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Dowdall selected Atlantic Exchange Company, LLC (AEC) to act as QI. During the course of the exchange, the taxpayer’s proceeds were stolen by AEC and Edward Okun, AEC’s sole member. The taxpayer’s loss was over $604,000. The taxpayer argued that his loss was caused by Dowdall’s legal malpractice, including:

• Failure to properly investigate AEC before selecting it as QI;
• Failure to confirm that AEC was sufficiently bonded before recommending AEC as the QI, and;
• Failure to confirm that the taxpayer’s exchange proceeds were deposited into an account on behalf of the taxpayer as required by the terms of the exchange agreement.

The Court determined that Dowdall did not adhere to their duty to perform sufficient due diligence in that they did not sufficiently investigate the QI prior to recommending the company to the taxpayer. Dowdall had represented that they were experts on the subject of 1031 tax-deferred exchanges.

Tax, legal, and financial advisors should realize the importance of performing sufficient due diligence before recommending a QI to facilitate a 1031 exchange on behalf of their clients.

Asset Preservation, Inc. (API), adheres to consistent and disciplined practices in handling exchanger funds, overseen by its parent company Stewart Title, a publicly-traded company (NYSE: STC).

For example, API’s parent company, Stewart, provides a “Letter of Assurance” guaranteeing the performance of API.

To understand the powerful protection a 1031 exchange offers, consider the following example:

• Assume an investor has $400,000 in gain and also $400,000 in net proceeds after closing. Assuming an investor with a $400,000 capital gain and incurs a tax liability of approximately $140,000 in combined taxes (depreciation recapture, federal capital gain tax, state capital gain tax, and net investment income tax) when the property is sold. Only $260,000 in net equity remains to reinvest in another property.
• Assuming a 25% down payment and taking on new financing for the purchase with a 75% loan-to-value ratio, the investor would only be able to purchase a $1,040,000 replacement property.
• If the same investor chose to exchange, however, he or she would be able to reinvest the entire gross equity of $400,000 in the purchase of $1,600,000 replacement property, assuming the same down payment and loan-to-value ratios.

As the above example demonstrates, tax-deferred exchanges allow investors to defer capital gain taxes as well as facilitate significant portfolio growth and increased return on investment.

In order to access the full potential of these benefits, it is crucial to have a comprehensive knowledge of the exchange process and the Section 1031 code. For instance, an accurate understanding of the key term like-kind – often mistakenly thought to mean the same exact types of property – can reveal possibilities that might have been dismissed or overlooked.

Asset Preservation, Inc. (API) is one of the best 1031 exchange companies and your resource to obtain accurate and thorough information about the entire exchange process.

Now that you know how important it is to follow up, and how long (give or take) you should wait before sending each email, let’s go through how to write the follow-up email itself.

1. Add Context

Try to jog your recipient’s memory by opening your email with a reference to a previous email or interaction. Even if your recipient draws a blank, they’re more likely to react positively to the follow-up if they’ve been reminded of the fact that they’ve heard from you before.

2. Add Value

Avoid lazy follow-ups – ones where you’re simply ‘touching base’ or ‘catching up’ – that don’t add anything other than one more email in their inbox. Provide value at each interaction. Make it worth their while to open, click, and respond.

3. Explain Why You’re Emailing

Go on to explain the reason for your follow-up email, in a manner that’s both direct and concise. Focus on them here. Remove ‘I’ statements from your text. They honestly don’t care much about you or what you think or believe.

4. Include a Call-to-Action

Make it easy for the recipient to respond. A lot of marketers and sales personnel make the mistake of leaving it vague and ambiguous. Make your call-to-action crystal-clear and hard to resist. What exactly do you want them to do? Tell them.

5. Close Your Email

Wrap up in a way that feels natural to you and is sympathetic to your interactions with the recipient so far.

While I have a few suggestions below, this part is really quite personal – as above, wrap up however you feel comfortable.

• Let me know what you think! [Your name]
• Let me know if you have any questions. [Your name]
• Speak soon? [Your name]
• I look forward to hearing from you! [Your name]

Let me walk you step-by-step through setting up your email marketing drip sequence.

Step 1: Distinguish your target group

Drip email campaigns are about delivering the right message to the right audience.

For that, the first step is to determine who you are targeting with your drip campaign. Your target group can be:

• Blog subscribers
• First-purchase customers
• Lead magnet downloaders
• App downloaders
• Trial users, etc.

Step 2: Decide on your campaign’s objective

Having a clear objective is an essential step to any marketing strategy, email marketing drip campaigns are no exception.

You drip campaign objective can be:

• Customer upsell or cross-sell
• User onboarding
• Lead nurturing
• Increase free to paid conversion
• Improve customer experience
• Build a sales pitch

Step 3: Set up your trigger

You can create personalized and automated email drip campaigns that can get triggered when a contact:

• Gets a tag
• Gets added to a list
• Submits a form on your website, or
• Clicks a link in an email
• Etc.

Step 4: Create your emails

Now that you’ve triggered your drip emails when to be sent, you have to craft your emails’ content and set up your workflow.

Step 5: Monitor your drip campaigns performance and optimize it

It’s true that your automated email drip campaign is on autopilot but that never means that you set it once and you completely forget about it.

An email drip campaign is a triggered sequence of automated emails sent on a predefined schedule to targeted email subscribers to achieve a specific result.

The automated and triggered email campaign enables you to personalize messages to your subscribers on a large scale, based on an action.

Let’s say a website visitor fills a contact form to receive a free PDF from you. Once they click on submit, a personalized automated email with the promised document is sent to the subscriber.

But you don’t want the relationship with your contact to end there. After the first email, you’d want to introduce yourself or your business, send another email related to the same topic the subscriber is interested in, invite the contact to sign up for your business or buy a product.

Each time a drip email is sent out, it comes from a queued list of pre-written emails, so you don’t have to sit on your desk and write an email for every new contact.

Even though these are automated emails, they can be personalized with your contacts’ name, company info, customer behavior, and more.

Think of drip campaign as linear email sequence, where you send the personalized pre-written set of messages to leads, customers or prospects over time.

• Really niche until it hurts. Don’t just find potential buyers, but find out who your ideal buyers are and look for leads who match that profile
• Instead of the timid options, just start out with the questions at hand.
• Good templates along with personalization are also a necessary combination to avoid email mistakes.
• Cut out all of the fluff. Take away everything you can that doesn’t add clarity. Figure out what you want the lead to do and only include words that make that most likely.
• Software goes a long way toward reading a lead’s inbox.
• Templates are still helpful, but be much more personal.
• Many people play the violin well, but there is only one Lindsey Stirling. Her entertainment and skill far surpass playing beautiful music.
• Try to stand out via humor or personalization. Just be purely valuable to your lead without asking for anything (at first)
• Always be testing something. Make a list of email split tests (we’ve got over 50 for you right here) and start doing them one at a time. Double down on what works and forget what doesn’t.

Email Mistake 1: Playing to the Wrong Crowd

No matter how beautiful an orchestra plays, there are many people who just don’t care for it. And others still who like it, but don’t LOVE it. The same is true with your products/services. The skills that you offer will speak better to some target markets than others.

Email Mistake 2: “Just Checking In”

Don’t say this in your emails. Follow-up emails — Good. Passive language — Bad. In addition to this, avoid things like “following up”.

Email Mistake 3: Not Using Email Templates

Playing a song without sheet music leaves too much to improvisation. Sending hundreds of emails without a well-thought-out template for the bulk of your copy could leave your emails sounding like you made it up as you went along.

Email Mistake 4: Not Tuning Your Email

Instruments that aren’t properly tuned can be either flat or sharp. Too flat and the music sounds dull. Too sharp and it’s offensive to the listener. Emails (not surprisingly) are the same.

Email Mistake 5: Read the Audience

Each piece of music an orchestra plays tells a story. So does the entire concert. Conductors may re-arrange the music based on the average crowds’ reaction. All of this is to entice a maximum response. 

Email Mistake 6: Being Afraid to Improvise

Composers write music, but it can be interpreted in different ways. Sticking with the template alone can have lackluster results. If you only send a couple hundred emails a month, a 2% conversation rate is only 4 people. 

Email Mistake 7: You’re Not Entertaining

If you’re on a sales call, you’re likely doing something to build rapport. Mentioning the sites/weather where the lead is at, asking questions that are “off topic”, or even being funny.

Email Mistake 8: Failure to Experiment

Sending the same email for long periods of time will diminish your results over time. Tactics change, roles change, and even your products/services change. Sending the same email is never a good idea, even if everything remains the same.

1) Relevance

The pitch was simple. Aware that I had both shared and professed my admiration for his link strategy, The Skyscraper Technique, Dean thought it would be worthwhile to let me know that he had a new, related case study coming out.

2) Timing

Many people undervalue the benefits of an aptly timed pitch. This is because timing is very difficult to scale, and you can’t force it whenever you want. Some opportunities just present themselves at the perfect time, and if you can capitalize on them, it will greatly increase your chances of success.

3) Creativity

I recently read an article by Hupport that shared one of the simplest and most creative strategies for outreach I’ve read this year. 

Here’s what you do:

Subscribe to the newsletter for the person/company you want to connect with.

Reply to the first email they send.

That’s it

4) Credibility

When your pitch asks someone to expose their audience to your brand, you want to make sure you build in a lot of social proof. This is particularly important if you’re looking for:

A guest post

A product review

An affiliate relationship

5) Personalization

Of all the five elements, I imagine personalization is the one you could have guessed. After all, every outreach script you’ve seen so far has some degree of personalization — some more than others.

Each template covers a specific part of the customer follow-up process, so you can choose the templates that best fit the needs of your business.

1. The ‘How Did We Do?’ follow-up email

Each time a customer contacts your support team, they expect a response.

This template is designed to be sent to follow up with someone after they’ve contacted customer service and to make sure that they’re entirely satisfied.

2. The ‘Survey’ follow-up email

A ratings scale is a great way to get high volume responses, but if you’re looking for more detailed feedback, you can include a link to a survey within the follow up email.

3. The ‘Just Checking In’ follow-up email

This purpose of this email is to delight and surprise your customers.

This template is a great way to build a longer-term relationship. Best of all, it shows them that you care.

Sending this email from a person will help the customer feel appreciated and listened to, which in turn is more likely to lead to a response.

4. The ‘Anything else?’ follow-up email

It’s common to solve an issue, but not hear back from the customer.

This email should also state what will happen to their issue if the email is not responded to within a specific period.

5. The “Join us” follow-up email

One of our loyal readers, Lorie, left a comment asking me how she can follow up with a customer who has signed up to the freemium version of their product but has not yet subscribed to a paid plan.

To increase the likelihood of converting them into a paying customer, I would segment this follow up email even further and send it based on active/ engaged users.

6. (and 7.) The “Thank you” follow-up email(s) from Apple

Apple is renowned for being a customer service leader (scoring 93 out of a score from 100).

So, when I reached out to their customer service team recently I had high expectations.

Conclusion

Use these 7 follow up emails for inspiration:

1. The “How did we do” email
2. The “Survey” email
3. The “Just checking in” email
4. The “Anything else?” email
5. The “Join us” email
6. The “Thank you” email
7. The “Thank you again” email

These different types of emails have been created for specific points in the customer journey.

Best of all, using these follow up templates will not only help you keep your existing customers happy, but it’s a great way to stand out against the competition and generate business from potential customers.

ContactMonkey is your ultimate internal comms and sales email tracking solution.

When it comes to measuring internal communications and internal emails ContactMonkey is the only solution that enables you to measure individual employee email engagement and send beautiful responsive HTML internal emails from Outlook to your Outlook distribution lists.

Our simple to use internal email solution plugs into your existing Outlook, enabling you to create, send, track, and measure all of your employee emails. What’s more, using dashboard analytics you can measure engagement levels without having to leave Outlook.

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