Funny Business: Cultivated Wit, The Onion, and Mouth Foods Bring the Yuk-us
Humor has always been a part of what we do at MailChimp. We like having fun, even (especially?) while working. For heaven's sake, our mascot is a chimpanzee with no pants. But our lighthearted side is balanced by our scientist side, our get-things-done side. And that's something we have in common with a lot our users.
In this issue of MonkeyWrench, we talk to the folks behind The Onion, Cultivated Wit, and Cards Against Humanity about making fun part of their work. We also explore how some retailers like Betabrand, Mouth Foods, and Robocat sprinkle unexpected lightheartedness into their newsletters. Forcing a joke never works and humor isn't always appropriate, but these users have found a way to delight their customers to positive results.
And while we're at it, we'll look behind the scenes of MailChimp's new emoji support for subject lines, check in with our delivery team's record-breaking numbers, and take a moment to let Conan O'Brien remind us that laughter really can be the best medicine.
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Cultivated Wit gets laughs, stuff done
When Cultivated Wit started a few years ago, the idea was to help companies do better work through humor. Turns out, that's a pretty good idea! Rachael talked with co-founder and product director Craig Cannon about how MailChimp helps. "We don't know what matters," he says, "but we know if we have people's emails, we can get stuff done."
Betabrand's irreverence started out as a stalling tactic. But as the company grew, that wiseacre sense of humor came to define their marketing. And it extends to their ridiculous approach to the holiday shopping season.
"We like to make fun of the excess, the gluttony, that comes along with the holidays," Betabrand E-commerce Analyst Elavn Levin tells the MailChimp blog. "Christmas has become this big, fat beast. We acknowledge we're a part of it, that we still have to participate in it, but we're going to have fun with it."
In our latest release, amongst various other updates and new features, we announced subject line support for emojis. Fun, right? But there's a method to the madness. Using a pile of research and developer knowledge, Allison gives a look behind the scenes of emoji support and explains how emojis are becoming increasingly valuable in the ever-evolving world of modern communication. (Yep, even the pile of poo.)
"The thinking behind the frequency of [our] lists is based on the musings of a long-dead ancient people whose reasoning has been lost to the sands of times," Onion Inc. Digital Manager Jordan David tells us.
We're pretty sure he's joking, but he did explain how The Onion—and its sister properties, The A.V. Club and ClickHole—choose the best headlines for their email newsletters, and how those newsletters drive traffic to their websites.
Cards Against Humanity's approach to newsletters is rather unusual. "Sending an email is one of the worst things you can do to a person," CAH founder Max Temkin says. We asked him to explain why they don't send very often and how they make those rare emails count.
Every weekday, Team Coco uses MailChimp to send an email of jokes from Conan O'Brien's monologue. Nothing too fancy, no fuss, minimal advertising—just some jokes. It's become an office favorite, so we thought we'd share with you. Enjoy.
No joke, that's a lot of emails! In fact, it's the most we've ever sent in a month. But Matthew explains how that number will be the norm before long. Whoa.
