welcome/confirmation message subject line

[JC Dill]

I recently started working for a website, members join and receive a 
welcome message that they have to reply to before they have full access to 
the site.  We are finding a high percentage of "less sophisticated Internet 
users" (e.g. AOL users, hotmail users) are re-requesting that we send the 
verification message again, and again, because the message that they 
receive they then mark as spam instead of opening and replying to 
it.  (This was verified by AOL, who looked at several user email boxes for 
us and found the missing messages in the user's spam boxes, put there by 
user action.  If anyone has a contact at Hotmail who could help check on 
Hotmail user behavior, we would love to talk to them too.)

For those of you who run lists that have a high percentage of 
unsophisticated subscribers, are you seeing similar problems with address 
verification by AOL and/or Hotmail users?  Have you reworded your welcome 
message subject line to improve the odds that the recipient recognizes the 
email as requested and one that requires action before they can join your 
list?  If so, what changes have you made that have helped with this problem?

Thanks!

jc