Emoji Marketing — That’s a Thing?

Ah, emojis — a widely used set of characters that broadly defines communication in modern times. Wherever you go in the digital landscape, emojis have their space. A plain text message can have so much more impact on the reader by just adding an emoji as it enunciates exact emotions or moods, which may not be evident in plain messages.

The Emoji Impact

These statistics show how emojis influence digital marketing by boosting engagement, click-through rates, and open rates. As Emojics Blog explains it, 

“When people look at an emoji, their brain behaves in the same way as when they look at a real human face. This is why emoji user engagement is more than what you’ll see with text or any other content type.”

Online interactions, whether private or for business, get that extra sociability that we usually get from face-to-face interactions.  To put it simply, emojis are the 🍒 on top. 

How Emojis Affect Marketing

They humanise your brand. Brands are more than their actual products now. Digital marketing gives brands an avenue to curate their personality, which helps them engage with their audience and maintain consumer loyalty. Using emojis highlights your brand’s tone of voice and elevates it. Whether you’re serious, fun, witty, or enthusiastic, emojis are your go-to option in humanising your brand.

It drives better engagement. Incorporating emojis in your message makes it easier for people to notice your communication. In particular, 40% of millennials, who make up a huge chunk of consumers, engage more with pictures. A study also reveals that 56% of businesses witnessed an increase in email open rate when they used emojis in the subject. Emoji push notifications are opened 135% more on Android and 50% more on iOS than notifications without an emoji. Bottomline, emojis have a crazy potential to increase user engagement.

It adds context to content. In content marketing, context 👏 is 👏 relevant 👏. Emojis add meaning to your communication and can sometimes be used to emphasise the messaging you want to send across. Keep in mind that emojis aren’t meant to replace good copy, though. You have to get the perfect balance of text and visuals to whip up great marketing content.

How to Utilise Emojis Well

Of course, emojis don’t mean much by themselves, and you have to have the right balance of sending the appropriate amount of text, emotion, and intent for your content to make sense. So how can you apply emojis in your next marketing campaign? 🤔

Know your audience. How do they use emojis? How do they respond to emojis? Use social listening tools to determine which exact emojis are being used by your consumers and experiment with them. Eventually, you can begin asking your followers to interact with your content through emojis. Ask them if they agree or disagree with something by reacting 👍 or 👎, use Facebook polls, or ask them to use emoji reacts on Instagram or even TikTok! Having that kind of interaction encourages your audience to engage with your brand even more.

Study emojis. Silly as it may seem, you still need to do your research. Emojis can have a variety of meaning across countries, so you have to know which emojis to use as we don’t have room for misinterpretation here. Here’s a rule of thumb: Don’t use emojis that express actions that you won’t do in-person when faced with a customer. 

Use them in moderation. We know that emojis are fun, but don’t get too carried away. 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 

Oops. Anyway, remember that emojis are mainly used to support your message, and going overboard can make your message appear forced, or confusing. 

At the End of the Day

When used strategically, emojis make good assets in elevating your content marketing. Just make sure that using them aligns with your tone of voice. If so, go ahead and type in those hearts and smiley faces as long as you think it works best for your brand. If you want to get a headstart on emoji marketing and so much more beyond this, then don’t hesitate to drop us a message and let’s hash it out together. 😉