The investor asked good questions. You discussed where the strategy might fit, spent time on portfolio construction, and agreed to send more information. Then you followed up with: “Great speaking with you. Attached is our latest deck.”
Sound familiar? It’s a perfectly polite email, but almost none of the conversation made it into the follow-up. If the recipient forwards it to a colleague, that person gets the deck without knowing why the discussion was worth having.
Your follow-up should help the conversation continue, especially when you’re no longer there to explain it.
The person you met may need to discuss your fund with a colleague or bring it to an investment committee. They’ll have their own assessment, but you can make it easier to find the information that informed the conversation.
Start with the question or portfolio consideration that received the most attention. “You asked how the strategy’s short exposure behaved during the drawdown” is more useful than another paragraph introducing your firm.
Keep the language faithful to the meeting. A question about liquidity doesn’t mean the investor is comfortable with your terms, and discussing a potential portfolio role doesn’t mean they’ve decided the fund fits.
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Replace the generic opening in your follow-up with one sentence about the substance of the meeting.
Give a colleague who wasn’t there a reason to read the materials.
If an investor asked about capacity, sending your deck may not resolve the question. Even when the answer is in there, they still have to find it.
Identify the relevant page, table, or document, and explain what it addresses. “Pages 8–9 show how position sizes and trading volumes inform our capacity estimate” gives the reader a clear starting point.
If the available material doesn’t answer the question, acknowledge that and explain what you’ll provide. Sending a loosely related document can create another round of emails without moving the discussion forward.
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For each attachment, explain why you’re sending it and where to look.If you can’t connect it to the conversation or an agreed request, reconsider whether it belongs in the email.
A follow-up doesn’t need to make every issue sound resolved. It should accurately distinguish what you’ve answered from what still needs work.
For example:
“Attached is the monthly exposure history we discussed, alongside the attribution separating long and short contributions during that period. We’re still preparing the additional detail you requested on the recovery and will send it by Thursday.”
That gives the investor something useful to review now and a clear expectation for what comes next. It also helps anyone joining the discussion understand where things stand.
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Check your meeting notes for unanswered questions before sending.
State what you still owe the investor and give a delivery date you can meet.
Before sending, read the email as someone who missed the meeting. References such as “the issue we discussed” or “those numbers” may be clear to the original recipient but mean very little to their colleague.
The same applies to attachments. A filename that identifies the fund, document, and reporting period is easier to recognize later than “Presentation_Final_v7.” Check that the materials are current and that any shared links are accessible to the intended recipients.
Keep the email focused. Adding your full investment philosophy and every selling point that didn’t come up in the meeting makes the useful information harder to find.
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Apply the forwarding test: could the recipient pass your email to a colleague without writing an explanation above it?
If not, add the missing context and remove anything that distracts from it.
If you’d like to discuss how your team follows up with prospective investors, contact us. We’d be happy to talk through your approach, from what to send after the first meeting to how to keep subsequent conversations relevant.
The views expressed above are not necessarily the views of Thalēs Trading Solutions or any of its affiliates (collectively, “Thalēs”). The information presented above is only for informational and educational purposes and is not an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities or other instruments. Additionally, the above information is not intended to provide, and should not be relied upon for investment, accounting, legal or tax advice. Thalēs makes no representations, express or implied, regarding the accuracy or completeness of this information, and the reader accepts all risks in relying on the above information for any purpose whatsoever.