Of course, every business wants to make sure their marketing e-mails are opened by members of their database, but it's not easy - generally 10-15% of marketing e-mails get opened.

So when we first started out, and had 100 people on our mailing list rather than the 20,000 we have now, we decided to add a limerick (loosely related to speed-dating) to each e-mail.  The subject line would be "Speed-dating in NYC, plus a limerick".  The body of the text would be the limerick and whatever event we were promoting.  We thought that the novelty might encourage people to open our e-mails.

We got the expected response from most customers - a few said "Ha ha, funny", and at least as many indicated we should never ever include a limerick in our e-mails ever again.  But we got a couple of responses that were a little more unusual.

So here they are - a couple of the limericks, and a couple of bizarre customer responses...

Limerick 1:

"Speed-dating is fun!" the king said,
"If she bores me, then off with her head"
But 500 years later
If you don't want to date her
We ask that you phone her instead

Customer response:  "Yes hello, I think you are joking with your e-mail, but can you tell me if I am likely to meet royal people at your event?"

Limerick 2:

At the speed-dating champs between nations
Ireland caused a sensation
When Patrick McBride
Was disqualified
For After-The-Bell's-Gone-Flirtation

Customer response:  "My name is [xxx] and I would like to participate in the next speed-dating competition that you are running.  I have been speed-dating before, and I did very well, and I may have won, but no one told me whether I did or not.  So maybe I didn't, but I got four matches from picking just five women.  Can you please tell me what the prize is?"