Emojis are everywhere…on social media platforms, blogs, text messages, and now they are even in movies. They are used by almost everyone – even your grandma (once she’s worked out how her smartphone works). Although you personally might not use them, it is highly likely that someone has sent you an emoji on more than one occasion by now.
One platform where emojis are undoubtedly quite useful is email marketing; especially when your open rates are at stake!
With marketers making every effort to cut through the noise within the inbox and get their message seen by their target audience, emojis come in quite handy. When used appropriately, these little emojis can be a huge help with increasing open rates.
Before choosing whether to use or ignore them, perhaps have a quick read about our experience with emojis and what we really think of them. There’s no stopping these little guys, with 56 new emojis moving onto your smartphone this autumn, so if you are thinking about using emojis within your email marketing we have some helpful advice…
The best way to really maximise the impact of these little icons and really drive increased engagement is to place them within your subject lines.
Emoji-Style Subject Lines
One excellent example of emojis within your subject lines is when they are used as an extension of your brand. For example, if you are a music company selling gig tickets, you could use a speaker emoji in a subject line:
Another attention grabbing example is the one I from travel agent, as shown below. The company was able to convey the call to action: Book a trip > Get on the plane > Enjoy the sunshine, all through the use of emojis. With emojis taking up so few characters, they free up valuable space for this tech-savvy travel to convey their CTA hook: a ‘discount’ and sale’.
And here is my favourite one, from a fashion retailer who has taken email personalisation and targeted data to the emoji level. Not only did they send a birthday message, they also included a birthday balloon in the subject line:
Why Use Emoji Subject Lines? They Help Boost Open Rates
There’s something about an emoji that simply makes people want to click. Why? The answer to that is actually quite interesting. According to TNW (The Next Web), when we see a face emoji online, the same parts of our brain react as when we look at a real human face hence the instant engagement with emoji. Our mood adjusts depending on the emoji’s association in our brain and sometimes we even mimic the emoji’s face expression subconsciously. At this point we engage with the emoji by opening an email/ reading an article or anything else that call-to-action (CTA) asks us to do as we empathize with these online avatars.
How To Use Emojis In Your Emails:
Inserting emoji is as simple as copying an emoji from a website/ document and pasting it into a subject line of your email. However to ensure the symbol displays correctly, make sure you test the email by sending it to yourself and your colleagues.
There are, however a few things that could go wrong when using emojis in the subject lines. For example, the email client might not support emojis in the subject line, displaying the symbol ‘▢’instead.
The emojis will display differently depending on recipients’ operating system (see example right). Most browsers support emoji on iOS, OS X, Android and Windows operating systems.
For more info on emoji compatibility with emails and browsers, here are some helpful links:
Litmus – Emoji Support in Email
We’ve found a useful site where you can choose emojis and check how they would render within a different inboxes.
Emojis – Are They Good Or Bad?
It depends. As shown above, when used appropriately, emojis can convey emotions or act as an extension of your brand. They also help shorten subject lines (1 emoji = 1 character), boost open rates and in turn click-through rates.
There is however, a risk of overusing or even misusing emojis. A big no-no for emoji use would be to insert an emoji within the main body of an email, especially if the context of the email is serious or has a professional target audience.
We also recommended to not replace words with emojis. The reason for that is the fact that recipients can’t always figure out what message the sender is trying to convey. For example a sentence ‘Have a Nice Day’, when used with an emoji would read as follows:
Everyone interprets an emoji symbol differently, so the question is – will your recipients correctly guess the word you are trying to replace? This is only a simple example but as you can imagine, the more complex the sentence the lesser chance the recipient will decrypt your message correctly.
There is also a risk that the emoji will not display at all or display as a question mark or empty box symbol and so the recipient would read ‘Have a � day. ‘
Think Before You Emoji
Emjois might seem like fun, but you should consider their use carefully. You should avoid using them for sensitive or important matters as it may irritate or offend your recipients, as you could be seen to be trivialising the subject matter.
One recently unfortunate use of emojis that backfired was with an American politician who asked young voters on social media platforms to express their opinion on student loan debt using 3 emojis. What could possibly go wrong? Quite a bit.
By using emojis in this fashion your target audience is likely to feel (as was the case here) that you are not taking them or the subject matter seriously.
You should also consider your brand and whether using emojis is appropriate for your tone of voice. Some brands may be able to use emojis in the main body of the email copy, for example toys manufacturer or other brands that target younger audiences or millennials (apparently the latter are inseparable from emojis).
So always ask whether emojis are appropriate for your brand, and think carefully about the icons you choose and how you place them within your emails.
However you decide to implement them, please…
…use emojis responsibly.
