Stop sending "just checking in" emails

A lot of agents treat the follow up as a chore. They open the thread, type "just following up" or "checking in to see if you had any thoughts," and hit send. It feels productive. It is not. That email gives the prospect nothing, so the prospect gives you nothing back. You have spent a touch and bought silence.

I want to make the case for a different habit, because in a market like Dubai the follow up is where most deals are actually won or lost. Every prospect you are chasing is talking to a dozen other consultants right now. The one who stays useful is the one who gets the call when they are ready to move. So let me show you what the data says, and then exactly how I write a follow up that earns the next reply.

Why your follow ups are dying

Here is the uncomfortable part. The reason follow ups fail is rarely the prospect. It is the message. Two things are happening at once across the industry, and both work against you.

First, almost nobody follows up enough. Research on sales follow-ups finds that most deals need five or more touches to close, yet a large share of reps stop after the first attempt.

So most consultants are quitting at exactly the point where the deals start to land. If you simply kept going past touch four, you would already be ahead of nearly everyone else competing for the same buyer.

Second, the people who do keep following up usually send empty messages. And empty messages get punished. The teams analyzing millions of emails keep landing on the same conclusion: a follow up with no fresh value reads as "I have nothing to say, please reply anyway," and prospects feel it. Belkins found that most buyers do not mind being contacted repeatedly, as long as the message is relevant and adds something. Relevance is the whole game.

Make every follow up carry value

This is the rule I live by, and it is the one thing I want you to take from this page. Before you send a follow up, you have to be able to name the new thing it carries. If you cannot, you are not ready to send yet. Go find the thing first, then write.

"Value" does not mean a clever subject line or a softer tone. It means a concrete, specific item that is useful to this exact prospect:

• A new listing that fits what they told you, framed against the area: "Saw a 2-bed in JVC list 4% under the area average this morning, thought of you."
• A price change on something they already looked at, framed as market data rather than a sale pitch.
• A real number that affects their decision: a rent yield, a payment plan change from a developer, a shift in mortgage rates.
• An answer to a question they raised, or a question that shows you were actually listening.
• A short, honest take on whether now is a good time for their situation, even when the honest answer is "wait."

Notice what all of these have in common. They could only have been written by someone who knows this prospect and watches this market. That is the opposite of "just checking in," which could have been sent by any of the other dozen consultants in their inbox. The blunt test: if your follow up could have been sent by anyone, delete it and start again.

What a value follow up looks like

The second one gives Sarah a reason to open, a reason to trust the number, and a clear, low-pressure next step. It also quietly says: I am paying attention to your search even when you are not.

Timing and cadence: how often, how long

Value tells you what to send. Cadence tells you when. The research here is surprisingly consistent, so you do not have to guess.

• Move in minutes on warm intent. When a lead fills a form or replies, speed wins. Studies repeatedly show the first responder takes a large share of the deal, and responding within five minutes dramatically raises your odds of connecting.
• Space cold follow ups two to three days apart. On a cold sequence with no reply yet, a two to three day gap tends to beat same-day or daily contact. Daily pinging reads as desperate; a few days reads as deliberate.
• Plan for at least six touches. Since most deals close between the fifth and twelfth contact, build a sequence that actually reaches that far instead of fizzling at three.
• Keep email sequences tight, then change channel. The analysis of large email datasets suggests three to four emails in a sequence before reply rates fall off. When email stalls, that is your cue to move to WhatsApp or a call, not to send a fifth identical email.

One caution from the deliverability side: if you are sending at volume, your list quality matters as much as your words. A pile of bounced follow ups quietly damages your sender reputation, so clean data is part of the job, not an afterthought. This is exactly the kind of plumbing we set up inside the A1 system so you are not learning it the hard way.

The real goal: stay top of mind

Step back from any single email and look at what you are building. Every useful follow up is a deposit. Do it for a few months and something shifts. People stop seeing your name and thinking "the agent who keeps poking me," and start thinking "the one who always knows something I don't."

That is the whole point. I call the end state the GOLD LIST: a group of people around you who trust you, so that when you have a good opportunity you can send one message or make one call and close. You do not get there with a single brilliant email. You get there by being consistently useful across email, WhatsApp, and the occasional call, until trust compounds.

This is also why I push email so hard for individual consultants. You own your email list in a way you will never own an Instagram following. The platform decides who sees your posts. Your email reaches everyone you send to. Pair that ownership with a follow up habit that always carries value, and you have a lead engine that does not need a paid ads budget to keep turning. If you want the longer argument for why this beats spending on ads, I laid it out in A1's approach to lead generation for Dubai consultants.

Where to start this week

Do not rebuild your whole system on a Tuesday. Pick the ten leads you most want to close and look at the last message you sent each one. If it was a "checking in," that is your homework. Find one genuinely useful thing for each person, write it the way you would talk, and send. Then schedule the next touch two to three days out, and decide now what value it will carry.

That is the entire discipline. Never send a follow up that could have come from anyone else. Do that for ninety days and you will feel the GOLD LIST start to form. I write one short tip like this every day for Dubai consultants in my WhatsApp group, so if this was useful, that is where the rest live.