I received an email today with the subject “Re: Need a website“. It read:
Hey Bryan,
I sent you an email regarding “Website Designing” proposal recently to your
email address. I was wondering if you had a chance to peruse through it.Regards,
Miklos
and it was followed by the “original email” dated 2 days earlier.
That “original email” never existed.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this, but I’ve noticed this happening a little more often. I’m guessing that marketing studies have found that you’re more likely to open and read an email that is a “reply” to a previous message. It plays on your sense of guilt that you missed an email, that you rudely ignored an email, that the sender is really interested in helping you – when, in fact, this email is just a pretense.
A clever pretense, because I did, in fact, open and read this fake “reply”. But I also searched for the original email and, of course, there wasn’t one.
So, for me, this “reply” tags the sender as a fake who is trying to trick me – meaning, they’re now on my “sh**-list” and won’t get business from me.
On the other hand … it must work well enough because marketers are using this trick.
