Modern communication is all about being fast and packing in as much punch as possible in small packages. Thankfully using emojis in email marketing can help them check all the boxes and be as expressive as possible over the internet. Communicating in the virtual world can be often tricky. You can’t see the face of the other person and hence, you don’t know if he is serious or joking, reliable or fishy. It is very easy to disguise your emotions over the net. While that can be an advantage at times, it stops being so at others.
Emojis have become so important in our lives that in 2015, the British Oxford Dictionary named the emoji Tears of Joy as the word of the year. There is a movie on Emojis and even a World Emoji Day celebrated on the 17th of July. Clearly emojis have a big impact in our lives today and will continue to be so in the future. There are 3304 emojis now according to the most recent count in March 2020. With that many emojis in stock, millennials hardly need to type words to express their feelings. No wonder, emojis are now part of our conversations online – whether it be through online chatting platforms, social networks or even email. Yes, emails with emojis work extremely well for marketing purposes when used correctly. Here is all you need to know about emojis one mail marketing.
Why Use Emojis?
So how do emojis increase engagement? Why use emojis in email marketing at all? Well, there are a few reasons why you should.
- By now most marketers know that using emojis in subject lines can give a huge boost to their open rates. This statistics here, says that between 2015 and 2016 alone, open rates from emails with emojis in subject lines increased 775%. Emojis help marketers express better and engage customers. While using emojis in subject lines, it can be used to express what is in the copy, to graphically represent the brand right on the subject line, or even substitute words.
- With emojis, users become more aware of the brands. Even if they do not open your emails, they can easily recognize it from the emoji you use.
- Since they are self-explanatory and can substitute words, they save space, especially in your subject lines, where the cut-off character limit is 50.
- One of the biggest reasons marketers use emojis is because they increase your chance of reaching the inbox of the users. This is because emojis make email copies more like a personal email and anti-spamming algorithms do not treat them as spam.
- Emojis also make your email stand out in a crowded inbox.
- They can often sum up feelings that words fail to do.
- They are fashionable and trendy right now, hence the brands that use them catch the user’s eyes.
What to Do When Using Emojis
When using emojis in email marketing, you must remember to keep these best practices in mind.
Do What Your Audience Prefers
Before sending emojis in email marketing, you need to consider what your audience prefers. Emojis are a modern invention, those who are more old school might not be comfortable with them or feel it right to use them in a professional way. You need to know what kind of audience will be reading your email. Are they baby boomers and seniors or teens and millennials? The latter is the right kind of audience for emojis.
If you are a professional brand catering to other businesses with seniors, then you should think twice before sending emojis. Basically, it depends on what your audience would like and what kind of an image your brand has. If you’re unsure, you can also do an A/B test to see if emojis do resonate with your audience.
Add Personality To Your Messages
As mentioned before, online interactions can often be misinterpreted. We can’t see the other person, we don’t even know what kind of a person he is. Hence, messages can have quite a different meaning from what it was meant to be. If you want to avoid this kind of miscommunication, add emojis to your messages. It will tell the person on the other side what you mean exactly.
It will help give your messages a personality and a tone. Our voice tone also helps our audience understand exactly what we mean. Since online communication is toneless, the recipient can put a negative tone to it.
Make Sure They Are Contextual
While using emojis is highly recommended these days, it is best to keep it contextual, say experts. For example, laughing with tears in your eyes can be quite different than just smiling. Just like laughing and smiling can be quite different in real life. Hence, don’t forget to use emojis that are contextual.
It’s often best to use emojis at the end of a sentence rather than in the middle. However, for subject lines use it in the beginning. This will catch your reader’s eye faster and enhance your message.
Use Emojis Along With Words
Emojis alone won’t be enough to convey your message to the audience. Do use words when you can and when it is necessary. You don’t have to use emojis just because you know that they might give a boost to your marketing campaign.
Emojis must be used to enhance your message, not eliminate words entirely. They make the message stronger and appealing. Eliminating too many words can make it harder for the reader to understand.
Show The Human Face Of your Brand
Often email interactions between brands and customers can be very stiff. As a brand, you can warm up to your customers or show them your human face by adding emojis. When you bring in humour, laughter, tears of joy, a slice of pizza and so on in your messages, your customers can relate better with you and your brand.
They find your brand more approachable, friendly and relatable. Especially for the millennials and teenagers, creating a relationship that goes beyond seller-buyer is imperative.
What not to do when using emojis in email marketing
Here is what you should not do.
Don’t Use A Lot Of Emojis
While using emojis can help your email stand out, overdoing it might have a negative impact on your customers. Using five or more in a single message or substituting words completely can be overkill. It might even look spammy to your readers. Also, since it is a business-customer relationship, it might look too unprofessional.
Use it moderately, so that your target audience doesn’t feel alienated. It is tempting to use a lot of emojis since now you know that they can boost your open rates, but do not fall into that trap.
Make Sure Your Audience Is Not Misinterpreting
If you are using emojis in your email you have to be 100% sure that they won’t be misinterpreted by your audience. More than 3000 emojis are there for you to choose hence you might get confused and make a wrong choice. Make sure the emojis you are using are easy to interpret and simple.
Depending on your device or viewing platform emojis might not look the same in the recipient’s inbox. This might not be great for your marketing campaign as there is room for misinterpretation. Worse, customers might even get offended!
Don’t Follow Big Brands
Just because the big fellas are doing it all the time and getting lots of love from the audience, you don’t have to. If it’s not a good fit for your company, don’t think about using emojis at all. It might be a trend that will survive the test of time or will fade in the future. The point is, if you don’t want to use it as it might affect the image of your brand, stick with the tried and tested strategies.
Having said that, you should also know that trying to infuse a bit of humour or smile in your message now and then wouldn’t hurt. Don’t take emojis too seriously, use them in a light-hearted way, have fun with them and use it if you think it will work and not because Starbucks and McDonald’s use them all the time!
Don’t Send Without Testing
Like we said in the previous point, what looks good in your device and platform might not look the same in your user’s inbox. That brings us to our next point. Never ever send emojis without testing. Even the smallest mistake might affect your business, hence test diligently and without fail every time you send emojis in email.
Don’t Use Emojis In Transactional Emails
Transactional emails should be kept as professional as possible. These are emails that usually send over receipts, purchase confirmation, password resets, account notifications and so on. These are serious subjects and hence, keep them emoji free. Emojis are more suitable for promoting products, sales, creating brand awareness, newsletters.
Make Sure Your Emojis Are Accessible
It is very important to take into account the fact that differently-abled people will also be receiving your emails. Usually, the text to voice software will describe the emojis for them. Hence it is important to stick to the best practices to make your emails more accessible. Too many emojis or repeating emojis might be time-consuming for disabled people.
It is best to have no more than 3 emojis in a single message. Do remember that about 300 million people in the world are visually challenged and about 50 million are completely blind. As a business it is your responsibility to make sure that you send the right kind of message for all your users.
To sum it all up, emojis in email marketing has become a useful tactic to catch a subscriber’s attention. But it should be used when it fits the bill. Don’t force it just because others are doing it or to get better open rates. Need more tips on email design tips? Do take a look at an earlier post from us to get more ideas.
