Week 7: Follow-Ups
Follow-ups as either new information or a second free cost.
5 April 2027
The reader’s math from last week doesn’t reset when a first email goes unanswered. It gets asked again. This lecture is about what a second email needs to contain to justify asking it a second time.
Before the lecture
This is just to get a quick understanding before the lecture. The examples and the rest are in the lecture, so it’s advisable you attend.
In brief#
This week’s failure is the costly follow-up: “just bumping this up” makes the reader pay the original cost of attention again, with none of the original content’s chance of being useful. A follow-up earns its place only by adding something the first email didn’t have, a new fact, a narrower ask, a deadline that’s now real. It matters because persistence isn’t free for the reader even when it’s free for the sender, so a follow- up with nothing new just spends the goodwill the first email built.
Outline#
- what a follow-up costs the reader that the first email didn’t
- new information vs. repeated urgency
- deciding whether to send a follow-up at all, or wait