Many people turn to email marketing to promote their home based business or service but in today’s market you have to be very careful to ensure that you are not labeled a “spammer” and therefore end up unwittingly sabotaging your own campaign and even perhaps the credibility of your company.

Ideally in order for your email marketing campaign to be successful you need not only get recipients interested enough to read your message, but to also forward to their contacts, people who are not on your company’s mailing list. One of the best ways to achieve this “viral email” status is to add a little humor to your message.

Amusing videos, funny pictures and cartons can all be added to your email to make it more appealing. If something makes a person laugh out loud chances are that they will indeed pass it on and share with their friends.

It’s a tactic that even some of the biggest names in business use. A few years ago when the world was worried about a possible bird flu epidemic over 35 million internet users viewed and forwarded an email that contained a simple single image. The picture showed Donald Duck lying motionless on the floor in front of the famous Cinderella’s castle at Disneyland and the caption beneath read “Bird Flu hits Disneyland.” The email also contained a discreet advertisement for Disneyland itself. What looked like a simple amusing email from a friend was actually a clever campaign conceived by the marketing department at Disney itself.

The fact is that any company, large or small can take advantage of this tactic to take their email campaign “viral” and see a real return on the time and effort that goes into it.