Send Meeting Follow-Up Email: Best Practices + Templates

Do you have a sigh of relief after a meeting with a prospect and close your laptop? Hold on, there is one more thing to do to call the meeting a success — send a follow-up message.

An email follow-up after a meeting is often overlooked, even though it plays a crucial role. Apart from leaving a good impression, following up after a meeting is a great way to ensure that all the important points are covered and to clarify any remaining questions or concerns.

This is not a tough task, but it requires a bit of careful planning.

That’s why we created this guide: to guide you to write an effective post-meeting email, loaded with insider tips and templates to get started.

What is and when to send a follow-up email?

A meeting follow-up email is a message that you send to attendees after a meeting to summarize what was discussed and review any action items or decisions made.

The purpose of the email is to express gratitude to the participants, ensure everyone is on the same page, and offer a chance to clarify any concerns.

Although meeting follow-up doesn’t always have to be in an email (it can also be shared via Slack), it is a widely accepted way, especially for formal business meetings.

When to follow up after a meeting?

When it comes to sending a business email, timing is an important factor to consider. 

Typically, a follow-up thank you email should be sent within 24 hours of the meeting when the words remain fresh in the recipient’s mind. But there are situations qualified for a longer interval.

• Within 48 hours: In case an application should be submitted or there were no action items assigned during the meeting.

• Within 1-2 weeks: If there is no response regarding a job interview or request.

• Every three months: If you only intend to keep in touch with a network member. 

How to craft a meeting follow-up email‍?

The elements of the follow-up email may vary based on the meeting types, but they generally include the following:

• A show of appreciation

• A mention of your discussion with the recipient to provide context

• Key takeaways from the meeting

• Next steps

• An invitation for questions on any matter that requires clarification

• Scheduling the next meeting (optional)

Now, let’s get our hands on crafting a follow-up letter after the meeting.

1. Write a compelling subject Line

47% of email recipients glance at the subject line to determine whether to open an email or not. Therefore, if you want your recipients to read your follow-up letters after the meeting, create a subject line that quickly makes it clear what the email is about. A good way to do this is to use a subject line that’s relevant to the meeting topic.

‍For example, if you had a meeting about your company’s content strategy, the subject line could be “Content Strategy Meeting Follow Up.” 

Some follow-up email subject lines to use:

• Follow up: [meeting title]

• Recap and follow up

• [Meeting title]: next steps 

2. Show appreciation

Time is a precious commodity in the workplace. As such, while writing a follow-up email after the meeting, it’s a kind gesture to appreciate the participants for taking the time to attend the meeting and for their contributions to the discussion, even if you have already thanked them in person during the meeting.

3. Refresh their memory (of the meeting)

If this is your first time meeting with a client, start the message by giving a short self-introduction (your name, position, and company) and a mention of the discussion you just had. This will spare them extra time trying to figure out who you are and why you are sending this email.

Also, write a sentence about what you enjoyed about the meeting to establish a common ground and make the email intriguing.

4. Give a brief summary of the meeting

For business meetings, the body of your follow-up email should provide a quick recap of the meeting. Even if the attendees took their own meeting notes, omission or misunderstanding happens, so it’s always good to confirm everyone is on the same page with a meeting summary.

Here is the information you should cover:

• The key discussion points and metrics

• The decisions made in the meeting 

If there are unanswered questions or uncertainties about issues, clarification can also be provided in the email follow-up.

5. Highlight the next steps

To ensure that there are no uncertainties about what needs to be done, highlight the next steps from the meeting with the responsible person and the timeline. Also, include a call to action to get the ball rolling immediately.

This ensures that everyone knows their responsibilities and holds them accountable by having these responsibilities in writing.

Tip: Find it time-consuming to extract action items from lengthy conversations or worry that you may miss some? Notta is here to help. It can not only record your meeting and create a transcript automatically but also generate a meeting summary with action items listed, saving you much time in writing a follow-up email.

6. Include the next meeting time (optional)

Only include this point if you are meeting someone regularly. A quick reminder of the next scheduled meeting at the end of a post-meeting email will give the recipient a heads-up quickly.

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Pro tips for writing an effective follow-up email

Now you know what to include and how to write a follow-up thank you email after the meeting, below are some tips that will make you a pro.

1. Have a clear objective

Don’t just write a meeting follow-up email for the sake of it. You need to have a clear objective that you want the email to achieve. 

This could be something like providing information about the steps you want the recipient to take, offering your help with something, or providing more information about what was discussed in the meeting.

2. Personalize your message

Even if you use a follow-up email template, don’t use the same generic email after every meeting. This will come off as insincere.

What you should do instead is personalize the email by mentioning the recipient’s name, highlighting something about the meeting that stood out to you, or even mentioning something about the recipient that came up during the meeting. 

For example, if the recipient mentioned that their favorite team was playing that night, you could mention the results of the game in the follow-up email the next day.

3. Keep it short and sweet

When it comes to follow-up emails, less is more. People already took time off their busy days to attend a meeting with you. You don’t want them to waste more time going after the same things that were said in the meeting. Therefore, avoid any unnecessary details and go straight to the point.‍

4. Provide value

If you want to make an impression in your recipients’ minds, don’t just go over what was covered in the meeting. Instead, use the follow-up email as an opportunity to provide more value. You can do this by providing additional information and resources that will help the recipient achieve their goals.

For example, if the recipient mentioned that they are struggling with driving more traffic to their website, you can send them a link to an insightful article or video on how to increase site traffic.

6 follow-up email templates after meeting

It’s time to practice. Let’s go over some effective email follow-up templates that apply to different use cases and help you better grasp the essence of writing a post-meeting email.

1. Follow-up after a conference or networking event

If you had a great time communicating with someone at a conference or event and promised to share some valuable information, make sure to send a follow-up email and remind them who you are.

2. Follow-up after a project or team meeting

3. Follow-up email after meeting with client/prospect

4. Follow-up email after a business meeting

5. Follow-up after an informative meeting/training

‍6. Follow-up email after a job interview

Wrapping up

Sending a follow-up email after a meeting is an easy task, yet it makes a big difference. It can go a long way in building strong relationships and achieving successful outcomes.

With the best practices and templates listed in this post, you will surely craft a perfect meeting follow-up email with the essential components covered:

• Express gratitude to the attendee

• Summarize what has been discussed

• The next steps

Moreover, you can use the Notta meeting productivity tool to record, transcribe, and summarize meetings to make your follow-up easier!