“You’re writing your daily email, aren’t you?”
Hayley’s voice floated in through the door of my study.
I stopped typing for a second. “Uh … yeah. How did you know?”
She popped her head around the corner.
“Because I can hear you sitting there laughing at your dumb jokes again.”
😂
Alas, it’s true:
I’m not a very funny guy in the traditional sense of the word.
(Although, my opinion of my sense of humour is a little higher than a copywriting mentor I once had, who read one of my emails and told me: “Don’t try to be funny. Be you.” Gee … thanks? Backhanded compliment much?)
But yes, my gags are lame. And I can’t tell a joke to save my life.
So, I can’t write the kind of emails that have you snorting out your coffee as you read them.
But precisely because of that, I double down on the only thing I know:
I write the things that make ME laugh.
Thus, as I’m sitting there writing out a story about my kids, or my wife, or what happened to me that day … I’m cracking up at the keyboard, thinking my jokes are the greatest thing ever.
Perhaps that’s narcissistic.
But for me, it’s a way of keeping my emails genuine.
And it makes sure that the people who would like me in person — and appreciate my dumb sense of humour — are the same people who appreciate me by email.
Perfect.
This is an extension of yesterday’s lesson about “being you”, for all the people who got that and turned up their noses at how “basic” it was.
‘Tis a principle that takes on many forms, my child.
One more thing:
Humour doesn’t have to be the only tone you strike in your copy.
It’s certainly not the only egg in my chicken.
(See, I just made that up and I literally have no idea what it means but I thought it was funny and now I am crying help)
But there’s a reason I use ‘funny’ most of the time.
Yet that is for me to know, and for you to find out.
So, if you would like to have the World’s Funniest Copywriter helping write your emails?
The waitlist for my services is this-a-way
Don’t worry … lame gags optional.
Daniel