This is what I respond to:
First the product had to be something I am already interested in. I may have signed up for a freebie or to test a product. They email me offering a healthy discount but give me a couple of weeks to think about it (this takes the pressure off and gives me time to ask any questions I may have). I may buy then but may want time to think it over. In my busy life and maze of emails I do need a reminder. I sit on it for a while and then get an email two days before the offer ends and I have the fresh reminder to take action. I know by then if I really want it and either buy or I don’t but often I have.

So what if my queries are not answered in time? I don’t buy and get rather sceptical about the quality of service if I had. In a word (or five) “They loose me for good”

I don’t like or respond to repetitive countdowns and usually end up deleting all emails I see from this person before I read them. As for the html web page countdowns – my first response to one of those was “this is dodgy!” To me they shout ‘liar’.

If something is news worthy and there’s already a degree of rapport, credibility, and trust developed between you and the person you’re sending your email to; you can get right to the point early on.

That said, it’s not like you’re putting an irresistible carrot under someone’s nose or doing anything that would indicate they would be foolish to ignore or turn down your offer.

That would be totally non-professional, and also rude.

There are legitimate reasons for creating a sense of urgency, and there are those that are simply hype. A good rule of thumb is to know your email audience. Recognize what you already have in common with them and what status your relationship is with them.

When things are genuinely time sensitive then do your best to give your recipients ample time to review and to make a non-pressured informed decision. Respect them by not sending minute by minute or hour by hour countdowns that pressure them. That just looks like a typical mainstream desperate hard sell tactic.

Treat people you don’t have a genuine relationship with respectfully and take time to get to know one another and especially their personal wants and needs before you start sharing urgency flavored messages. Unless of course you do have something unique and special that you already have a good idea that they would most likely be interested in based on the type of lead and what they were looking for originally would make sense from their perspective.

The reason I would read all the emails regardless of the subject lines that I get from AWeber; is simply because there’s a trust factor and it’s clear that AWeber has both or our best interests in mind for a long term mutually beneficial relationship.

Your comments are quite welcome here!

I had an experience this past weekend that I think relates to what you’re saying about never-ending discounts (i.e. when is a sale really over?).

I went to a retail store to purchase something on Saturday and they claimed they were having a one-day sale… big red tags on products, banners draped from the ceiling, etc.

Partly because I was curious, and partly because I still didn’t like the price of the product I’d come to look at, I left and then went back Sunday. Voilà! Not only was the product still on sale, but the price had actually decreased further, and I bought it then. Sure, technically it was a different sale (the tags had changed) but from my perspective as a buyer, a sale is a sale no matter how you dress it up — I was just interested in the price.

The difference between that offline experience and the online equivalent, for me, is the cost associated with coming back later. To run my little experiment, I had to spend my time and fuel to drive to the store twice. That’s a cost with trying to bargain-hunt offline, and for many, that cost will prevent them from finding out that the price went down the next day, and from that urgency backfiring on the retailer.

Online, those "bargain-hunting costs" decrease significantly. The likelihood of someone holding out longer, shopping around more and finding out about further price drops (post-sale) increases, and the odds of an urgency tactic backfiring on a seller do too.

I enjoyed reading the feedback on applying urgency to your subject lines.

Sure there may be 20% off but is it 20% off the price it was selling for last week or 20% off the 40% inflated price.

I have found most to be untruthful ploys just to get someone like the person that bought the home study course for $1495.00.

I really can’t imagine anything about writing a newsletter worth that much money nor can I believe the seller would limit a $1494.00 product to 145 subscribers. I guess I’ve been around too long and seen too many scams to believe that which doesn’t sound right.

Everyone has been to the sites stating, "to guarantee this price you must purchase before the date below." The date always show the date of today and if you look at the html part of the page you will find a timer that changes the date every night at midnight and if you visit the same site 6 months from now, it will still be saying the same thing, only the date has changed.

When I get those urgency letters I delete them and most of the time I unsubscribe.

I guess I’m a little old fashon, I believe in telling the truth even if I don’t make a sale today because sooner or later untruths will catch up with the marketer that thinks a sale is worth lying to get and then where will he/she be?

You can delete this if you wish but you asked for comments and I thought I’d offer mine.

I won’t speak for Ron, but that could very well be the article he was referring to. Thanks very much for digging it up.

My take on these numbers is that using a subscribers first *and* last name produces the reverse of the desired effect in the mind of the subscriber. Instead of feeling like they’re being written to personally, they feel as if they’re being sent a form letter and disregard it like they would form letters they get through snail mail.

You’ll notice, however, that messages using only a subscriber’s first name in the subject line achieved a very respectable 40.9% open rate.
Meanwhile, "[n]ewsletters sent without personalization of any type in the subject line generated average open rates of 28.9%."

There is an art to writing messages… Urgency is a great tool *if its used tastefully and appropriately*. We seem to agree on this.

Subject line personalization *can be* very effective — as you can see from these numbers — if its done right.

We use personalization in some of our messages for our campaigns with this in mind.

I remembered from the top of my head that I was reading something about names in the subject line on AWeber. I found a News Headline from two years ago.

http://www.aweber.com/news/newsletter_statistics_for_best_open_clickthru_and_delivery_rates_1250.htm

It says 19% of the emails had the first name in the subject line. It also said that the full name in the subject line decreases the open rate. I am not sure, if I was reading this one or another.

Anyway, I just looked in the folder, where I keep my received newsletters from the internet marketing fellows.

I scanned about 1000 messages and found that 43% use the first name in the subject line. In almost any case it is the first word. Some use it in each and every message.

I have the personal feeling that the top guys with salesmanship are the ones that don’t use the first name in the subject frequently or don’t use it at all.

It’s late and I am too lazy to dig any further.

1.) Build a list and a relationship with your list.
2.) If you use urgency as a marketing tactic, stick with your commitments.

I think most are stating that they would tend to respond to urgency if they had respect for the individual that sent the urgent e-mail (someone they trust and know).

The other key element is to stick to your guns and cut it off when you say you will and make sure that the offer "truly" never happens again.

I understand that there’s now some software that some folks are using to coincide with this type of marketing that helps to keep your promise of a deadline and never seeing the offer again. I would think, if this software really can do that, that this would be a smart thing to do. Make it dummy proof.

Like anything, I think it’s all about the "tact", in your "tactics". If you wouldn’t respond to your own marketing, why would they?