ANYone who uses this 'tactic' is crossing the line...

I agree. I often use Re: to indicate the content of an original message (not a reply) to another person, or even a group.

I understand the point, and have received some messages from some marketers that are clearly intended to get you thinking they replied to one of your messages. I don't like that approach, although it is effective in getting my attention, which means it must work.

I have seen it used quite effectively by many online marketers.

For example: one marketer I know of was planning a launch of his new product on a particular date. The day before the launch he sent out an email with the subject line of "RE: Launch scrubbed..."

It got my attention and when I read the email he was informing everyone that he was pushing back the launch date because there were problems with part of the offer and he wanted everything perfect for the launch.

A BOLD young Goddess indeed.Would he prefer that we use the whole word "regarding"?

English Grammar 101: "Re" means and has always meant "Regarding"...

Usage Example: I reply to ad in the paper for a job. So I send off a cover letter along with my resume. In my cover letter I include something like this:

Re: Your Ad in the Toronto Star classified dated July 7, 2009, for the position of Web Developer.

capiche?

in short, I disagree with the OP that using Re is meant to deceive unless the sender writes: Re: your Recent Order, or Re: your recent email, when I clearly had no prior communication with the marketer

I have a small question... How is it deceitful if you know you never sent them an email to reply to in the first place?

Just wondering.


Now this I totally agree with.

Hey TW, are you deceiving and scamming us here 'cause you just used Re: in the subject line of your Re:ply?

Good times.

Cheers!

you are, of course, entitled to your opinion. as we all are. What seems like a scam to you may be perfectly fine to someone else. Personally, I think there are far worse deceptive marketing tactics.

Obviously you've never had any military experience.

RE: is used in message subject to indicate 'regarding'.

So is the entire military a scam?

Hi,

Lots of people saying it 'upsets' them and that it's 'shameful.' Lots of powerful emotions being discussed.

Whether the method is right/wrong, good/bad, brilliant/shameful why not find some kind of positive from this? I found one.

If a marketer is the type who would do those shameful things, which would in turn illicit an emotional response from you of a negative nature, which of these scenarios is better for you? -

1) they are not quite so smart, and they give you a glaringly obvious, giveaway, unmissable signal that you need to take the appropriate action - unsubscribe and avoid.

2) they are much smarter than that. They realise that it's much wiser to build rapore and trust slowly but surely, suck people in, maybe get a few small commitments off them to qualify them as someone who has accepted the rapore and trust and is ready to buy, and then when the time is right - bang! - hit them hard with the 'shameful' side of their marketing and take them to the cleaners for a whole bunch of money.

They realise that using their most shameful tactics to get better open rates is not as wise and powerful as playing it nice and trying to appear to be what you want them to be and saving that 'demonstration of shameful behaviour' to extract as many gains as possible at one strategically planned point in time.

Would you prefer that marketers who have the capacity and intention to do something within their marketing that in your eyes is 'shameful' stop doing 1) and start doing 2) instead?

By NOT unsubscribing, particularly if you also continue to buy, you are actually giving them stats that tell them that it works. You are encouraging them to annoy you more.

I don't say it to sound smug, but to help - I don't get upset about email titles and content as much as others around here. Perhaps that's because I only see annoying ones from a particular person once?

I just want to make sure I understand you.

So if I were to send out an email with the subject:

"RE: Amazon's Change To Tax Rates For Affiliate Marketers"

I'm trying to deceive my subscribers?

Okay. :confused:

His target must be dumb people then. I'm guessing you fell for it.

Hi --TW,

Yes I know you are sell-sell --TW

Well without going into the specific differences between persuasion and deception (see Blair Warren for that one) I would say that in many ways it's a thin line between the two, many seem to find it easy to slide across

Post three said -

I just picked up on that word to demonstrate that it causes an emotional response in some of the marketers discussing it here. Others get 'annoyed' by it.

In a nutshell, I'm saying, if they use RE in a deceptive way -

Don't complain about them giving you such an obvious signal that it's time to unsubscribe. It could be worse (see 2] in my previous post for an example).

Hi Sven,

Cheers again! That's exactly what I would like someone to do if my post helped them. That, along with realising that there are lessons everywhere, sometimes right in front of our noses, and often they are found by taking a negative and turning it positive, but they are also found by taking a step back, looking at things from a different angle and asking - 'what is the lesson here?'

I'm saying the lessons are - weigh up each list and try to find the point in the process where you want to 'hit them hardest' (using that term loosely) and risk losing them. Is it the subject line, the initial content, or later on in the relationship?

Also, don't allow other peoples' marketing to cause an emotional response. It tends to happen when one is thinking as a consumer rather than a marketer. Spend less time in that zone - it's cheaper, and the lessons are easier to find because one is less busy ranting about it (and only attracting others who agree) which leads nowhere except to ending up feeling like an annoyed consumer. Instead, one could be focused on finding the lessons.

I agree with the OP. I know what RE: is supposed to mean, too. But when it comes to email, unless it is in response to an email I sent previously, 99.999999% of the time, it IS just trying to trick me into opening it.

It used to piss me off, too. Now I just delete it unread, regardless who it's from. If I miss the greatest deal of the century by doing so, well, I am willing to risk it.

Susan

Personally, when I see that it is in fact a bogus email and not a real reply I delete it. There are so many eye catching headlines to use why take the chance of turning off your list you worked so hard to get with a cheap shot? I think we just tend to get lazy some times. Your list is your most valuable possession and should be treated like they deserve.

Hey Mike,

Not Fair! Not Fair!

You teased me with the headlines and now I have to go find them and read the stories.

Now you have brought this conversation up on a level where it is indeed positive and helpful. I appreciate you doing that.

Ken Leatherman
The Old Geezer

P.S. Re: above post. Please don't wombat me for implying you other folks did not make a good post, but then again ..........

The use of Re: at the beginning of a subject line is, assuming the part that follows is the (or a) primary subject of the message, grammatically correct. It is also proper business practice, as has been pointed out several times.

Yes, it's a safe bet that some people use it to get attention. It's just as safe a bet that some folks remember their 6th grade English and high school Business Communications classes and are doing things the way they were taught is correct.

When you can read their minds, you can say whether that one signifies inappropriate intent. Again, assuming the content relates to what follows the Re:.

The suggestion to unsubscribe if something offends you that much was correct. You don't need to explain your personal preferences to anyone. I would add that one should try not to be so easily offended.

In response to Amy's remark: Yes, a womback is usually appropriate.

Re: the discussions of persons vs people... The generally accepted usage is for 'persons' to refer to a fairly limited group of individuals (the persons involved in Saturday's robbery), while 'people' normally refers to a broader and/or less defined group (people who like cheese).

That is not a hard and fast rule, but it will provide useful guidance in choosing which of the two to employ in a given circumstance.

Razer, RE:ally?

Hey, if they flunked English, that's a problem. Just not MY problem. (I could see that mistake for ESL speakers, mind you.)

The word "scanning" was appropriate in the use you corrected. If you're going to wombat, get it right. Otherwise, you leave yourself open to being corrected for incorrectly correcting someone's correct usage.

If you wish to accuse me of being semi-educated, feel free. I suggest taking a look at Merriam Webster's list of definitions before jumping off that cliff again, though.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scan

Or, if you wish a more authoritative source, please note the first definition in the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary:

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/scan

Feel free to wombat the editors of the OED. I'm sure they, too, will feel chagrined to discover their woeful definitional shortcomings.

Think about what you're saying before you challenge someone on such small things in the future, eh? There's a good lad...

'Skim' is also technically correct, by the way, but not as precise in connotation.


Paul (Onslaught),

Re: "What the hell is a wombat?" It all started in 4th grade...

http://www.talkbiz.com/wombats


Paul

Well, that was a rollercoaster ride!

First of all, what Razer Rage said here

I wouldn't do this myself but I don't see how it shows a lack of marketing skill. A subject line that converts way better than any other will get used by a lot of people, regardless (should that be re:less?) of whether it is misleading.

It is about business models. Some marketers go the churn and burn route. They get loads of unsubscribes and replace them with fresh cannon fodder every day. To them it's a numbers game and developing a relationship is not on their agenda.

However repugnant that model is, it doesn't mean people using it are lacking in marketing skills.

I'll have to take issue with Paul Myers here

re: ESL/EFL speakers who have gone through formal courses.

Many foreigners know English grammar better than native speakers.

In the days before I was a teacher a German guy asked me

"Would that be a gerund or the present participle?"

"Ugh, yeah, er . . . the first one . . . ?"

I had no bloody idea because at school my whole grammar education consisted of "a noun is a naming word, a verb is a doing word and an adjective tells us more about the noun".

One of the reasons British people have difficulty learning a foreign language is because they have no idea about grammar. In many other countries, learning the grammar of the language is a top educational priority.

That's not to say you should become anal about grammatical correctness. Grammar fiends find it almost impossible to learn a foreign language well because of analysis paralysis.

Any student who has reached pre-intermediate level will know about 'scan' and 'skim'. It is a fundamental reading skill that is taught in all modern ESL/EFL coursebooks. Generally, students are told to 'read for gist' (skim) and then 'scan' for specific information.

This definition is in all the literature of ETS (based at Harvard University) ETS: Educational Testing Service ? Home and University of Cambridge Cambridge ESOL: Exams

Yes, the meanings or usage of words change over time and they don't always have the meaning we think they have.

In Shakespeare's day, "nice" also meant trivial as in

Why are people getting so het up about something as nice as the meaning of "re:"?

Before the late Michael Jackson "bad" meant the opposite of good.

If you have an interest in the changing meaning and usage of the English language you should check out the British National Corpus

[bnc] British National Corpus

Over 100 million words of real, spoken and written English
Researchers using the corpus actually found that some things taken as gospel by grammar books were not how people actually used the language.

Language changes all the time and just because somebody uses a word differently doesn't necessarily mean they have "slaughtered the term".

There are so many Englishes in the world today, and new ones developing all the time. Who's to say which one is 'correct'?

I had students in London who refused to have an American, Irish, Scottish or Australian teacher because they "didn't speak correct English".

Maybe they didn't speak 'correct' English (), but they spoke an English that could communicate with another English. They used some grammar and words differently but they weren't incorrect, just not British English.

Getting way off topic. Time to stop.

Martin

Hi,

At very real risk of repeating myself for the third time, multiple people are still suggesting that the way to 'control what we read' is to either 'not open' an email, or to 'delete it.'

I have never seen such a compelling argument for running an opt-in newsletter and have to admit that I never realised that there was such an aversion to using the unsubscribe button - which in turn makes it even more illogical that we get so many threads complaining about the content of opt-in emails.

Is it because people enjoy complaining so much, that they are scared to remove the source of the complaint from their lives?

{goes off to make some stickers for my bedroom door and ghetto-blaster - 'unsubscribing is not a crime'}

Ahhh, Kishor -- that is absolutely not true.

The only posts in this thread that have "re:" in them are the ones that *ARE* truly (legit) responses (replies) to the OP.

Therefore, the only re's in this thread are LEGIT re's, therefore they are NOT scams. Note: The op does NOT have re in it.

So, actually your post proves my point for me -- by showing the *difference* between legit re's and scam re's.

Cheers.

-- TW

Hi Kishor,

What, even this one?

That's crap. It's a crutch for lazy thinking and evasion.

It's also illogical. If the OP perceives it as wrong, that must be reality, based on your comments. Therefore, you've proved yourself... wrong?

Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. And it ignores the fact that we deal with others who have their own perceptions, which may conflict directly with our own, and thus affect our "realities."

There is nothing "creative" about an epistemological blank.


Paul

Suzanne,

On that one, I will second the motion, and move to smash the offenders with a large mallet, on their most sensitive parts.

That is an outright lie, and deserves pain.


Paul

Geez, catch a few hours of sleep and look what happens...

TW, it must have been second hand smoke, but what ever it was must have been strong. It muddled my brain into seeing something that wasn't there.

Factor that in, and the post never did make any sense, so I've deleted it. In the words of Maxwell Smart, "Sorry about that, Chief..."

Given the content of this thread, I don't think it's possible to say with absolute certainty that anyone using that convention has deliberately intended to deceive anyone. Such intent might be there, and one could collect anecdotal evidence in support of such an argument, yet I still don't believe such a statement can be absolute.

Perry Marshall just posted a snip of video on his blog where he calls a person's email box a very intimate space. I happen to agree with him. I think it's a large reason why email practices that rub people the wrong way elicit such emotional responses.

I'm one of those 50+ types who was taught to use "Re:" in business correspondence to telegraph the subject of a business letter. Given the intimacy of email and the common practice of client developers to use "Re:" on any reply, I will probably amend my use of the code in the future.

I don't want people seeing smoke where there is no fire.

Actually, according to some research, that video would likely only be effective if the people who jumped and died were similar to the potential jumper.

If you showed a middle-aged man with the notion he could fly videos of women, teens, or children hitting the ground, his brain would very likely tell him that it didn't matter; he was different. Show him videos of other middle-aged men painting the concrete, and the message very likely would get through.

I once received the snail mail equivalent of that -- and it made me chuckle...

It was a POSTCARD marked "CONFIDENTIAL."

Cheers.

-- TW