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How to Use Humor in Sales Emails
Say goodbye to boring, old format and generic sales emails, and welcome the new age of email marketing. Humor is considerably the best marketing charm, not because it is the best medicine but because most people like and associate with funny brands. With over 306 million emails being sent and received daily, getting your clients to notice your email is becoming increasingly harder. However, spicing your email marketing campaign with some humor gives your company some personality and helps stand out from the competition.
Unfortunately, not all forms of humor suit every brand, and the template used by Book of Ramses may not appeal to your audience. Therefore, before taking up the humor in your email marketing strategy, ensure that you get the right inspiration. Below is a guide on integrating humor into your email marketing campaign and some email marketing examples for inspiration.
- Use Familiar Humor
Like any other email marketing tip, it is best to play safe when using humor in your email marketing service. Otherwise, all the benefits of email marketing can easily be washed away by inappropriately used humor. Therefore, evaluate your target market and pick gags that align well with them. As the name suggests, humor should be familiar, safe, and popular.
Basically, use jokes that you can tell safely at a family dinner or while at work. If properly used, familiar jokes should evoke some nostalgia and make your audience quite sentimental.
A brand that greatly utilized this concept in its email marketing campaign is Mack Weldon, a popular men’s underwear brand. Here’s what the brand wrote:
“I’ll call you later.” Don’t call me later, call me dad.
If you can’t improve his jokes, improve his wardrobe. To make it easy, we put together four gift packs, carefully selected with dad in mind.
This sales email grabs the readers’ attention, thanks to its stereotypical wordplay and irony. The joke works well to all readers, those who find the joke funny and those who think it is total nonsense. The brand also transitions smoothly from the joke to a call to action without looking overly sales-y in this email marketing sample.
- Use Visual Humor
The use of visuals in the marketing realm is an increasing trend, and email marketing has not been left. Psychology experts claim that 50% of the brain becomes active from visuals, and up to 65% of people exposed to visual information remember it three days later. Without visuals, this number drastically drops to 10%.
Using visual humor as part of your email marketing tips makes it easy to connect with your audience. This explains why most brands and companies share GIFs, memes, and funny videos that evoke and express emotions. Such visual gags also contribute to the emails’ overall appearance and feel.
- Gallows Humor
Email marketing using gallows humor goes in the opposite direction and slightly contrasts the use of familiar humor mentioned above. Generally, this is dark and fatalistic humor that skews to the negative. While it may not appeal to the general audience, don’t be afraid of using it if it appeals to your target audience.
If you’ve watched Rick and Morty, this is the best show to source such inspiration. It also gives some clues of the perfect audience for this form of humor. Death Wish Coffee perfectly used gallows humor on their sales email by using the main character from Friday the 13th horror series.
- Puns and Wordplay
You can also use portmanteaus, puns, and other forms of wordplay in your marketing email subject line and content to inject some humor. However, you should use it relevantly to benefit your products and brand. The key is ensuring that your jokes come out the best way possible, as there is some potential that your jokes will induce eye-rolls instead of laughs.
- Absurdity
Like gallows humor, absurdity in your email marketing strategy may not be the best for all your audience. However, if you have previously giggled hysterically to an absurd joke or image, then you understand absurd humor. Old Spice is among the few brands that use this humor in their online commercials because it works excellently.
Before using absurdity, pepper your email with absurd scenarios, random facts, and basic silliness. Using this humor in your marketing email appropriately is a great way of asking customers to make purchases without being too pushy. This is something that you should adopt to avoid building a negative image on your target customers.
Essay Supply aced this humor strategy with their “Don’t be a pickle, order Essay” marketing campaign, where they used the pickle Rick character from the popular cartoon Rick and Morty.
Pro-Tips to Adding Humor to Your Mails
Keep in mind that jokes without marketing messages won’t have any impact. Therefore, ensure that the funny tones are persuasive enough. Also, use the following marketing tools to improve email marketing content:
- Flash Essay – the best email marketing tool for copywriting assistance
- Grammarly – helps keep your grammar and spelling in check so that the readers focus on the content and not mistakes
- LanguageTool – it is a Google Docs and Chrome plugin that checks your writing across many languages
- Hemingway Editor – this is probably the best email marketing software if you want error-free, humorous, and easy-to-read content.
Bottom Line
Using humor in your email marketing campaign is a great idea if you want to build trust, make your brand stand out, and evoke positive customer emotions. However, this doesn’t mean that all your email marketing messages should begin with “knock-knock” jokes. Proper use of humor can make your email marketing messages memorable, increase open rates and conversions.
However, you should understand your audience and don’t deviate from the email marketing campaign’s purpose as you try making the content humorous. That said, which recent email marketing campaign from top brands used humor the best?
Author’s Bio:
Thomas Glare is an experienced copywriter and digital marketer with a master’s degree in media studies. He helps his clients identify their brand identity and core message, attract customers, and sell services. Thomas also loves blogging about marketing. It helps him to stay on top of all the emerging trends in the fast-changing world of advertising.