How I Cold-Emailed My Way Into 3 FAANG Interviews (With the Exact Templates)

Let me tell you about the moment I decided to never apply through a job portal again.

It was a Tuesday evening in October 2024. I had just checked my email and found three rejection notices - all from companies I had applied to six weeks earlier. Two were automated. The third was a personalized note from a recruiter at a mid-size startup that said, "We were impressed by your background, but we've decided to move forward with other candidates." I had never spoken to anyone at that company. No phone screen. No technical assessment. Just a resume tossed into a pile, briefly glanced at, and discarded.

I had applied to 73 companies over three months through traditional application portals. The result: 3 phone screens, 1 onsite, 0 offers. A conversion rate of roughly 4% from application to phone screen. Those numbers are not unusual - they are actually slightly above average. Industry data consistently shows that online applications have a 2-5% response rate for software engineering roles.

Meanwhile, a friend of mine had landed interviews at Meta, Google, and Stripe - all within two weeks. He had applied to exactly zero companies through their career pages. Instead, he had sent targeted cold emails directly to recruiters and hiring managers. His conversion rate: roughly 15%.

That disparity changed everything for me. Over the next month, I sent 47 carefully crafted cold emails. Three of them led directly to FAANG-level interviews: one at Meta, one at Stripe, and one at a Series B fintech startup that had just raised $80M. I received responses from 11 of the 47 - a 23% response rate. And of those 11 responses, 3 converted to interview processes.

This post is the complete breakdown of what I learned. The templates, the subject lines, the timing, the follow-ups, and the 44 emails that went nowhere.

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Why I Skipped the Application Portal Entirely

Before we get into the tactics, let us talk about why cold outreach works so much better than traditional applications. This is not just my anecdotal experience - the data is clear.

The Black Hole Problem

When you apply through a company's career page, your resume enters an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). The ATS runs keyword matching against the job description. If your resume does not hit enough keywords - and the threshold varies wildly by company - it never reaches a human being. At large companies like Google and Amazon, a single job posting can receive 500-1,000 applications. Recruiters physically cannot review every one. They rely on the ATS filter and then skim the top 30-50 resumes that pass through.

Even if your resume makes it past the ATS, you are now competing with 30-50 other qualified candidates for the recruiter's attention. The recruiter spends an average of 6-8 seconds per resume. Six seconds. That is not enough time to appreciate your elegant system architecture at your previous job or your open-source contributions.

The Referral Advantage

Internal referrals have a 10-20x higher chance of leading to an interview compared to cold applications. Why? Because when an employee refers someone, the recruiter treats that resume differently. It bypasses the ATS, lands at the top of the pile, and comes with an implicit endorsement: "I know this person, and I think they'd be good here."

A cold email to a recruiter or hiring manager is not a referral, but it occupies a middle ground between a cold application and a referral. When a candidate emails a recruiter directly with a clear, concise message, it signals initiative, communication skills, and genuine interest in the company. The recruiter is far more likely to give that person a real look.

The Numbers That Convinced Me

I tracked every data point obsessively. Here is the comparison:

Traditional Applications (3 months):

• Applications sent: 73
• Responses received: 8 (11%)
• Phone screens: 3 (4%)
• Onsites: 1 (1.4%)
• Offers: 0

Cold Emails (1 month):

• Emails sent: 47
• Responses received: 11 (23%)
• Phone screens: 5 (11%)
• Onsites: 3 (6%)
• Offers: 2

The cold email approach produced better results in one-third the time. And each email took me about 10-15 minutes to research and write, compared to 20-30 minutes to fill out yet another application portal that asked me to re-enter everything already on my resume.

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Finding the Right People to Email

The most critical step in cold outreach is identifying the right person to contact. Send a brilliant email to the wrong person and nothing happens. Send a decent email to the right person and magic happens.

Who to Target

Your ideal targets, in order of preference:

1. Technical Recruiters who specialize in your role level. Not the head of recruiting, not the campus recruiter - the person who specifically fills mid-level or senior software engineering roles. Their entire job is to find candidates. Your email makes their job easier.

2. Hiring Managers (Engineering Managers or Directors). This is higher-risk, higher-reward. Hiring managers are busy and get fewer cold emails than recruiters. When they do respond, they often fast-track you past the initial recruiter screen.

3. Engineers on the team you want to join. This is the "warm referral" play. You are not asking for a job - you are asking for a conversation. If the conversation goes well, they will often refer you internally.

How to Find Their Contact Information

LinkedIn (Free Tier):

• Search for "[Company Name] Technical Recruiter" or "[Company Name] Engineering Manager [Team Name]"
• Look for people who have been in the role for at least 6 months (they are established enough to influence hiring)
• Check their recent posts - if they have posted about hiring or open roles, they are actively looking for candidates

Email Pattern Discovery: Most companies use a consistent email format. Common patterns:

• firstname@company.com
• firstname.lastname@company.com
• firstinitiallastname@company.com

Tools like Hunter.io (free for 25 searches/month), Apollo.io, and Clearbit can verify email patterns for a specific company domain. I used Hunter.io for 80% of my research and Apollo.io for the rest.

The LinkedIn Profile Method: If you cannot find someone's email, check their LinkedIn profile. Many recruiters include their email in their "Contact Info" section or their "About" section. Some even include it in their headline: "Recruiting for [Company] | reach me at jane@company.com."

GitHub and Personal Sites: For engineers you want to connect with, check their GitHub profile or personal website. Many developers include their email prominently.

Building Your Target List

I built a spreadsheet with these columns:

• Company name
• Target person's name
• Title
• Email address
• LinkedIn URL
• How I found them
• Date emailed
• Subject line used
• Response (Y/N)
• Follow-up dates
• Notes

I started with 60 targets across 15 companies and ultimately emailed 47 of them (I could not find reliable email addresses for the remaining 13).

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The 4-Line Email That Got Me a Meta Phone Screen

Let me share the exact email that landed me a phone screen at Meta. I have anonymized the names, but the structure is real.

Subject: Senior SWE interested in Meta Messaging - quick question

Hi Sarah,

I'm a senior software engineer at [Current Company] where I've spent the last 2 years building real-time messaging infrastructure that handles 50M+ daily messages. I noticed your team is hiring for the Messenger backend team.

I'd love to explore whether my experience with WebSocket-based systems and distributed message queues might be a good fit. My resume is attached, but the short version: 5 years of backend experience, primarily in Go and Python, with deep experience in the exact domain your team works in.

Would you be open to a 10-minute call this week or next?

Best, [My Name] [LinkedIn URL]

That is the entire email. Four substantive sentences. Here is why each line works:

Line 1: Credibility + Relevance. I am not just "a software engineer." I am someone who builds the exact type of system this team works on. The "50M+ daily messages" number adds concrete credibility without being boastful.

Line 2: Connection to their specific need. I am not asking about "any open role." I have identified the specific team and role. This shows I have done my research.

Line 3: The ask is small. A 10-minute call is not intimidating. It is easy to say yes to. I am not asking for an interview - I am asking for a conversation.

Line 4: Easy next step. LinkedIn URL means they can quickly verify my background without opening an attachment.

What I Deliberately Left Out

• No cover letter prose. No "I've always admired Meta's mission to connect the world." Recruiters read that sentence 200 times a week. It means nothing.
• No laundry list of skills. I did not list every programming language I know. I mentioned the two that matter for this specific role.
• No desperation signals. No "I would be so grateful for any opportunity" or "I'm currently exploring new roles." Confidence without arrogance.
• No generic opening. I did not start with "I hope this email finds you well." That is an instant signal that this is a mass email.

The Meta Response

Sarah responded within 48 hours:

Hi [Name],

Thanks for reaching out! Your background in messaging infrastructure is definitely relevant. Let me connect you with our recruiter for the Messenger team. Are you available for a 30-minute recruiter screen next Tuesday or Wednesday?

Best, Sarah

Total time from cold email to scheduled phone screen: 3 days. Compare that to the weeks or months of silence from application portals.

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The Subject Line A/B Test (Data From 47 Emails)

I am a data nerd, so I tracked the subject lines of all 47 emails and their response rates. Here is what I found.

Subject Line Categories and Response Rates

Category 1: Role-Specific + Personal (12 emails, 5 responses = 42%) Examples:

• "Senior SWE interested in Meta Messaging - quick question"
• "Backend engineer, 5 yrs distributed systems - [Team Name] role"
• "Quick question about the Staff Engineer opening on Payments"

Category 2: Mutual Connection or Shared Context (8 emails, 3 responses = 38%) Examples:

• "Fellow [University Name] alum - question about engineering at Stripe"
• "Saw your talk at QCon - question about [Company] backend team"
• "Referred by [Mutual Connection Name] - interested in SWE roles"

Category 3: Generic but Professional (15 emails, 2 responses = 13%) Examples:

• "Senior Software Engineer - interested in opportunities"
• "Experienced backend engineer exploring new roles"
• "Application for Senior SWE position"

Category 4: Creative/Attention-Grabbing (7 emails, 1 response = 14%) Examples:

• "The engineer who broke prod on Black Friday (and fixed it in 12 minutes)"
• "I built a system that handles more messages than your current one"
• "3 reasons I'd crush it on your backend team"

Category 5: Question-Based (5 emails, 0 responses = 0%) Examples:

• "Is the Senior SWE role on the Infra team still open?"
• "Are you hiring backend engineers for the Seattle office?"

Key Takeaways

The data is clear: specific, role-targeted subject lines massively outperform generic ones. The top-performing category (Role-Specific + Personal) had a 42% response rate - more than 3x the response rate of generic subject lines.

The creative/attention-grabbing category was a surprise disappointment. I thought clever subject lines would stand out, but they actually performed about the same as generic ones. My theory: recruiters see hundreds of emails and have developed a filter for anything that feels like a marketing gimmick. They respond to substance, not cleverness.

The question-based category was a complete failure. Every single email with a yes/no question as the subject line went unanswered. I think this is because a question invites a one-word answer ("Yes, it's open" or "No, it's filled"), and neither of those naturally leads to a conversation.

The Winning Formula

Based on this data, the ideal subject line follows this pattern:

[Your Level] + [Your Specialty] - [Specific Team/Role] at [Company]

Examples:

• "Senior backend engineer, distributed systems - Platform team at Stripe"
• "ML engineer with NLP focus - interested in Search Ranking at Google"
• "Full-stack engineer, 4 yrs React/Node - Growth team at [Startup]"

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Follow-Up Timing: The 3-Touch Rule

Of my 11 total responses, 4 came from follow-up emails - not the original message. That means 36% of my positive responses would not have happened if I had not followed up. Let that sink in.

Here is the follow-up cadence I used:

Touch 1: The Original Email (Day 0)

Send your initial email on a Tuesday or Wednesday morning between 9-11 AM in the recipient's time zone. Why? Monday mornings are inbox-clearing time - your email gets buried. Thursday and Friday, people are winding down. Tuesday and Wednesday mornings are when recruiters are most actively doing outreach themselves, so they are in "conversation mode."

Touch 2: The Value-Add Follow-Up (Day 4-5)

If you do not hear back in 4-5 business days, send a follow-up. But here is the critical rule: do not just say "bumping this" or "following up on my previous email." Add new value.

Here is the follow-up template I used:

Subject: Re: [Original Subject Line]

Hi Sarah,

I wanted to follow up on my note from earlier this week. I also wanted to share that I recently published an open-source library for distributed message queue testing ([GitHub link]) - it might be relevant to the challenges your Messenger team deals with.

Still very interested in exploring a conversation if you have 10 minutes this week.

Best, [My Name]

The key is the value-add in the middle. It could be:

• A relevant open-source contribution
• A blog post you wrote about a related technical topic
• A specific observation about their product ("I noticed your app's message delivery latency improved significantly in the latest release - curious what architectural changes drove that")
• A relevant conference talk or paper you can share

This follow-up demonstrates that you are not just another applicant - you are someone who actively contributes to the engineering community and thinks deeply about the problems their team faces.

Touch 3: The Graceful Close (Day 10-12)

If you still have not heard back, send one final follow-up. This one is short and gives them an easy out:

Hi Sarah,

I know you're busy, so I'll keep this brief. I'm still very interested in the Messenger backend team, but I completely understand if the timing isn't right.

If things open up in the future, I'd love to reconnect. Either way, thanks for your time.

Best, [My Name]

This email does something subtle: it removes pressure. By saying "I completely understand if the timing isn't right," you are giving them permission to not respond - which, paradoxically, makes some people more likely to respond. Two of my 11 responses came from this third touch.

When to Stop

After three touches with no response, stop. Do not send a fourth email. Do not send a "Just checking in one last time" email. Three unanswered emails means either: (a) they are not interested, (b) the role is filled, or (c) your emails are going to spam. None of these problems are solved by a fourth email.

I made the mistake of sending a fourth email to one person early in my campaign. He responded - but only to tell me to stop emailing him. It was mortifying and taught me that persistence has a threshold beyond which it becomes harassment.

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The LinkedIn DM Variant That Also Works

Not everyone's email is findable. And some people are more responsive on LinkedIn than email. I sent 12 LinkedIn messages in addition to my 47 emails, and the results were interesting.

Connection Request Messages

LinkedIn gives you 300 characters in a connection request note. That is painfully short. Here is the template that worked best for me:

Hi Sarah - I'm a senior backend engineer specializing in real-time messaging systems. I noticed your team at Meta is hiring, and I think my experience would be a strong fit. Would love to connect and share more.

That is 247 characters. Every word counts. Notice:

• I lead with who I am and my specialty
• I reference her specific team
• I state why I am reaching out
• The ask is minimal (just "connect")

Response rate on connection requests: 7 out of 12 accepted (58%). But acceptance does not mean response to your follow-up message. Of those 7 who accepted, I sent follow-up DMs to all of them and received substantive responses from 3.

The Follow-Up DM After Connection

Once someone accepts your connection request, wait 24 hours, then send a DM. Do not send it immediately - it feels too eager and transactional.

Hi Sarah, thanks for connecting! I wanted to elaborate a bit on my background. I've spent the last 2 years at [Company] building WebSocket-based messaging infrastructure that handles 50M+ daily events. I'm really interested in the Senior SWE role on the Messenger backend team.

Would you be open to a quick 10-minute call? I'd love to learn more about the team and share how my experience might be relevant.

Here's my resume for context: [link to PDF or personal site]

This is essentially the same structure as the cold email, adapted for LinkedIn's more conversational tone.

LinkedIn InMail

If you have LinkedIn Premium (which I recommend for active job searches - the free month trial is enough), you can send InMail to people you are not connected with. InMail has a surprisingly high open rate because it lands in a separate inbox that gets less traffic than regular messages.

My InMail template was identical to my email template, just slightly shorter. I sent 5 InMails and received 2 responses - a 40% response rate, though the sample size is too small to draw strong conclusions.

Email vs. LinkedIn: Which is Better?

Based on my limited data, email outperforms LinkedIn for initial outreach to recruiters, while LinkedIn outperforms email for reaching engineers and hiring managers. My theory is that recruiters live in their email and treat it as their primary professional communication tool. Engineers and managers, on the other hand, check LinkedIn more casually but are more receptive to messages there because the context is already professional networking.

My recommendation: use email for recruiters and LinkedIn for engineers and hiring managers.

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Templates You Can Copy Today

Here are four ready-to-use templates for different scenarios. Customize the bracketed sections with your real information. Do not send these verbatim - recruiters can spot templates, and the whole point is that your email feels personal.

Template 1: Cold Email to a Technical Recruiter

Subject: [Your Level] [Your Specialty] - interested in [Team/Role] at [Company]

Hi [Recruiter Name],

I'm a [level] [role] at [Current Company] where I [one sentence about your most relevant accomplishment, with a number]. I came across the [specific role] on the [specific team] and believe my background in [relevant specialty] could be a strong fit.

Quick snapshot: [X] years of [language/stack] experience, with particular depth in [1-2 areas directly relevant to the role]. I recently [something noteworthy - shipped a feature, published a paper, contributed to open source].

Would you be open to a brief call this week to discuss whether there's a fit?

Best, [Your Name] [LinkedIn URL]

Template 2: Cold Email to a Hiring Manager

Subject: [Your Specialty] engineer - question about [Team Name] at [Company]

Hi [Manager Name],

I've been following [Company]'s engineering blog and was particularly impressed by your team's work on [specific project or blog post - do your research]. I'm a [level] engineer at [Current Company] working on [related area], and the problems your team is solving are exactly what I want to work on next.

A bit about me: I led the redesign of [specific project] at [Current Company], which [quantified result]. Before that, I [another relevant accomplishment].

I'd love to learn more about the team's roadmap and explore whether my experience might be useful. Would a 15-minute chat be possible?

Best, [Your Name] [LinkedIn URL] | [Personal site or GitHub]

Template 3: Warm Outreach to an Engineer (for Referral)

Subject: Fellow [shared context] - would love to learn about engineering at [Company]

Hi [Engineer Name],

I came across your [talk/blog post/open-source project] on [topic] and really appreciated [specific thing you liked - be genuine]. I'm a [level] engineer at [Current Company] working on similar problems, and I've been thinking about [Company] as my next move.

I'm not asking for a referral (though I wouldn't turn one down!) - I'd genuinely love to hear about your experience on the [Team Name] team. What does a typical day look like? What's the tech stack really like vs. what's on the job posting?

Happy to buy you a virtual coffee. Would 20 minutes sometime this week or next work?

Best, [Your Name]

Template 4: The "I Used Your Product and Have Thoughts" Email

This one is specifically for startups and works surprisingly well.

Subject: Power user of [Product] with backend engineering background - interested in joining

Hi [Name],

I've been using [Product] daily for [time period] and it's become central to my workflow. A few things I've noticed as both a user and an engineer: [1-2 specific, thoughtful observations about the product - ideally something that shows you understand their technical challenges].

I'm a [level] [role] at [Current Company] with [X] years of experience in [relevant areas]. I would love the chance to contribute to [Product] as an engineer. Your open role for [specific position] caught my eye.

Would you be open to a conversation?

Best, [Your Name] [Link to relevant work]

This template works because it demonstrates something no resume can: genuine product intuition and user empathy. When a hiring manager reads an email from someone who clearly uses and thinks about their product, it stands out from the stack of generic "I'm interested in a role" messages.

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What I Would Do Differently

Looking back on my 47-email campaign, there are a few things I would change:

Start earlier. I began my email campaign in week 10 of my 12-week interview prep plan. In retrospect, I should have started in week 6-7. The interview scheduling process takes 2-4 weeks, so by starting earlier, I could have had my interviews lined up perfectly with the end of my prep period.

Personalize more aggressively. My highest-performing emails were the most personalized ones - emails where I referenced a specific blog post, conference talk, or product feature. My lowest-performing emails were the ones where I only customized the company name and role. The personalization is what separates a cold email from spam. Take the extra 10 minutes.

Track everything from day one. I did not start my tracking spreadsheet until email number 15. By then, I had lost data on my early emails and could not accurately analyze what worked in those first two weeks. Start your spreadsheet before you send email number one.

Do not email on Fridays. Every email I sent on a Friday went unanswered. Every single one. Friday emails get buried over the weekend and are ancient history by Monday morning.

Batch your research and writing. I found it most efficient to spend 2 hours on Sunday researching 10-15 targets and drafting their emails, then schedule-send them throughout the following Tuesday and Wednesday. This "batch and schedule" approach was much more efficient than writing one email at a time throughout the week.

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The Bigger Picture: Cold Outreach as a Career Skill

I want to zoom out for a moment. This post has been tactical - subject lines, templates, timing. But the underlying skill is something much more valuable: the ability to reach out to strangers and start professional relationships.

This skill does not expire when you land your next job. It is the same skill you use to find mentors, build partnerships, recruit for your team, and navigate your career over decades. The engineers who advance fastest in their careers are not always the best coders - they are the ones who can communicate, connect, and create opportunities for themselves.

If you are currently building your career as a software engineer, cold outreach is one of the highest-leverage skills you can develop. It applies whether you are a junior developer looking for your first role or a staff engineer exploring your next move.

The 47 emails I sent did not just get me 3 interviews. They built 11 new professional relationships. Three of those people I am still in touch with today. One of them eventually became a colleague when I joined the company. The interviews were the immediate payoff. The relationships were the long-term investment.

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Final Thought

Somewhere right now, there is an engineer with the perfect background for a role at their dream company. They are going to spend 30 minutes filling out an application form, uploading their resume, and retyping their work history into 15 separate text fields. Their application will enter a queue of 800 others. A keyword-matching algorithm will scan it in 0.3 seconds and route it to the rejection pile because it does not contain the phrase "CI/CD pipeline orchestration."

Do not be that engineer. Find the human on the other end. Write them a real message. Tell them why you are interested and what you can bring. It takes 10 minutes instead of 30, and it works 5x better.

Forty-seven emails. Three interviews. Two offers. The math speaks for itself.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is it okay to cold email a recruiter?

Absolutely, and most recruiters actually appreciate it. Recruiting is fundamentally a people-finding job. When a qualified candidate reaches out directly, it saves the recruiter time they would have otherwise spent sourcing candidates on LinkedIn or sifting through application portals. The key word here is "qualified." If you are a junior frontend developer emailing a recruiter about a Staff ML Engineer role, that email will be ignored and may even leave a negative impression. But if your background is genuinely relevant to roles they are hiring for, a well-crafted cold email is welcomed by the vast majority of recruiters. I have spoken with several FAANG recruiters about this topic, and their consistent feedback is: "We love hearing from qualified candidates directly. What we don't love is generic mass emails that are clearly being sent to 200 people." Put in the effort to personalize, target the right person, and clearly articulate your relevance, and your email will be received positively.

How do I find a recruiter's email address?

There are several reliable methods, and I recommend using them in combination. First, check their LinkedIn profile - many recruiters include their email in the "Contact Info" section, the "About" section, or even their headline. Second, use email finder tools like Hunter.io (25 free searches per month), Apollo.io (free tier available), or Clearbit. These tools can verify whether a specific email address exists at a company domain. Third, use pattern matching: once you know a company's email format (e.g., firstname.lastname@company.com), you can construct the email address from the person's name. Most companies use one of three patterns: first@company.com, first.last@company.com, or firstinitiallast@company.com. Hunter.io can tell you which pattern a specific domain uses. Fourth, check the company's engineering blog or team page - sometimes contact emails are listed there. If all else fails, reaching out via LinkedIn is a perfectly acceptable alternative. In my experience, about 70-75% of targets had findable email addresses using the combination of LinkedIn and Hunter.io.

What should I say in a cold email to a tech recruiter?

Keep it to four key elements, and keep the entire email under 150 words. First, state who you are and your most relevant qualification in one sentence, including a specific number or metric: "I'm a senior backend engineer at [Company] where I built a payment processing system handling $2B in annual transactions." Second, connect your background to their specific open role or team: "I noticed you're hiring for the Payments team, and my experience in exactly this domain is why I'm reaching out." Third, provide a quick snapshot of your most relevant credentials - years of experience, core technologies, and one noteworthy accomplishment. Fourth, make a small, specific ask: "Would you be open to a 10-minute call this week?" Do not include a cover letter, a life story, or a bulleted list of every technology you have ever touched. The goal of the email is not to get hired - it is to get a 10-minute conversation. Keep that goal front and center, and strip out everything that does not serve it.

How many follow-up emails should I send?

Send exactly two follow-ups after your initial email, for a total of three touches. The first follow-up should come 4-5 business days after your initial email. Crucially, this follow-up should add new value - share a relevant project, blog post, or observation, not just "bumping this to the top of your inbox." The second and final follow-up should come 5-7 business days after the first follow-up. This one should be a graceful close: express continued interest, acknowledge they are busy, and leave the door open for future contact. After three unanswered emails, stop. Sending a fourth email crosses the line from persistent to annoying, and it can damage your professional reputation. In my experience, 36% of positive responses came from follow-ups rather than the initial email - so following up is absolutely essential. But more than two follow-ups yields rapidly diminishing returns and increasing risk of irritating the recipient. If three emails get no response, the answer is no, and you should redirect your energy to the next target on your list.