The short answer
Solar follow-up emails should be under 120 words, written in plain text from a named person, and carry one specific thing rather than a check-in. The nine below cover the sequence from the instant acknowledgement through the quote follow-up, the stalled deal, re-engagement and the polite close.
- 01Under 120 words. Anything longer gets skimmed to nothing on a phone.
- 02Plain text from a person beats a designed template for follow-up.
- 03Never send an email whose only content is checking in.
- 04Subject lines should be four words and lower case, like a colleague wrote them.
Email does the parts of solar follow-up that text cannot: the explanation, the attachment, the thing worth keeping. It fails when it is treated as a newsletter or when it is sent for its own sake.
Every template below follows three rules. Under 120 words. Plain text from a person. One specific thing, never a check-in.
The instant acknowledgement
Fires on form submission, alongside the automatic text. Its job is to set expectations and reduce the anxiety of having given a stranger your address.
Subject: your solar enquiry / Hi [name], thanks for getting in touch. I will call you within the hour. When we speak I will ask about your roof, your typical bill and what is prompting you to look now, and that is about ten minutes. No survey booked until you want one, and no obligation at any point. [name], [company], [direct number].
The day three useful email
Sent when calls have not connected. Carries something rather than asking for something.
Subject: a system near you / Hi [name], we have not managed to catch each other, so here is something useful in the meantime. We fitted a [size] array on [street or area] in [month]. Similar roof to yours from what I could see, and it is covering most of their daytime use. Happy to talk through what yours would look like whenever suits. [name], [number].
The quote follow-up
Sent two days after the quote. Not a chase. An invitation to raise the thing they did not want to raise.
Subject: anything unclear? / Hi [name], sent the quote on Tuesday. Most people have one question they do not want to ask in case it sounds obvious. Mine would be why the inverter costs what it does. Whatever yours is, ask it and I will answer straight, including if the answer is that this is not the right time. [name].
The stalled deal
Sent around day fourteen of silence. The highest-response email in most solar sequences, because it offers an exit.
Subject: should I stop? / Hi [name], I do not want to keep landing in your inbox if the timing is wrong. Three options: you are still interested but busy, the timing has changed, or you have gone with someone else. Any of the three is a fine answer and one word is enough. [name].
The rest of the set
| When | The one thing it carries | |
|---|---|---|
| Appointment confirmation | On booking | What will happen, how long, and that nobody signs anything |
| Post-survey summary | Same day as the survey | What you saw on the roof, in plain language, before the quote |
| The objection answer | When one is raised | One objection, answered fully, nothing else in the email |
| Re-engagement | Monthly, in nurture | A rate change, a local install, or a seasonal fact |
| The polite close | End of active sequence | You are stopping, the door is open, here is a direct number |
What should you strip out?
- HTML templates and header images. They lower deliverability and raise the chance it reads as marketing.
- Attachments in early emails. Link to the quote instead; attachments get filtered.
- Long signatures. Name, company, one number. Social icons add nothing here.
- Just checking in. If there is nothing to say, do not send an email. Send nothing and keep the next one for when there is.
- Multiple calls to action. One per email. Two gets neither.
These sit inside the wider cadence in the solar sales follow-up sequence, and they work best when the texts and calls around them are also happening. Email on its own is the weakest of the three channels; email as part of a sequence is doing a job the other two cannot. For the long tail, see solar lead nurturing.
How do you make sure they arrive?
A perfectly written email in a spam folder is a worse investment than no email at all, because you will conclude the messaging failed when the delivery did.
- Send from your domain, properly authenticated. An unauthenticated domain increasingly lands in spam by default.
- Send from a person, not from noreply or info. It improves both deliverability and replies.
- Keep images out of follow-up emails. Text-only mail from a real address is treated more like correspondence and less like a campaign.
- Watch the reply-to. Follow-up emails people cannot reply to are a common and expensive misconfiguration.
- Check your own inbox placement quarterly by sending to a couple of the common providers and seeing where it lands.
These, sent on time, without anybody remembering
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Common questions
- How long should a follow-up email be?
- Under 120 words. Most are read on a phone between other tasks, and anything requiring a scroll gets skimmed to nothing. If it needs more room, it is a phone call.
- Should follow-up emails be plain text or designed?
- Plain text from a real person's address. Designed templates read as marketing, are more likely to be filtered, and convert worse for one-to-one follow-up. Save design for genuine newsletters.
- How often should I email a solar lead?
- During active follow-up, roughly every two to three days alongside calls and texts. After that, monthly in nurture. The frequency matters less than whether each email carries something worth opening.
