Over Used Marketing Trick - apologies for the last email...

These idiots simply do not realise they are insulting the intelligence of someone who they have quickly lost as a potential customer.

I've seen a couple of people do this when it seemed to be genuine - or at least they had the nous to only do it once, making it look genuine.

But I too have noticed that more small-to-medium businesses doing this and sometimes I feel embarrassed for them. After all, if you've signed up for the newsletter, presumably you have some interest in their goods so why not just be clear and send a straight forward email letting people know that the offer, etc, has 24 hours left. Or just improve your marketing funnel a bit!

In today's marketing world, you need to be really creative, not to go straight to the junk box. Having passed that checkpoint, you need to stand out of some 10-20 messages being sent in business hours mon-fri, so your title must really be bold and non-spammy.

People are trying to impress their potential customers with some kind of innovative way of thinking...

There are some "nice try" messages, or something that is really interesting.

What are the type of messages you'd trash immediately, and what are those ones you'd open?

My options -

TRASHES:
- XYZ, see our picks for this week's SuperAwesomeStuff.com
- This week only, amazing sale up to 50%!

INTERESTING:
- Could your fridge be spamming your friends?
- XYZ, do you think your pet would like an extra treat in the post?

What's your opinion?

We send out a soft sales promo every month to our free listings, and have been doing it for years. In that time, have tried just about every variation in the subject field, but the one that has the highest open rate (the name of the game) is simply <business name>

Nothing else. At least that's what works for us. As for actual content, that's a different story

Interesting! I find my most successful subject lines are ones that are simply informative, no trickery or 'trying to induce curiosity'.