You send an email to the decision-maker. Three days later, you get a response - but it's not from them. It's from someone else on their team with a message like "Hey, forwarding this to you - can you take a look?" or "Sarah asked me to handle this."
This is either the best or worst thing that can happen in a cold email campaign, depending on how you respond. Most people panic, assume they've been rejected, or send an awkward follow-up that kills the deal entirely. The reality is simpler: the email got passed to someone else because it's relevant to them. Your job now is to re-orient without looking confused.
Why Your Email Got Forwarded (And What It Actually Means)
The forwarded response tells you something important - your original email was interesting enough to share. It wasn't deleted. It wasn't marked as spam. Someone thought it was worth passing along. That's a win.
The forward usually happens for one of three reasons:
- It's out of scope for the original recipient. You emailed the CMO, but the email is actually relevant to the VP of Operations or the demand gen manager. They forwarded it to the right person.
- There's a legitimate workflow reason. Your original contact owns budget approval or final sign-off, but they need the day-to-day owner to evaluate first.
- They're interested but busy. They forwarded it to someone who has more bandwidth to dig in right now.
In all three cases, your email made it past the initial filter. The new person reading it is doing so because someone they know recommended it. That's a powerful signal.
How to Respond When You Get Forwarded
The mistake most people make is treating the forward like a rejection and either going silent or sending a desperate "just checking in" email. Both kill momentum.
Here's what actually works:
1. Acknowledge the forward directly, but stay brief.
Your new contact didn't write the original email - they're seeing it for the first time through someone else. You need to reset the context without repeating everything. A one or two sentence acknowledgment that shows you understand they're the relevant person does this.
Thanks for grabbing this from Sarah - appreciate her thinking of you for this. Since you own [their specific function], I wanted to jump in directly.
This tells them: I know you're the right person, I'm not confused about who I'm talking to now, and I respect their time enough to start fresh.
2. Give them one specific reason this matters to their role, not a generic pitch.
The original email probably included context about the business problem. The new person doesn't need that rehashed. They need to know why their specific department or function should care. This is where most people fail - they just forward the original email and add "FYI" at the top.
If you originally emailed about how your service reduces customer churn, and it gets forwarded to the Head of Customer Success, you pivot:
The reason I thought of you specifically - most of the teams we work with are spending 40-50% of their CS bandwidth on reactive churn issues. If you're dealing with the same thing, I have a pretty simple framework that cuts that down to 20%.
Now you're speaking directly to their problem, not repeating a generic company pitch.
3. Propose a small, specific next step.
Don't ask them to take a call with your whole team or review a 20-page deck. You haven't earned that yet. Give them a micro-commitment that takes less than five minutes.
Are you open to a quick 20-minute call next week to see if there's a fit? If not, totally understand - I know the timing might not be right.
This isn't vague. It's: the call is 20 minutes (not open-ended), it's next week (specific timeframe), and you're explicitly giving them permission to say no. People respond better to clear constraints and permission to decline than they do to wishy-washy asks.
A Complete Response Template
Here's what a full response looks like when your email gets forwarded. Assume your original email went to the VP of Sales about a prospecting tool, and it got forwarded to the Sales Operations manager:
Hey [Name], Thanks for grabbing this - much appreciated. Since you own the tools and workflows on your team, I wanted to address this directly. What I'm running into with most teams like yours is that their reps spend about 6-8 hours a week on manual prospecting work that a good workflow system could cut in half. We've built something specifically designed for that - takes about 2 weeks to implement, zero engineering work on your end. Worth a 20-min call next week to see if it makes sense? I can do Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon. Thanks, [Your name]
Notice what's happening here: you acknowledge the forward, you address their specific role (tools and workflows), you give them a concrete number (6-8 hours), you explain what you do in one sentence, and you ask for a tiny commitment with specific options.
This isn't a rejection. This is a redirect, and you're handling it like someone who knows what they're doing.
When to Walk Away From a Forward
Not every forward is worth pursuing. If the forward comes with a note like "we're not the right fit" or "we already use X," that's different. That's feedback. But a simple forward with no context? That's a green light.
The one exception: if you get forwarded to someone three levels down who has no buying authority, that's often a polite brush-off. A junior analyst getting "can you look into this?" is different from a manager getting "this might be relevant to your team." You can feel the difference in the tone. If it's clearly a dump, move on.
Why This Matters For Your Overall Campaign
Forwards are actually a sign that your original email was specific enough to route internally. Generic emails get ignored. Relevant ones get shared. So if you're getting forwarded a lot, it usually means your targeting and messaging are close to right - you're just talking to the wrong person in the org. That's fixable in your next batch.
For more on getting the targeting right in the first place, check out our guide on emailing the wrong person. If forwards are happening, but you're still not converting, it might be how you're framing your offer.
The Real Challenge: Doing This at Scale
Everything above is straightforward if you're doing this yourself with 50 emails a week. You can hand-craft each forward response, you can research the new person's role, and you can pivot your pitch in real time.
The problem hits when you're running 500+ emails a week across multiple campaigns. Forwards are coming in constantly. Some need to go to your sales team. Some need research on the new contact. Some need a new angle entirely. Without the infrastructure to track who got forwarded to whom and why, you end up sending generic responses that tank your conversion rate. That's where most teams fall apart - not because they don't understand the strategy, but because they don't have the system to execute it consistently.