Happy World Emoji Day! How To Use Emojis in Your Marketing.

Do you use emojis on a daily basis? Many people use emojis all day long, even many businesses in their marketing! Since today is ?World Emoji Day?, we figured we’d shed some light on the little icons that help us to really just drive a point home, and figure out how different brands use them in their marketing!

Emojis are a very complex communication language that are developed and made available to platforms by The Unicode Consortium. Emojis are wildly popular, especially with Millennials, and they are quickly growing in popularity with other generations as well. You may have seen them featured in advertisements, in your emails, on social networks, in domains, and more.

Benefits of Using Emojis In Your Marketing 

Let’s be honest -- most people don’t read all of your content anyway, but they will definitely skim through and click something with a bright, colorful, and otherwise unique emoji. Wouldn’t you?

Using emojis gives your brand a sense of personalization. What better way to stand out in an inbox full of plain text email subject lines?

As using emojis in email subject lines has become more common, many email management platforms enabled emojis in subject lines to benefit their customers. In fact, 56% of brands using emoji in their subject lines had a higher unique open rate.

Another benefit of using emojis in your marketing - is that they save space by making things more concise. A emoji is worth just one character -- so if you have a character limit, see if you can say it with an emoji! On that same page -- you can use emojis to depict or convey a certain emotion or feeling - that would otherwise take a great deal of text to explain. You know what they say, “A picture is worth 1,000 words.” That common phrase certainly rings true within the realm of emojis.

Consider using emojis in your:

• Emails
• Social Media
• And possibly even your content!

Before you jump into the fun world of “Emoji Marketing” here’s a few things you should consider:

Your Email Management System 

Sending 100’s to 1,000’s of emails via your email client would be a bit tedious, so you’re likely using an email management system to send out your email blasts, right? If you’re interested in using emojis in your email subject lines you’ll want to make sure that your email management system supports/offers this feature.

The following systems DO support emojis in email subject lines:

• MailChimp
• Campaign Monitor
• Savicom

Potential Rendering Issue 

If you are able to use emojis in your email subject lines you’ll want to consider that some email platforms might have trouble rendering the emoji itself, and instead of showing up as a cute yellow face - they might just see a blank, confusing box. ☐

(This chart above from Campaign Monitor reviews several email clients and whether or not they support emojis)

Emoji Best Practices 

• Know the difference between an Emoticon, Pictogram, Emoji, and Bitmoji and yes, there is a difference. See the below “evolution”

• Does using emojis work with your business messaging and tone? If your messaging is very corporate professional - steer clear of emojis in your marketing. If your tone and messaging are a little more casual and conversational, then emojis might be right for you!
• Consider your audience. Would your audience react positively to emojis? Or would they instead see them as childish?
• Consider all unintentional meanings of the emoji you choose. You don’t want your message to be easily misconstrued. Sticking with the more popular emojis is a good way to take a risk but still play it safe!
• Run some A/B tests to see how your audience reacts. Make sure that you track metrics and only change one variable at a time!
• Remember: Less is more.

Emojis can be a great attention grabber- and for that reason can really benefit your marketing efforts -- assuming they fit your company’s messaging and its audience. Will your company be using emojis in its marketing in the future? Need some inspiration? Let us know in the comments or reach out to us for our marketing advice.