How many email marketers do you need to change a light bulb?
Latest posts | By Mark Brownlow | 27 Comments | Licence this content
Time to “lighten” up a little (see what I did there?) with an update to an ancient post. Get creative and submit your own in the comments!
Nobody ever removes the bulb. Unless it’s been inactive for more than six months.
You can’t change the bulb until you’ve tested different bulb versions to see which performs best for the target room.
None. The light bulb can change itself using a preference center.
None. Nobody uses light bulbs anymore. Social media killed the light bulb.
Two. One to change the bulb, and one to point out the excellent ROI compared to other ways of lighting the room.
Two. One to change it and one to get the appropriate permission to do so.
Two. One to fit the new bulb and one to design it so it works as intended in whatever socket it goes into.
Three: One to change it, one to design it to work in all sockets, and one to complain that the light bulb still doesn’t work in rooms built by Microsoft.
Six. One to change it, two to work out the best day and time of day to make the change, one to ensure the new bulb will meet user expectations, one to monitor how many people subsequently flick the light switch, and one to remind us that flicking the switch is not an accurate measure of whether the user truly engaged with the bulb.
Reader suggestions
From Jay Allen:
Why change it? It doesn’t cost any money to just keep using the bulb forever, whether it responds to the light switch or not.
From Justin Premick:
Two: one to change the bulb and one to suggest repairing the bulb is cheaper than constantly buying new bulbs.
Two: one to change the bulb, and one to suggest that we don’t have to change the bulb – it’ll work fine as long as we’re willing to pay a penny every time someone wants to turn it on.
Thirteen: one to change the bulb, and a dozen to write about how bulbs and sockets are constantly changing, who changes them well and poorly, and what anyone thinking about changing bulbs must know lest s/he get electrocuted. 
From Robert:
None. If it’s dark someone must be blocking my light since I’m sure that my IT does all those “techy” things right.
From Anonymous:
550, but that’s only if the socket didn’t actually exist.
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27 comments on “How many email marketers do you need to change a light bulb?”
Five. One to change the bulb and four to tell him what they would have done instead.
We actually had a booth at the last CMA conference where we asked people this question. Here’s my personal fav:
How many email marketers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
That depends…do we have the lightbulb’s permission to screw it in?
Regards,
jim
Nice one Scott!
And nice one Jim…
It takes 4: One to change the bulb, and 3 to come up with subject lines to announce the new bulb.
None, that’s IT’s job. It will take 3 to write the press release about the change though.
It takes 8.
One to explain to the bulb designers how use inline css.
Five to makes tests in different bulb sockets
The one braveheart who change the bulb & turn on the light (click “SEND”)
And the CMO who ask why the bulb installed have 50% of Bounce rate.
I doubt seriously that bulb is going to have much of a bounce rate.-)
Excellent, keep ‘em coming. Mike: I think you might like yesterday’s Dilbert cartoon.
Dilbert: “liquor and guessing”, classic.
Are you guys still using Light Bulbs?
We switched over to third-generation synchrotron light sources a few years back – and our inbox placement went up 600%
Robin, I think some of us are still using oil-based lanterns.
11,000,000
10,999,999 that bounce, aren’t delivered, simply ignored, tagged as spam, are opened out of curiosity.
1 for the recipient who has now changed the lightbulb at the spammer’s house.
(not sure if I have actually answered the question!)
One. Then 42 “social media experts” to say you should have posted it on Facebook and Twitter.
Only 42 Andrew?
Mark, surely you know the answer is always 42.
And now for an actual contribution…
Two: one to change the bulb, and one to suggest that we might be able to get the old bulb to keep working if we gave it the option to be switched on once a week instead of several times per day.
Nice Justin!
The answer is indeed always 42. And all good things go up to 11.
One, but s/he’ll need to stay in the room and hold up a different filter in front of it for everyone. To give them the colour lighting of their preference.
It depends on the A/B testing
One, but when executives learned that one light bulb worked great, they said have more, so the one employee had to install 100 bulbs.
“It depends.”
Excellent everyone.
Alex – best yet.
If the light bulb is in DJ Waldow’s house: It depends and let’s test several combinations over a craft beer to find out. If it is in David Baker’s house we don’t know until we hire a multi-channel agency that truly has the expertise to give us the right answer.
If it is in Morgan Stewart’s house, we’ll only know after doing regression analysis. If it is in Dela Quist’s house the answer is not enough, as email marketers haven’t come close to changing too many light bulbs.
If it is in John Caldwell’s house…oh that’s right he doesn’t have a house, just a boat…so like man, we don’t change the bulb – moonlight is all we need…but you do buy his impartial guide to Light Bulb Changing Vendors – and then you hire the one that is a match for your style of bulb.
If it is in Tamara Gielen’s house the answer is whatever the current number of members there are in the Email Marketer’s Club.
If it is in Bill McCloskey’s house the answer is however many people you need to make a profit as the only reason you’d change a light bulb is if it made you more money.
If it is in Andrew Kordek’s house the answer is zero, cause you break the bulb and then use the light from multiple PCs reflected off that shiny head.
If it is in Mark Brownlow’s house the answer is one better than what everyone does.
LOL Loren. Actually all the above don’t know how many marketers it takes. So we’ve signed up to a relevant webinar…given by Loren McDonald.
Touche Mark. Thanks…love it…all is fair…and I think you nailed it. Thanks for starting this post…a great creative diversion…and fun.
One designer to change the lightbulb at least 20 times.
6 marketing members to take all the credit.
None, they are already using the state of the art brand new innovation which no one else has ever used before or knows about and its called the Viral Bulb! It just keeps generating more and more energy on complete autopilot forever and never needs replaced…… unless you want the upgraded version.