So does the previous article (Writing humorous direct mail: how the Bollard stories come to be) mean that you can write anything and get away with it?   Unfortunately no – if only it were that simple! 

Here are what seem to me to be the golden rules of using humour in direct mail. 

Firstly the rules if you are going to try and do the writing yourself 

1. Never make fun of anyone for whom you think the majority of your readers will feel an affinity.  I have a laugh at George W Bush and John Prescott, and by and large they seem fairly safe targets to me.  It would be different if I were trying to sell things in the American mid-west.
   

2. Beware of stand alone jokes – the sales letter really needs to take the reader from A to Z – and a joke on its own can’t do that.  Don’t write jokes, write humorous stories.
   

3. What you write does have to leave the reader with a smile – fail to do that and you have failed, for a joke that does not get a smile is worse than no joke at all.
   

4. Writing in all forms takes practice and time – don’t expect to be able to write a good sales letter the first time you write a sales letter.   Most people take a long time to learn how to perfect the art and even the masters can take many hours and many re-writes to get the letter right.
   

5. Writing humour takes practice too.  People who manage to do it invariably listen to and read a lot of humour – and that does not include the average TV sitcom.  If you don’t include many of the Radio 4 comedy programmes, the local stand-up comedy venue, and the works of writers from PG Wodehouse to Douglas Adams in your weekly routine, you are probably going to find this type of writing very difficult.  Humour is not a tap that can be turned off and on at will.
   

6. You really do have to know what the point of your letter is.  

And secondly, the rules about humour in direct mail in general 

1. Whereas TV, radio and cinema advertising is packed with humour, direct mail is by and large a humourless dessert (and I do mean pudding), largely because it is written by a load of boring drongos who spend too much time in the pub and not enough studying the aforementioned PG Wodehouse.   This means that the moment you introduce humour your mailshot will stand out from the crowd – which is normally what you are trying to do in the first place.  So if you do go for the humour, know that you are going to make your mailshot differentiate your product or service from the rest of the universe.  If you don’t want to do this, then don’t be funny.
   

2. The single most important purpose of the sales letter is to gain attention.  The quickest way to do this is to be funny.  But you have to be funny from the very first word on the page.  Whereas the stand-up comedian can tell a long rambling story and carry the audience, he/she can get away with this because of body language, because of the power of the pause, and because the audience will fill in the gaps anyway.  You don’t have any of this in writing letters, and you have to grab the reader and hold the reader from the headline to the PS.  Which is why it is always best to tell a story.
   

3. Never send out something that you and your colleagues don’t feel is actually very funny.  If you don’t like it, then your ability to turn the next phone call into a sale will be greatly diminished.  You have to believe in what you send out.
   

4. You can joke about yourself, and about the vagaries of the world.  You can joke about imaginary people, about officialdom, about children, about dogs.  But don’t joke about your product or service, or your rivals’ products or services.  And don’t joke about the reader either.
   

5. Never expect everyone to like what you send out.  There is every likelihood that you will get one or two protests or admonishments.  Be prepared and don’t panic.  Although this is not an absolute rule, if someone feels moved enough to write to you in protest it means you have gained the reader’s attention – and that is exactly what you are trying to do.  Just because some people don’t like the humour, it does not mean that the whole mailshot flops.  Indeed some of the most successful pieces ever written in direct mail have caused protests.  The point is that you are writing to thousands of individuals – and it is quite likely that, for every one person who protests, you will find 100 who read it and appreciated what you were saying.