Draft polite follow-ups for emails that never got a reply
Every weekday at 4pm, spot the threads that went quiet, stage a ready-to-send nudge in your mailbox, and get a ranked Slack recap.
Aurinko
Google Sheets
Slack BotSalesPersonal ProductivityEmail AutomationNotifications & AlertsEvery weekday at 4pm, using a cron trigger, catch the email threads I have let go cold and stage polite follow-up drafts for me to review. Never send anything automatically. Drafts only is the hard rule for this workflow.
Start with Aurinko "List Email Messages" to pull everything I sent to external recipients in the last 14 days. Then search the same mailbox again for later messages from those same recipients, and work out which of my threads never got a reply by matching on participants plus subject or the thread id returned on the message records. Aurinko exposes no thread-fetch operation, so reply detection has to be done this way, by listing messages and comparing them rather than by loading a conversation directly.
Only treat a thread as cold when the newest message in it is mine and no reply came back afterwards. Skip anything less than 3 days old, since I do not want to chase people who have simply not got to it yet. Also skip newsletters and bulk mail, no-reply and do-not-reply senders, automated receipts and system notifications, and any recipient on my own email domain, because colleagues are not who I am chasing here.
Before nudging anyone, read the "Follow-ups" tab of my Google Sheets tracking spreadsheet with "Get Values". If a recipient already appears there with a nudge logged in the last 10 days, leave them alone this run so nobody gets chased twice. The sheet is the memory that stops this workflow becoming annoying.
For each thread that survives those filters, use Aurinko "Create Draft" to stage a short, polite follow-up in that same thread, addressed to the original recipient and keeping the existing subject so it reads as a continuation rather than a fresh email. Read what I actually wrote and reference the specific ask or question I left hanging, for example the proposal I sent, the times I offered, or the document I asked them to look over. Keep it to a few sentences, warm and low pressure, with a clear next step. Leave every one as a draft and never send it.
Log every new nudge back to the "Follow-ups" tab with "Append Values", one row per draft, recording the date, the recipient, the subject, how many days the thread has been waiting, and a short note on what I originally asked for.
Finish with a single Slack Bot "Send a Message" direct message to me. Resolve my Slack user with "Look Up User by Email" if a user id is needed. Rank the list by how long each thread has been silent, longest wait first, and for each one give the recipient, the subject, and the days waiting. Close the message with a one-line reminder that the drafts are sitting in my mailbox ready to review and send. Send exactly one message covering the whole run, and if nothing qualified on a given day, skip the Slack message entirely rather than sending an empty summary.
What does this prompt do?
- Looks back over the mail you sent in the last two weeks and works out which threads never got an answer
- Leaves out anything too new to chase, plus newsletters, receipts, no-reply addresses, and colleagues at your own company
- Writes a short, polite follow-up into each quiet thread and parks it in your drafts, so nothing goes out until you press send
- Keeps a running log in a spreadsheet so the same person is never chased twice in a fortnight, and sends you a ranked Slack recap of what is waiting
What do I need to use this?
- An email account connected through Aurinko, which works with Gmail, Outlook, Office 365, Exchange, Zoho Mail, iCloud, or any IMAP mailbox
- A Google Sheets spreadsheet with a tab named Follow-ups to hold the nudge log
- A Slack workspace where the bot can send you a direct message
- Your own email domain, so teammates are left off the chase list
How can I customize it?
- Change the timing: run at a different hour, or only on the weekdays you care about
- Adjust the patience settings: chase after 2 days of silence instead of 3, or look further back than 14 days
- Change the cool-off period before someone can be nudged again, or send the recap to a private channel instead of a direct message
FAQs
Will it email people on my behalf?
Does this only work with Gmail?
How does it know whether someone replied?
Will the same person get chased over and over?
What happens on a day when nothing has gone quiet?
Will it try to follow up on newsletters and receipts?
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Stop letting good conversations go quiet.
Every afternoon this finds the threads waiting on you, writes the nudge, and leaves it in your drafts so all you have to do is press send.