How would you follow up? · Daily Email House

John Bejakovic

Feb 6 (edited) • Marketing Riddles

How would you follow up?

Hidden deep in a comment on another thread,

@Maliha M

reports on a potential partner who stopped responding.

(Full details of the interaction below.)

How would you follow up to get the guy talking again?

Think a bit and write your best take in the comments below.

Maybe we can help Maliha come up with a strategy she can test out and report on.

But even sooner than that...

A moment spent thinking now will pay you back if you ever want to find a list swap partner... an affiliate partner... somebody to sponsor your newsletter... somebody whose newsletter you can sponsor... a reader who can pay you $1k for an offer you're making etc.

People drop off. At all points. For all kinds of reasons.

Following up with them is a fundamental habit and skill.

Here are the details of the interaction Maliha has had so far:

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I left this message in a group recently:

"Would anyone like to "sponsor" my newsletter, but instead of paying me with money, you hop on a Zoom call with me, and teach one thing to my audience in a quick 15-20 minute presentation?

I will share this video in my tiny community... but I'll share your link (newsletter, lead magnet, or whatever you want) as a classified ad in my newsletter.

What you teach must be relevant to my readers, of course. (Marketers, bloggers, newsletter writers, copywriters, and creators in general.)

Let me know if anyone is curious!"

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To which, and to my astonishing surprise, my favorite humor writer chimed in (didn't even know he was in that group!!!), and said:

"I'm interested! I've been working on some ideas around “How to be funny” for exactly this kind of thing."

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I took it to DM and gave him some details of what I expect, to which he wrote... a week+ later:

"Hey Maliha, sorry for the delay on this. Sounds fun! I'd be happy to talk about easy ways/strategies to incorporate humor.

Let me know what you're thinking as far as schedule etc."

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To which I wrote back:

"Don't worry about it. As for schedule, I'm pretty flexible. Just give me a couple of days and times when you're free and I'll make it work."

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Crickets.

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Me a few days later:

"Hi Greg, checking in! Are you still up for this?"

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He responded quickly this time with:

"Hey Maliha, sorry to fall off the map! I got slammed by a bunch of projects all at once… definitely still down but it may be another week or two before I have the bandwidth again!"

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So I said,

"That's perfect, actually. Two others were interested in doing this and we scheduled for the next couple of weeks... so March is probably the best time for me, too If that would work for you... just let me know!"

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That was a week ago... so now I'm too shy to bother him again...

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