Forget boring. Your emails deserve better than ‘Monthly Newsletter’ yawns.
Marketers are often afraid to stray too far from professionalism, but sometimes, it’s all right to have a little fun with your email marketing. Your email subscribers will probably appreciate it, and it’s also more entertaining to create. That’s a win-win.
Using fun subject lines is the perfect way to infuse some playfulness into your marketing without becoming too casual. You get to show off your brand personality in just a few words, deepening your connection with your email subscribers. Plus, your promotional emails will be more enticing, which will hopefully lead to even better results.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to strike the right balance between professional and playful. Explore tips and tricks for making your subject lines memorable and more engaging.
Why fun subject lines matter
Don’t let the word “fun” fool you. From a brand perspective, fun subject lines are serious, too. They can significantly impact the success of your email marketing efforts. Here’s how.
Standing out in the inbox
In 2023, people sent and received nearly 350 billion emails per day. Even spread across billions of email users, that’s still a lot of emails clogging up the average person’s inbox.
No one has the time or inclination to read every email they receive. Instead, people scan their email inbox, reading the sender’s name, subject line, and preview text of each message to decide whether they’re even worth opening.
Your promotional emails are competing for attention with every other message in each recipient’s mailbox. If your message doesn’t stand out and make an impression at a quick glance, the recipients may never even open it to see the great content inside.
Further complicating matters is that most email opens come from mobile devices. That means your subject lines and preview text have even less room to capture the reader’s attention.
A fun subject line could be the difference between people engaging with your message and overlooking it entirely.
The real benefits
Using fun subject lines isn’t just about getting a chuckle out of your audience. There are meaningful benefits to adopting this strategy.
You may see higher open rate statistics for emails with engaging subject lines than regular, plain ones. And the reason is simple — they stand out.
Amusing subject lines can also help develop your brand personality. They help strengthen the connection between you and your subscribers as they feel like they’re getting to know your brand better.
Psychology behind engagement
Using humor may make your messages more memorable. People remember funny sentences better than non-funny ones.
Part of why humor works is that it interrupts the expected pattern of dry, dull email content. That moment of surprise or intrigue can trigger the readers’ curiosity and make them much more interested in reading the rest of your email message.
Humor also creates an emotional connection between your brand and the email recipients. You wrote something they thought was funny or noteworthy, and that’s a strong building block for a deeper brand-customer relationship. There’s still more work to do, but it’s a very good start.
Key elements that work
Of course, deciding to use fun subject lines is the easy part. Actually coming up with something that fits your brand personality and comes across as fun to your audience can be much trickier.
Follow these guidelines for the best results.
- Length guidelines: Typically, you want to keep your subject lines short and sweet. Aim for 30-50 characters, which is about five to eight words. Shorter subject lines are less likely to get cut off on mobile devices, making it easier for everyone to read what you come up with.
- Clarity requirements: Make sure that even with some humor, your subject lines are still clear and easy for your audience to understand. They should have a pretty good idea of what your email content will contain from the subject line. You don’t want to mislead readers — otherwise, your message can start to look like spam.
- Timing considerations: There’s a right time and place for funny subject lines. Consider when your target audience would most appreciate humor, and incorporate that into your understanding of the best time to send your marketing emails.
- Brand voice consistency: Only use humorous subject lines if they fit your overall brand voice. For example, a very formal B2B law firm likely wouldn’t benefit from informal subject lines. If the subject line is too far away from your usual brand voice, it may seem suspicious or confusing for your subscribers.
Making subject lines fun
So, how do you actually make subject lines fun? It depends on your target audience and brand personality, but a few techniques tend to work across the board.
Creative techniques
Unfortunately, the perfect relevant bit of humor probably won’t pop into your head every time you need to send a marketing email. Instead of just waiting for inspiration to strike, see if you can make any of these tried-and-true techniques work for your message.
- Wordplay and puns: Who doesn’t love a good pun? Think about the subject of your message and try to come up with some humorous wordplay or puns related to that topic. It doesn’t need to be worthy of a stand-up special, just something that will stand out to readers.
- Pop culture references: Referencing pop culture, especially something recent and notable, can create an instant spark of connection between your brand and your email subscribers.
- Question formats: Asking a question in your subject line is a great way to make it just a little more intriguing to the readers. And if you can incorporate some humor into that question, even better.
- Emoji strategy: Adding emojis to your subject line is another way to help your message stand out. Just be careful to avoid using too many. The emojis you include should enhance the subject line text, not overwhelm it, so stick to just one or two.
- Seasonal creativity: Lean into holidays or other seasonal events to inspire your fun subject lines. That way, they’re both timely and amusing — two things that will draw your recipients’ attention to your messages.
Five winning examples and why they work
Looking at successful marketing emails from other brands can help inspire you to write your own excellent subject lines. Consider these five winning examples.
1. “Spend $25, Get a Free Puppy”
Vermont Teddy Bear once ran a holiday promotion that said, “Spend $25, get a free puppy.” Obviously, the company wasn’t actually giving away dogs, but the shock and humor of that subject line were likely enough to get many recipients to open the email.
In reality, the company was giving away a free stuffed dog to anyone who spent $25 or more, so the subject line was not a lie, just a clever bit of humor. The company could measure the success of this subject line statistics about the open rate, click-through rate, and conversions.
2. “We’re not saying it’s your birthday, but…”
The use of the ellipses in this subject line leaves the reader wanting to know what the message will say next. What comes after that “but?” Talking about the reader’s birthday may inspire thoughts of special offers or free gifts, which brands often give out on customers’ birthdays.
With just seven words, this subject line intrigues readers and makes them think of exciting things — the perfect combination for getting them to open the message.
3. “Deals That Make Us Proud (Unlike Our Nephew, Steve)”
This subject line from Groupon works because it starts out normal but ends in a totally unexpected and ridiculous place. Poor Steve. The use of parenthesis also helps the funny bit stand out more so people don’t stop reading after “Proud.”
4. “New Year? More like new yarn!”
This Michaels email uses a funny response and an emoji, all within a few characters. It’s catchy and goofy enough to grab the customer’s attention. The follow-up, “Start 2025 with new kits, yarn, and tools,” makes the subject line a bit long, but it helps clarify what the message contains.
5. “Licking your phone never tasted so good.”
OpenTable, an app for booking restaurant tables, used this ridiculous subject line to surprise and amuse readers. The first three words alone have the readers hooked because it’s such a silly image. Why would anyone lick their phone? The recipients will likely want to open the message just to see what it’s even talking about.
Find your style
Humor is unique from person to person and brand to brand. If you’re going to incorporate it into your email marketing, you need to find your brand style.
See what feels right to you and your team and what your audience responds to. The intersection between those two is where you should develop your voice. Learn from customer feedback through direct comments about the subject lines and by analyzing the results of different email messages. You’ll start to see what works and what doesn’t with your customers.
Then, once you find it, be consistent. Your audience will start to recognize your style of humor, strengthening the brand-customer connection.
When (and when not) to use fun subject lines
As entertaining as humorous subject lines can be, there’s a right and wrong time to use them. Stick to these guidelines to avoid subject line missteps.
Right time, right place
Think about your target audience and the industry you operate in. Is humor something that fits those details?
Any humor you use in your promotional emails, including in the subject line, should fit the occasion, the message content, and the channel. Sometimes, something comedic might work better in a paid ad or SMS message than an email, for example.
Make sure it’s the right time and place for humor before you hit send on any funny emails.
Setting boundaries
It’s easy to let the enthusiasm for crafting effective, hilarious subject lines get away from you. Set some boundaries to help maintain professionalism, like only using funny subject lines 20% of the time.
Monitor the results of your emails and compare the statistics from messages with comedic subject lines to those without. If your audience is responding well, you can confidently keep using the more fun, casual subject lines.
Still, know when to be serious. If the content of your message is more consequential or earnest, skip the subject line humor that time.
Start creating better subject lines
Creating unique, fun subject lines is one of the best ways to get more people to notice your marketing emails. Focus on finding a type of humor that fits your brand voice and appeals to your target audience. Then, analyze your email marketing results with a tool like Constant Contact to better understand which messages perform best.
In the user-friendly dashboard, Constant Contact lets you easily compare up to five messages at a time to see which got the most opens and clicks. You can also track your mobile vs. desktop open rate, delivery rate, and click rates with a heat map. Sign up for a free trial today to take your email marketing campaigns to the next level. Also, learn more about email marketing with 6 Ways to Personalize Subject Lines in Your Emails and Email Preheaders: Best Practices to Boost Your Campaign’s Impact.
Next download: Own the Inbox: Subject Lines to Boost Engagement
