Everyone has sent a message that went quiet. The awkward part is not the silence, it is the follow-up. Get it wrong and you sound impatient, or worse, like you are keeping score. Get it right and the other person barely notices they are being chased at all, they just reply. The formula: restate the ask in one line, skip the tired openers, and end on a question they can answer in one word.
Start from good faith, not suspicion
The person you are chasing is almost never ignoring you on purpose. They are busy, their inbox has four hundred unread messages, or your message landed at a bad moment and slid down the list. A good chase message reads as though you already know this. It does not hint that they are being rude, and it does not apologise for existing either. It simply assumes they meant to reply and have not gotten to it yet.
Restate the ask, do not make them dig for it
The single biggest favour you can do for a busy person is save them the trip back up the thread. If your follow-up just says “any update?”, they have to go find the original message to remember what you even asked. Instead, restate the ask in one short line as part of the follow-up itself. This does two things: it reminds them instantly, and it signals that you are not going to make this a whole production.
Retire the three tired opening lines
“Just circling back”, “per my last email”, and “just following up” have become so overused that they now read as mildly passive aggressive, even when you do not mean them that way. The fix is not to avoid the idea of following up, it is to avoid leading with the cliche. Open with the point instead: the restated ask, a small piece of new information, or the question itself. You can still acknowledge that this is a nudge somewhere in the message, just do not make it the first thing they read.
End with something easy to say yes to
A reply is much more likely when the ask at the end is small. Compare “let me know your thoughts whenever you get a chance” with “does Thursday still work, or should we look at next week?” The second gives them a decision they can make in five seconds. Where you can, turn your follow-up into a yes or no question, a choice between two options, or one concrete next step, and stop there. Do not stack a second question underneath it.
Common mistakes
- Leading with “just circling back” or “just following up” as the opening line, even though the rest of the message is perfectly polite.
- Assuming the reader remembers the original ask and skipping the one line reminder entirely.
- Ending on a vague, open ended question like “thoughts?” instead of something they can answer in one word.
- Writing a message that is longer than the original one, which makes the follow-up feel heavier than the ask itself.
- Letting a hint of irritation slip in about the wait, which undoes the good faith the rest of the message is trying to establish.