Testing the “Do You Hate Me?” Subject Line

Welcome to another Email Experiment. This time we're talking about the controversial ”Do you hate me?” subject line. 

Keep reading to find out what it is, what happened when I sent this email to my list, and if I'd ever do it again or recommend you try it.

What is the “Do you hate me?” email

This week I tested out the “Do you hate me?” email, which as far as I can tell is something that originated from Ryan Levesque, the guy behind the Ask method. He has a blog post on his site about different email subject lines to try. He also includes the “Do you hate me?” email in this blog post with the full body of the copy of the email to send. Here’s that link: http://askmethod.com/blog/my-top-20-email-subject-lines/

Ryan Levesque recommends sending this email after a launch as a way to get feedback from your audience. You send this email with the subject line: Do you hate me? It's meant to be shocking. It's meant to grab attention. It's meant to get people to actually open and respond to you.

The gist of the email is to say something like: I saw you didn't buy. Was it something I said? Was it something I did? Do you hate me?

Ryan recommends doing a little emoji like a winky face to kind of let people know that you're joking. You’re not seriously thinking that they hate you. The point of sending that email is to get people that were not engaged in your launch didn't buy to respond back and tell you why they didn’t buy so you can make changes in your messaging and your marketing next time you launch.

I originally learned about the "Do you hate me?” email from Tarzan Kay — another copywriter. (I didn't actually know about Ryan Levesque’s strategy until I started researching for this post to see what else there was out there about the “Do you hate me email?”)

Tarzan recommended using this as a subject line for a scrub sequence. That’s the sequence you send to subscribers who have gone “cold” and are no longer opening or engaging with your emails. You want to try and re-engage them, so you send them the “Do you hate me?” email.

Because it's such a shocking email subject line, the theory is that even unengaged people will see that in their inbox and open it and either make the decision to stay in your list or just unsubscribe.

Tarzan did share a warning to expect to get strong responses from this email. It's a polarizing email with a purposely polarizing subject line.

Sending the “Do you hate me?” email

So I used this as a scrub email and sent the subject line: ”Do you hate me?” The body was just something like: I noticed you haven’t been opening my emails for a while. Is it something I said? Something I did? Let me know if you would like to stay on by clicking here or unsubscribe if you're not interested anymore.

Let's get into the results of that email. I sent it to a cold segment of my list, so it was people that were not engaged. The open rate was low, but it was expected for that segment.

The open rate for this email was 12%. When I do a scrub sequence, I usually do a series of three emails to give people a few chances to see that before I just delete them from my list.

At 12%, this email did have the highest open rate of all three of the scrub emails I sent. The other two I sent had a 9% and 10% open rate.

The point of this email was to get people to either click to stay on my list or unsubscribe. I had 2 people click to stay on my list and I had 4 people unsubscribe. 

And of those unsubscribes, I did have one person email me back and her message was brutal. This is the reply I got:

“Okay, I have to say I was totally taken aback by the subject line. It sounds like a sad codependent girl who had a boyfriend leave her and she needs constant reassurance. YIKES! That subject line made me unsubscribe.”

So, yeah, that's the kind of strong response you might get from sending this email. But even though I went in knowing that I might get these kinds of responses, I wasn't really prepared for that level of roasting. Getting that response didn't feel very great and it didn't really make me want to send that email again.

Is “Do you hate me?” the most effective subject line?

But I think it's interesting to compare this to the last scrub sequence I did. I scrub my list at least once a year. This particular one I did in 2018. Then last year I scrubbed my list again and I sent a different email. I want to show the results of that just to kind of help you compare and see if the “Do you hate me?” email is more effective than any other subject line you could use.

So the next time I scrubbed my email list for the first email instead of using the “Do you hate me?” subject line, I used the subject line: “Do you still want to hear from me?” The rest of the email content was the exact same. The body of the email was the same. The call to action was the same too. And the open rate was 12.3% — so basically the same thing. 

Yes, this is a very small sample size — just me and my email list. But in this experiment, this magic subject line didn't perform drastically better just because it was so shocking. 

Would I send this email again?

So would I ever send the “Do you hate me?” email again? Honestly, I probably wouldn’t. It's not just because I'm a super-sensitive marshmallow that can't handle harsh feedback. 

This is just a personal preference for me (your experience might vary with this kind of email), but I personally don't like sending email subject lines to be shocking just for the sake of being shocking. 

Normally this is not something I would send and I was sending it because it was like an email marketing tactic that a mentor recommended that I was trying. But it felt like a tactic. It didn't actually feel like something I'd send, something I'd say, or how I would actually market my business.

That's where the “Do you still want to hear from me?” felt a lot more natural to me. And even for the Ryan Levesque email where you’re asking for feedback, you can get a similar result with a different subject line. I've asked my list for feedback using the email subject line: “Can you do me a favor?” That worked great. 

The other thing I don't love about this (and the person that sent me that email reply really hit on this is) is this subject line does sound really needy. And it makes everything about you. 

When I think about someone that hasn't been engaging with my emails for a while, there are so many reasons that they would not be reading my emails that have nothing to do with me. They could be busy. They could be dealing with health issues. They could be dealing with family issues. They can be having really difficult stuff going on in their life. Then I come in here like, ”Do you hate me?” 

To me, that just feels bad to put that on someone. Like if you're not reading my emails it must be because you don't like me anymore. Tell me if you like me. 

I get where that person was coming from when she sent me that feedback. And when I think about it that way and I think about how I want to approach my email list and how I want to approach my audience, I don't want to make it always about me. It's really about them.

Would I recommend sending the “Do you hate me?” email

So would I recommend you send a “Do you hate me?” email? No, not really. I'm all for experimenting with your email list. (I mean, obviously — I do it all the time with my own!) So if you want to give it a try go for it.

But is it a magic subject line that just totally unlocks your list and gets tons of engagement and gets like 100% open rates? No, it's not. And if you do try it, just be prepared for some tough feedback and some strong responses, especially if you're sending it to a bigger segment of your list. 

Another thing — if you do send this email out to your main list or a bigger segment of your list, be prepared for unsubscribes. I sent this to a cold segment of my list that was probably going to unsubscribe anyway, and if they didn't engage at all, I was going to delete them from my list.

If you have people that are engaging with your list and are liking your emails regularly and then you throw this “Do you hate me?” email at them, it might turn people off so much that they unsubscribe. If you do decide to try out this email expect a much higher unsubscribe rate as well.

So that is my experience with the “Do you hate me?” email. If you want to be part of my next email experiment, get on my email list. Sign up below!