A proposal that gets one follow-up is a business process. A proposal that gets five follow-ups is a person who cannot hear "no." The difference is a schedule you chose in advance, and a stop when they reply.
You do not need a clever sequence. You need to know the day you sent it, to send two notes that sound like you, and to shut up when they answer or when the second note has had time to sit.
Mark sent when it is actually sent
The clock starts when the proposal leaves your outbox, not when you finished the draft. If you mark it sent by hand, you will sometimes mark it sent and then forget to send it, and the follow-up will arrive before the proposal. If your mail is in a system you can read, a check of sent mail can set the date when a message to that person matches the proposal. Unknown recipients should become a note to you, not a new lead. A newsletter you sent is not a proposal.
Write the sent time on the lead. The follow-up workflow reads that time. It should not guess from "last edited."
Two notes, then stop
Day three and day seven are enough for a small studio. Day three assumes they meant to read it and the week got away. Day seven assumes they have seen it and you are offering to answer questions or to close the file. After that, the status can move to expired and you can stop. A later personal note, months on, is a different email and a different decision. It is not "day 45 of the sequence."
The day-three note can be: here is the proposal again, happy to walk through it, no pressure. The day-seven note can be: I will close this on my side unless you want to pick it up, and you can reply whenever. Both should be short. Neither should invent a discount that was not in the proposal. A discount that appears only in the follow-up teaches people to wait.
If you want a paid discovery session as an option, that is a separate offer you already use, not a surprise attachment. If you do not sell discovery that way, leave it out. An invoice for a call they did not agree to is not a follow-up. It is a different product.
Replies end the sequence
A reply should set the lead to replied so the day-seven note does not go out. "Thanks, I will look this weekend" is a reply. You might still want a human check-in later. The sequence should not send the close-the-file note on top of that.
Matching replies is imperfect. You will miss a reply from a different address, and you will occasionally match the wrong thread if you only compare email addresses. Read the first month of these by hand. If the match is sloppy, fix the rule before you trust it. A false "replied" is quiet. A false "not replied" is the pushy email. Bias toward stopping.
Tone you can live with
Read both drafts out loud once and save them. Do not let a workflow improvise the sentence. The point of automation here is the calendar, not a new voice.
Do not mention how many other clients you have. Do not say the price goes up on Friday unless it does, for everyone, on a rule you published. False urgency is how a follow-up becomes something people screenshot.
If the lead was below a budget you do not take, they should not be in this sequence. They already got a smaller note, or they should. Following up on a project you would refuse is how your pipeline fills with work you do not want.
What to log
Sent at, follow-up stage, and status. Status values you will actually use: sent, replied, won, lost, expired. Expired means the sequence ended, not that they are a bad person. Won means you are now in kickoff, and the follow-up must not still be armed. When a project exists, turn the proposal sequence off for that email.
A daily run is enough. You do not need to watch the inbox every minute for this. A quarter-hour check is reasonable if you want replies to cancel the next note before it sends. Either way, the note waits until the scheduled day. Do not send both notes on the morning you remember the proposal exists.
A month of watching before you trust it
For the first month, BCC yourself or read sent mail the morning after each note. You are looking for two failures: a day-seven note that landed on someone who already replied from another address, and a day-three note that arrived before the proposal because you marked it sent too early. Fix the clock or the match. Do not add a third note to compensate.
Keep a lost reason when you mark lost, in a few words, for yourself. "Budget", "timing", "went with someone else." You do not owe them a sequence based on that reason. You owe yourself a way to see whether the proposals are the problem or the follow-up is.
If two people at the company are on the thread, decide which address owns the lead. Following up with both, on different clocks, is two sequences. Pick one.
Where this sits
This is a studio workflow on your own inquiries, not the form on the client's new website. Those are different inboxes. The client-site form is their leads. The proposal sequence is yours.
You can run the sequence without any model rewriting the email. If you later want a draft rewritten, that is a separate switch, off, until you have seen it not embarrass you. The default path should be your own sentences.
If they ask for a change to the price, edit the proposal and reset the sent date. Do not let day seven describe a document you have already replaced. Tell them the new file is the one to read, in the same thread, so the follow-up is not the first time they see the change.
When a proposal is won, the next message is kickoff, not another follow-up. The asset list, the deposit, and the project row take over. Leaving the sequence armed is how a new client gets a "shall I close this file" note in week two of the work. Turn it off the day you mark won.
There is no free template in the set that is only this sequence. The closest public starting point, if you are not ready for the studio pack, is to keep the two paragraphs in your mail drafts and a date on the sheet, and to send them yourself for a month. You will learn which sentence you hate. Then automate the calendar, not the personality.
Community version
My proposal follow-ups were either nothing or a guilty thread of four emails. I cut it to two.
I only start the clock when the proposal is actually sent. Day three is a short offer to walk through it. Day seven says I will close the file on my side and they can reply later. Then the lead is expired and the sequence stops. A reply stops it earlier. I would rather miss a follow-up than send day seven on top of "I'll read it this weekend."
I do not add a discount in the second note, and I do not follow up on leads I already told I would not take. The words are mine, saved. The workflow only knows the date.
It took a month of reading the sent folder before I trusted the reply match. The failure mode I cared about was emailing someone who had already answered.
I still read the morning after a note goes out, for a while. The two bugs I watch for are a follow-up that beats the proposal, and a day-seven note on top of a reply from a colleague's address. I would rather stop the sequence than add a third email to feel thorough.