Confusing Email Subject Lines

I’ve seeing this more and more from different marketers, at first I thought hey that’s pretty clever and actually I even tried it once myself and boy did I hear about it.

What am I talking about?

Email subject lines that make the email recipient think they’ve earned a commission, or gained access to a membership site or receiving a download for a product.

The one subject line that I used was “where can I send your check?”

I sent this to my affiliates about a promotion I was running. It did the trick it got people to open up the email, but I received several “hot” emails where the affiliate thought they were receiving and affiliate commission and was not that happy that I’d “tricked” them into opening the email.

Fortunately I didn’t lose any affiliates over that and I’m sure I won’t be trying that again 😉

Here are a few others I’ve seen recently that run along the same lines:

“RE: Your Username and Password” – inside the email you get an access link that takes you to a sales letter.

RE: Your Order – again straight to a sales page

RE: Download this now…

And so on etc. I think you’ve received many of these yourself. I will say however that using the RE: can be a good thing when used correctly, for example, when you are resending the same email a second time. I’ve had good results doing this because in some cases your email just does not make it through the barrage of emails and by sending a second time with the RE: seems to make a difference.

I will put something at the beginning of the original email like “I’m resending this email just in case you missed it I felt it was important that you received this message.”

I’m curious what your thought is on the whole email subject line confusion thing. Do you feel it is confusing, acceptable or feels cheap and deceitful?

Put your thoughts in the comments below – thanks.