If you’re into email marketing, or even if you’re just on a lot of lists, you know that there are a lot of tactics that email marketers use to get you to open their emails. One of these tactics is the use of RE. There is more misinformation about the use of these two letters than just about anything else I can think of. So, this article is going to clear up some of that misinformation as well as discuss how effective or ineffective the use of RE is.

Let’s stat off by clearing up some misconceptions. A lot of people think that RE stands for responding to. For example, if somebody receives an email that says “RE: Your Income Plan” the person thinks that the email is responding to some email that THEY sent about and income plan when in fact no such email was ever sent. This in turn angers the receiver of the email because they feel that they are being deceived, or in some cases, made to open the email because they think it’s “legit.”

So let’s get this nonsense out of the way first. RE does NOT stand for responding to. It stands for regarding or in regard to. For example, if I were to send out an email today that had the subject “RE: The Yankees World Series Win” that means that the email is in regard to the Yankees winning the World Series and that I have something I want to say about it. It is in no way meant to be deceiving.

The reason that people believe that this email subject means what it really doesn’t is because of the email providers themselves. Whenever somebody DOES get an email back that is in reply to one they sent, the email providers stick a prefix of RE before the original email, so people assume it means a response to the email they sent. That’s why we have the problems with this subject that we do.

However, having said that, perception IS reality. In other words, if most people believe that RE means in response to because of the way email providers handle the use of it, then whether we as email marketers like it or not, we have to understand this and deal with it.

Therefore, to answer the question of whether RE works or not, you need to look at the segment of the population you’re sending emails to. How do THEY respond to it? Because let me tell you, each niche responds differently. Most marketers themselves respond very poorly to it because they look at it as a marketing tactic used to trick them and they don’t like it. In the meantime, somebody in the baseball niche might not even notice.

Ultimately, you need to test it and see if it works for YOU.

But be careful. There are a lot of folks out there who are sick and tired of RE.

RE: YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of not getting your emails delivered, read or opened? Sick of not making any sales from your email marketing efforts? Visit my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/emailmarketing/index.html and get your hands on 5 years of my personal experience with email marketing…experience that has earned me tens of thousands of dollars yearly.