Write a follow up that gets a reply
AI follow up email is an Agent Skill: a written method your AI applies on demand, in Zealos or in any client that reads SKILL.md.
AI follow up email is an Agent Skill: a written method your AI applies on demand, in Zealos or in any client that reads SKILL.md.
A follow-up gets a reply when it opens with the specific commitment made on the call, stays under 120 words, and asks for exactly one thing the recipient can answer in a sentence.
| name | email-rules |
|---|---|
| description | Rules for subject lines, length, structure and calls to action in outbound and reply emails, including when not to send at all. Use whenever drafting or reviewing an email. |
| allowed-tools | none — this skill adds judgement, not reach |
| compatibility | Zealos, Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and any client that reads SKILL.md |
| license | Free to use and edit |
--- name: email-rules description: Rules for subject lines, length, structure and calls to action in outbound and reply emails, including when not to send at all. Use whenever drafting or reviewing an email. --- # Email rules ## Length Under 120 words. Outbound: under 90. If it does not fit, the ask is not clear enough yet. ## Subject lines - 4–7 words, lowercase or sentence case. Not Title Case. - Say the subject, not a tease. "Pricing for 40 seats" beats "Quick question". - Never fake a reply with "Re:". - No emoji, no "[URGENT]", no personalisation tokens visible in the subject. ## Structure 1. **One line of why-you**, specific enough that it could not be sent to anyone else. If it could, delete it — a generic opener is worse than none. 2. **The point**, in one or two sentences. 3. **One ask.** A question they can answer in a sentence, or a specific time. No signature block essay. No attachment on a first email. ## Calls to action Ask for a reply, not a meeting, on a first touch. "Worth a look?" outperforms "Do you have 30 minutes Tuesday?" because the cost of answering is lower. ## When not to send - Nothing has changed since the last email. - You are following up on a follow-up with no new information. - The recipient is on a thread where someone else owes the reply. - The message exists to make the sender feel productive. A skipped email costs nothing. A fourth "just bumping this" costs the account.
The follow-up drafts itself from what was actually said, so the fourth touch stops being a bump and starts being a reason to reply.
The email goes out the same afternoon rather than three days later, while the commitment you are referencing is still fresh for both of you.
You stop writing the same three paragraphs from scratch and start editing a draft that already sounds the way you sound.
Under 120 words, and under 90 for a first touch. If it does not fit, the ask is not clear enough yet — length is usually a symptom rather than the problem.
One more than you have new information for. The rule worth encoding is not a number but a condition: do not send if nothing has changed.
Not if you pair it with a writing-voice skill. The rules govern structure; the voice skill governs how it reads.
Post-call automation turns a recorded conversation into the three things that outlive it: the commitments each side made, the fields that changed, and the follow-up that has to go out today.
/call-recap-formatA pre-call brief is worth writing only if it changes what you ask: who is in the room, what they are measured on, what happened last time, and the one question you cannot afford to leave without answering.
/discovery-questionsAn AI SDR agent is only as good as the definition of a good customer it is working from, which is why the fit criteria belong in a written skill rather than buried in a prompt nobody can find.
/our-icpAI email triage is worth having only when it sorts by consequence rather than by recency: what blocks a deal, what someone is waiting on you for, and what can be read at the end of the week.
/email-rulesAccount research earns its time only when it changes the first sentence you write, which means looking for what recently changed rather than assembling a profile anyone could have found.
/our-icpA writing-voice skill is the highest-leverage thing you can give an AI, because it changes every sentence the product produces and it needs no tools, no integrations and no data.
/our-writing-voice