Are these email subject lines deceptive, clever copywriting or bad data at work?

AI-driven changes arriving in inboxes will put even more pressure on your email subject lines. Are you up for the challenge?

The practice isn’t widespread yet, but as more inbox users adopt Apple Mail with Apple Intelligence or Google’s own AI for Gmail, you can expect AI-powered automatic extraction to replace your preheader copy with content they pull from your email. .

While your subject line and preheader once worked in tandem to convince subscribers to open and respond to your emails, your subject lines will need more persuasion because you can’t control what appears in the preheader field.

The price of fraud

You might think you need to make your subject lines even more attractive to compensate for this loss of preheader copy, but be careful of crossing the line where cleverness becomes fraud. It is known to be thin.

Fraud can destroy trust. Your emails reflect your brand, and customers don’t do business with brands they don’t trust. A 2022 Gartner study found that 30.4% of subscribers would opt out of receiving emails whose subjects are inconsistent with the content of the message. Subscribers could also ignore them or report them as spam. This threatens the financial success of your email program and can even affect deliverability if spam complaints increase and email activity declines.

You may even face fines or other legal action under laws such as CAN-SPAM in the United States, Canada’s Anti-Spam Act (CASL), the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations of the UK. For CAN-SPAM alone, fines can reach $51,744 for each email policy violation.

Is it deceptive marketing, good copy, or a CRM gone rogue?

This is a question we have always had to answer with our topics. Inboxes are more crowded than ever, and subscribers’ attention is more distracted. We have to get people’s attention somehow, and sometimes stunts pay off.

However, these tactics are becoming more common. They could tarnish not only your brand name, but also email marketing as a channel.

Most tips on writing effective subject lines include at least a brief reminder not to trick or trick subscribers into opening the email. You’d think that would qualify as a generally accepted best practice by now. So why is my inbox filled with items like this?

• Did you forget something?
• RE: Your $100 credit.
• Your cart is waiting for you.
• RE: Your Cart — You Must See This Today!
• FWD: Your exclusive FREE SHIPPING notification.
• FWD: Do not open this email.

At first glance, most of them look like a legitimate item. They don’t have weird spelling, non-standard fonts, or excessive punctuation, all of which can be a sign of spam. But they have one thing in common. None of them stem from any actions I’ve taken or conversations I’ve had with the brands that sent them. I didn’t leave something in the cart, ask for a $100 credit, or get a free shipping offer from a friend.

That’s enough for me to classify these emails as misleading. They may not break the law, or they may qualify as a misdemeanor instead of felony-level fraud. No one tells me that I won a car or some other big prize. But they all come from brands I subscribe to and sometimes even buy from. Because they look fake, I don’t feel compelled to open the email.

I realize I might sound harsh in this assessment, but that’s because the stakes are getting higher for email marketers. Between AI content extraction and imageless image viewing, we have less control over the email experience than we think. And as consumers become increasingly suspicious of email that doesn’t look quite right, we need to be as transparent and honest as possible.

Of course, there is another explanation for the emails that appear to be using fraudulent tactics, which I hinted at earlier. Emails like this can indicate problems with your CRM platform. Does it create false matches between user IDs and behaviors such as abandonment or order confirmations?

Earlier this year, OpenTable mistakenly sent a restaurant reservation cancellation confirmation email to a group of its users, including myself. I was surprised because I used Open Table to snag a table at that same restaurant — 10 years ago. OpenTable sent a reassuring apology email a few hours later.

Not everyone who sends a misleading or deceptive subject line is a scammer looking to steal your personal information or trick you into thinking you’re getting a job when you’re not. We just need to find subject lines that excite or intrigue the imagination without our clients feeling cheated or annoyed when the email content doesn’t reflect the subject line.

5 categories of misleading headlines

This list does not include items for fraudulent emails, such as phishing or identity theft or obvious spam. Instead, these are five categories of titles that come from everyday retail brands. I subscribed to some of them and found others in Bird’s eDataSource database, which pixelates any emails or content that is 1:1 or personalized. None of them fall into that category.

One thing you might notice: a few of them might go into more than one category. Multiple violations, one would say!

1. Fake Quit Email: Swimwear for All (via eDatasource)

Case: “RE: Your order is pending”

This email commits a double sin: it’s a promotional email disguised as a response email. And this implies that you have an order waiting for completion or acceptance. Nothing in this email supports any interpretation. (See #3 below.)

Let’s think about the implications for a moment. Do you really want to worry your customers? Should their immediate thought about your email in their inbox be “Oh no!” I’d rather think “Oh wow!”

2. False forward: OneStopPlus (via eDatasource)

Title: FWD: $100 credit

Here’s another email that uses two deceptive tactics. “FWD” implies that this email is being sent by a person, perhaps someone from customer service, who is telling me that I have “free” money to spend. That’s what “credit” means to me.

However, I found that I had to spend a certain amount to get the “credit”. It’s a common retail tactic that skirts the line of decency. I interpret credit as something that I have earned and that I can exchange for something for free.

3. Fake leak/bug/oops email: Cernucci (via eDatasource)

Title: “FWD: code error”

Uh oh! Someone made a mistake and sent this email to the wrong person who then forwarded it to a whole bunch of other people who will now get a bigger discount than they should have! And you better not wait because it will be fixed soon, and you don’t want to miss out.

Well, no. It is another in a long line of false errors. A misdirected office memo is one look at this tactic. The second is a fake “oops” email that a brand sends to drum up interest in a promotional email. The email went to the wrong list. Either the website wasn’t working, or the checkout wasn’t working, or the offer code was wrong/broken/missing.

At one point an email saying “Oops!” in the subject line, it piqued people’s curiosity and elicited overwhelming responses. But they lost traction because brands overused them.

Note: “FOMO” or “fear of missing out” can be an effective persuasive tactic to get customers to take action instead of letting the email sit in their inbox. But you have to use it wisely. Otherwise, the tactic loses its effectiveness and customers will not trust you.

4. Fake abandonment/email resending: 8 Sleep (sent to me)

Subject: “Did you forget something?”

This email came at the end of a multi-email campaign for Cyber ​​Monday. All emails in this campaign looked pretty much the same, albeit with different discount amounts. This made me wonder if this email was another way to resend promotions that didn’t drive enough action the first time around.

While resubmissions are not a bad practice in themselves, they require special handling. I didn’t open any emails in this campaign, so I shouldn’t be considered a prime target for resending. It’s better to target customers who opened but didn’t click the email, or customers who clicked but didn’t buy.

Anyway, the subject line is misleading because it implies that I reviewed the brand via email, which I didn’t.

5. False answer: Ellos (sent to me)

Case: Fw: 50% OFF The code you requested

And now we come to an email that uses all of these scam tactics in one message:

1. Uses “fake forwarding” tactics. (See #2 above).

2. It looks like a “fake reply”, even though it doesn’t use “Re:” in the subject line, as the content of the email purports to be a private conversation between a fashion influencer and a brand representative.

3. As I mentioned, this looks like a private message that was mistakenly sent to the entire email list. As we saw in no. 2 above, it gives you the impression that you’re getting a peek at a great deal you’re not entitled to, so of course you’ll jump on it, right?

At first glance this seems effective. A hallmark of influencer marketing is the ability to share VIP offers with your audience, which builds your following. And the language is certainly conversational. Sounds like someone with a good Insta or TikTok following asked for a favor and got a favor.

But this strains credulity. I’m not even sure how this mistake could have been made with any of the email platforms I work with, even the simplest ones. Your customers don’t know that, of course. And maybe the brand has pulled off this trick. But at best it could be a one-time send. Repeating it makes you look either incompetent or untrustworthy. Either way, it can hurt your brand. By the way — I’m not Melissa, nor a fashion influencer.

Dig deeper: What Every Marketer Should Watch Out for in 2025

Should these email marketers go to jail?

No, because they are not trying to steal data. I don’t believe they are trying to do anything but push another sale. However, I am not a typical customer. I know what goes on behind the scenes.

If you send emails with a subject line like this, each one can save your brand share with your target markets. No one likes to be scammed unless it’s the first of April and then you’re ready to be scammed. When do you do your daily shopping? Not so much.

It also doesn’t stop at your brand. It can be spread throughout the channel. Email has a hard enough time getting respect. We should not contribute to it with our actions.

If you find it difficult to write headlines that attract attention and action, here is a better idea:

Go to your campaign history and create three lists: campaigns with the 10 highest open rates, campaigns with the 10 highest click rates, and campaigns with the 10 highest conversion rates.

You will probably find that these campaigns are not the same. I usually use this test to illustrate why relying on open rate to measure success is wrong, but here it can show you what’s more likely to drive your customers to action.

Whatever you do with the item, always make sure it supports your campaign message. The most benign, transparent, and honest subject lines won’t do you any good if your customers open your email only to find something completely different from what they expect.

Customer trust is hard to win and easy to lose. Inbox can be your reliable ally in the fight.