5 ways to Induce Humor in your Email Marketing!

In the world of today where people are getting busier everyday and life is getting more and more complex and complicated, one thing that always puts a smile across our face is humor. Humor never fails to amuse you and the best thing about it is, it can bring about a smile on to our faces in the worst of days. 

You might be having a bad day at office and then suddenly you come across a funny email or a meme on Twitter and even though you might not laugh out loud, you will surely smile a bit, even if it is just for a second. With that being said, it can be well understood, that everyone loves a taste of humor in their lives, no matter how their days are going. 

Humor and Marketing

As marketers, we often find ourselves struggling to connect with our audience. No matter how much we try to brainstorm and live by facts and figures, sometimes, ideas just doesn’t show up. It happens to all us and there in no shame in admitting it. But there lies shame in not finding a solution to this problem. 

One of the best ways to market your idea and sell whatever you are selling to your audience, is to add a bit of humor to your pitch. Crack a joke and make your readers and audience laugh, and it has been scientifically proven that people will be more inclined to listen to you when they are either smiling or in a good mood.

Now the question lies, how do we incorporate humor in our marketing strategies, or more particularly in our email marketing campaigns. As explained in a previous blog post, email marketing is one of the best and most efficient ways of getting new readers and holding on to them. 

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Thus in this post, I will teach you 5 ways through which you can initiate a marriage of humor and email marketing for a killer email marketing campaign.

Let’s Begin!

1. The Signup

Across all the websites you visit on a day to day basis and all the content you read on these websites, almost 85% of them want you to sign up to their newsletters. The most popular strategy involves a show of numbers and applying the psychological principle of peer pressure.

It goes something like this, “Join over 30,000 of your peers and get our bi-weekly newsletters, delivered straight to your inbox.” While this is a very popular strategy and it works in most cases, a lot of these people use this and therefore in recent times, this strategy has proved to become less effective. 

If you want your audience to laugh or simply put a smile on their faces when they are on your website, one simple strategy you can apply, is to ask your audience to signup to your newsletters in a humorous way. 

Allow me to explain; instead of applying the principle of peer pressure as explained above, try telling something like, “Get free laughs; approximately once a week.” This slightly humorous statement points out two things to your readers:

1. First, that you intend to keep all your communications light and make them laugh.
2. Second, you intend to send one funny email once a week.

And data has proven that this strategy does work. 

Try it out!

2. The Body Says It All!

In email marketing, there are lots of things that a marketer struggles with. But one aspect that tops it all, is getting your subscriber to read until the end of your email. 

A recent study proposed that the millennials of today, have an attention span, similar to that of a goldfish, and for your information, that is only 3 milliseconds. So if you want to hold your reader’s attention, you better figure out a way to start off your emails with something interesting. Something that instantly sparks their attention and promotes them to read until the end of the email. 

For example, Rahul Subramanian, a comedian from India, starts his emails with a joke. Yesterday he sent me an email, which started with the phrase, “ Today I fired my boss out of his own office.” While at first read, this might look stupid, he went to explain how he was invited to do a stand up show at his old office and in the process he took a dig at his old boss and former colleagues. The email was a short 3 minute read and he kept the entire email, light on the head and funny, which prompted me to read the email until the end.

Keeping your email light on the head and following a strategy of starting out the email with a witty line, can make the difference between your readers abandoning your emails and actually reading it until the end. 

3. When They Try to Leave You!

Sometimes it might happen that a member of your subscriber list isn’t happy with the content you are sharing and they have decided to move on. In the case of emails, this means a simple click on the unsubscribe button. 

As marketers we have all been in this situation, and believe me it is the worst. But what if, there is a way to hold on to these subscribers when they are leaving you. I am not indicating at forcing them to stay. What I am telling you is, say something humorous and remind them why they subscribed to your blog in the first place. 

For example, when you to try to unsubscribe from 1800 contacts, you get this message.

Not only does 1800 contacts include a lot of funny elements into their unsubscribe page, but they also give you an option to only update your email address. With this message, they achieve two things; first, they reduce the number of people who come to the unsubscribe page and actually end up unsubscribing and second, they give you an option to update your email address and continue receiving their great emails.

Another company that does this well is Groupon. 

When you visit Groupon’s unsubscribe page, you are welcomed with this message.

Not only is this message utterly hilarious, they even give you an option to “Punish Derrick” and make a troll out of him.

As you can understand, with this page in place, Groupon has drastically reduced the number of subscribers, who want to unsubscribe. 

4. The Subject Line

According to a recent survey by Convince & Convert, more than 35% of people, decide whether or not to open the email, solely based on the subject line. If the subject line is interesting, they end up clicking and reading through the email and if it is not, well, you guessed it right, the email gets abandoned. 

As marketers we successfully write engaging emails, and promote people to read until the end, but more than often than not, we struggle with giving the email a proper subject line. Giving a great email, a bad subject line is similar to composing a bad email altogether; because the fact remains that if your subject line is bad and not intriguing enough, none of your subscribers will get motivated to click on the email in the first place. 

So, how to solve this issue?

You got it right. Humor!

Adding a touch of humor to your subject line, can massively increase your chances of subscribers actually opening your emails. For example, whenever I get emails from Patagonia, which is a company that sells outdoor gear, their email has the subject line, “Sleeping Around!”

Now this might not be funny at first sight, but when you read the entire email, you realize that they are marketing their high end sleeping bags, which have unique features and thus allows you to sleep anywhere and anytime. 

Simple, right!

Sleep around!

5. The Email Template

One thing that all marketers will blindly agree upon, is that a great email is made of a great email template. In this world of crazy competition, having a uniquely different and creative email template can be the difference between a great email copy and one that is not so much. 

Just take a look at this example from HubSpot. 

Not only is this email template unique, funny and appealing, it also makes an effort to understand the values of the reader and what they are trying to understand. 

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With a simple enough caricature, this email template proves to be the perfect one for a sales pitch. It will help you make your company stand apart from the competition and also distinguish yourself from your peers, who hold PhDs in sending boring emails. 

Tickle Yourself a Little

In today's world, everyone is getting more busier by the day and no one’s life is getting simple enough. Everything is way too much complicated, and in between all this, we forget the simple truth of life, that everything we want and desire are really simple. Like most things in life. 

Humor is a funny thing, and no matter how our day might look like, it never fails to put a smile on our faces. Thus, make it a point from now on, to add a bit of humor to everything you do; because at the end of the day, everyone loves a person who can make them laugh.

If you liked what you just read, don’t forget to like, comment and share this article with your friends and family.

 We can all make the world a better place, with a little bit of humor. 

Arpan Sarma

Signing Off