How to Write a Follow-up Letter
A follow-up letter is an important form of communication in a range of situations. After a job interview, or a great business meeting, or even after making a good business contact at a trade show, a follow-up letter is an effective means of consolidating a relationship between you and the intended recipient. It provides a platform for continued communication, and also to accent certain points discussed at the previous meeting. A well written follow-up letter, free of English grammar and spelling errors, can make all the difference to your success.
As a follow-up letter is usually written during the early stages of a relationship, the writing style needs to be fairly formal. Thorough proofreading is absolutely essential to the success of your letter. So, before you even sit down to begin writing, make sure you have the English tools available to make the letter worth sending. At a minimum, this means a quality grammar checking tool, and a comprehensive spell checker. A good dictionary is also essential. WhiteSmoke gives you all this and a whole lot more in a seamlessly integrated interface.
Let's consider some tips to help you write a better follow-up letter in any situation:
- Use a follow-up letter to re-iterate your attributes, and the positive dimensions of a new relationship for each party. If you are representing your business, you can make a short sales pitch. If you are applying for a job, remind the potential employer of your key skills.
- Don't cover old ground: offer new insights to add to your appeal.
- Make sure your follow-up letter is sent within 2 days of the meeting or interview; this will help keep things fresh, and promote continuity between your performance at the interview and your letter.
- In your follow up letter, indicate how you want to proceed from this point.
- Do not convey any negative sentiments in your follow-up letter.
Using these tips and WhiteSmoke's powerful English editing capabilities, let's look at an example follow-up letter text, and then improve on it.
Original Follow-up Letter
Dave !
I liked giving you my business presentation a couple of weeks bac. As I said, we can easily increase your profits two-fold in the next coupla years using my marketing techniques. I guarantee that it. I think we can go ahead and sign a deal, although I did have some concerns about your partner's resistance to the print media campaign I outline. Anyway, let's close the deal, .Garry
Follow-up Letter with Tips and after WhiteSmoke
Hello David,
Thanks for a great meeting yesterday. I feel the presentation was a success, and the feedback from you and your team was encouraging. Based on some of the points raised by you in the meeting, I had some further ideas, particularly related to the print media campaign. I hope I can raise them next time we meet.
Speaking of which, how about we schedule another presentation in around a week's time? I can then prepare the projection reports your team asked for.
I will call you by the end of the week to confirm a meeting time.
Yours Sincerely,
Gareth Ewing
In the example above, we have taken a poorly written text, and improved it by following our tips for writing a follow-up letter, and proofreading with WhiteSmoke. WhiteSmoke is a truly unique solution for your letter writing needs. More than grammar software, more than just a dictionary, it is a complete online English writing solution. With its text enrichment software, your sentences will not only be checked for errors, but also enhanced with synonyms, adverbs and adjectives; your writing will be expressive and persuasive. Over 600 letter templates are just a click away, giving you a great head start on any letter you could possibly need to write.
If you write within a specific discipline, like law, then WhiteSmoke also has a solution tailored to your needs. There are currently four specialized WhiteSmoke modules available: Business Writing, Creative Writing, Legal Writing and Medical Writing. With WhiteSmoke, your follow-up letter, or any other business communications or job search text you need to write, will be the best it can be.
