Can Stupid Jokes Make for Good Marketing Emails?

by Robert James Hardy · April 12, 2021

I know firsthand how difficult it can be to continually come up with new topics for your emails.

The first 20 are easy.

The next 30 aren’t too difficult.

The next 50 take work.

And once you’ve done a few hundred emails, you’re pretty sure you’re just writing the same things over and over again – most likely because you are.

If you want to keep your emails fresh, interesting and even exciting for your readers, then it’s time to step up your game and find something new to offer.

Which is why I thought of… stupid jokes.

Because who doesn’t love to hear a joke? Even if it’s one that makes us groan, we still enjoy the anticipation of seeing whether or not it’s funny, whether we laugh, and maybe even whether or not it’s good enough to share with others.

I know what when I receive an email from an individual or a business that says, “Joke enclosed,” I almost always open it, because… why not? I need more laughter in my life, and I’ll bet your readers do, too.

So how do you turn a joke into a marketing email?

That is the question.

First, let’s find a joke. I just did a quick search and found this one…

“When I asked my 3 year old niece Anna what she wanted for her birthday, all she’d say was “reading glasses.”

Thinking it must be some sort of preschool fashion trend, I bought her a pair with plain glass lenses.

A week later, I picked Anna up from daycare and asked where her glasses were.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “But they don’t work anyway.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, I still can’t read,” she sighed.

Ha!

Okay, I thought it was pretty funny.

How do we segue this into an offer? Let’s use the online marketing niche for our examples:

1: We could say something like, “Wouldn’t it be great if you could put on a pair of marketing glasses and suddenly know how to make sales on autopilot? This product is the next closest thing because…”

2: Or we could say, “As you see Anna took ‘reading glasses’ quite literally, which is exactly how I want you to take my guarantee on this product. I 100% absolutely, positively guarantee that when you follow the program, this is what will literally happen for you: …”

3: Perhaps we might go with, “Poor kid. Obviously, the glasses didn’t perform like the name, ‘reading glasses’ promised her. Have you ever purchased one of those, “Make X Money in X Days” programs, only to discover that what they really meant was, IF you have a website and IF you have a list and IF you have a product, then this will work?”

“Well with my $10,000 in 30 Days program, you don’t need any of that in place. In fact, you can be a total beginner and this program will still perform exactly as the name implies, with no catches and no disappointments.”

4: Last example: “I can’t promise you reading glasses, but I can do one better than that. This course will open your eyes to an entirely different way of thinking and doing business, resulting in you being more excited about your future than you have been since you were Anna’s age.”

All 4 examples need a little polish but you get the idea.

I took a random joke, typed it out and then came up with four segues into offers. Of course, this is no right or wrong way to do this and there are an infinite number of possibilities. In fact, if everyone reading this tried this exercise, we would have thousands of examples and no two would be exactly the same.

Here’s your assignment: Go online and find 3 jokes that make you chuckle or even laugh out loud.

Copy and paste them into your writing program and then come up with 3 segues into any product you are currently promoting or plan to promote in the future. If you don’t have a product, make one up.

The point is to see that you can indeed use almost anything interesting or entertaining to begin your emails, and then segue that into the message you want to convey. It might not even be to sell something, but rather to teach a tip, make an announcement or simply remind them that you stand ready to help when they need it.

Taking this to the next level: Keep a file of everything that catches your eye, whether it’s humor, news, off-the-wall ideas or whatever, and dig through this file when you need an opener for your next email to your list.