most useful change. Say a locksmith wrote to a property manager offering to look after rekeying between tenants. The follow-up doesn't need to repeat that pitch. It can simply ask whether it would help to have a licence and insurance on file for the next lock change, which is a question a busy person can answer in a word.
Leave out the things that make a follow-up feel like a telling-off. "Did you get my email?", "I haven't heard back" and "I'm sure you're very busy" all put the reader in the wrong. A deadline that isn't real, like a price that supposedly ends Friday, is worse, because they'll find out it wasn't true.
Reply in the same thread
Send the follow-up as a reply to your own first email. Find it in your sent folder, press Reply, check the To line still shows the person you wrote to and leave the subject as your email program sets it. Write your short note above the quoted first email and don't strip that out, because it's what lets the reader see what you're following up without searching for it. Most email programs also group the two messages together, so your follow-up arrives with its context.
Don't rename the subject to "Second attempt" or "Following up". The "Re:" your email program adds is honest here because this really is a reply to an email you sent. Google's sender guidelines ask senders not to start a subject with "Re:" or "Fwd:" unless the message is an actual reply or forward, which is why the later approach months on starts a new email with a plain subject of its own. Our guide to subject lines for business outreach goes through writing one.
If you think you wrote to the wrong person, ask in the follow-up who you should be talking to. Copying in the owner or a manager over the head of the person you first wrote to rarely goes down well.
The Spam Act still applies to every follow-up
A follow-up that mentions your services is a commercial electronic message under the Spam Act 2003, exactly like the first email. Section 6 of the Act decides that from the message's content and the way it is presented, so calling it a quick check-in doesn't change anything. Our guide on whether cold emailing is legal in Australia covers the rules in full. Here's how they play out when you follow up.
Consent. For most first contacts with a business, consent is inferred under clause 4 of Schedule 2 from an address the business has conspicuously published. That only works while nothing beside the address says they don't want unsolicited commercial messages and your email is relevant to their work. Before a later approach months on, look at their website again, and if the address has gone or a "no marketing" note has appeared, don't rely on it.
Who you are. Section 17 requires every commercial message to identify who authorised it and how to contact them, with details likely to stay valid for at least 30 days. ACMA's guidance asks for your correct legal business name, or your name and ABN. Put your signature in the follow-up itself and don't count on the quoted first email to do that job.
A way to stop. Section 18 requires every commercial message to include a working way to unsubscribe, and ACMA says a request must be honoured within 5 working days. Clause 6 of Schedule 2 says a withdrawal takes effect at the end of 5 business days, so the follow-up needs your unsubscribe line too. A reply like "we're happy with who we've got, please don't email again" is a request to stop however it's worded, so act on it the same day.
Two more habits matter. Silence is not a withdrawal of consent, but it isn't a reason to keep writing either. And once someone has asked to stop, don't send a "sorry to see you go" or "are you sure?" email, because ACMA warns that messages trying to win back people who have withdrawn consent may breach the spam rules.
When to stop
Most of the time the decision is easy once you know which situation you're in.
- No answer to the follow-up. Stop for now. Note the business and a month to try again, and write then only if you have something new to say.
- "Not right now". Thank them in a line and ask whether you can check back in a few months. Write then only if they said yes.
- "No thanks". Send one friendly line back and leave it there.
- A request to stop. Take them off your list that day and keep the address on a do-not-contact list so it doesn't get emailed again by accident.
- A bounce or a person who has left. Go back to the business's website to find who now handles it, and don't guess an address.
A simple sheet keeps all of this straight: the business, the address, where you found it, the date of each email, the outcome and a try-again month. It stops you emailing someone twice and it doubles as your record of where each address was published. If you'd rather not run that sheet yourself, Curlew writes to businesses in your name, answers the replies and stops the moment a business asks, and how it works explains the rest.
- Spam Act 2003 (Federal Register of Legislation, compilation of 10 March 2016): ss 6, 17, 18 and Schedule 2 cls 4 and 6
- ACMA: Avoid sending spam (consent, identifying the sender, unsubscribe within 5 working days; updated 29 November 2024)
- ACMA: Telemarketing and e-marketing, common issues and mistakes (’re-subscribe’ messages; updated 15 December 2025)
- ACMA: Dealing with telemarketing (calling hours and caller rules; updated 2 September 2026)
- Google: Email sender guidelines (Re: and Fwd: only on actual replies or forwards)