In recent years emojis have become a prominent part of everyday internet marketing communication. Emoji marketing is now important, as these little icons are being used more widely to communicate messages across all channels.
Emoji Marketing Helps Businesses Tell a Story
The communication power of these little symbols is so remarkable that marketers and businesses are leveraging emojis to communicate their brand message to customers. Virtually all businesses are now using emojis in their marketing efforts because emoticons help to enrich your conversation, in that you say more with these symbols than with text.
Consequently, messaging apps, social networks and others have expanded their emoji options, while business owners and marketers are expanding their use of emoticons in their marketing strategies. However, many have not seen or taken notice of the power of emojis, which prompts the question…
Why should I integrate emojis into my marketing strategy?
A recent study by Braze, formerly Appboy, found that brands using emojis in their marketing campaigns saw a year-over-year growth of more than 770%.
According to the 2016 emoji report, further studies revealed that emoticons were used in about 2.3 trillion mobile messages the year before. The research further shows that 75% of mobile messaging app users want more options for using emoticons.
From the same research, Twitter is said to have introduced relevant emojis in all industries, while Facebook Messenger has introduced more than 1,200 new emojis to users of the mobile messaging app.
Interestingly, people are more likely to engage and respond promptly and better to images than plain text.
So, using emojis in your marketing strategy can significantly change the way your audiences and prospective customers view your brand, because emojis add more meaning to your content, with fewer words.
However, with the rise of emojis and more and more marketers expanding their use of these little icons by adding them to their marketing campaigns, some may ask…
How can I use emojis in my marketing strategy?
Please continue reading to learn how you can use emojis in your marketing efforts.
6 Tips to Implement Emoji Marketing
1. Understand what emojis represent.
With over 6 billion emojis being sent around the world each day via mobile applications, Britain declared emojis the fastest growing language of all time. And from the stats above, you can see that more and more emoticons are being introduced in the marketplace.
Furthermore, as people celebrated World Emoji Day, Facebook celebrated by observing that 60 million emoji are sent on Facebook every day, with an average of 5 billion emoji being sent each day via the Facebook Messenger app alone.
As a result, the need to understand what these emojis represent has never been more important. Understanding what emojis represents will help you send targeted emojis that will engage and convert your audience to loyal customers.
2. Develop an emoji marketing strategy.
Once you have understood what each emoji represents, the next step is to develop your emoji marketing strategy – how you are going to use or incorporate emojis in your marketing campaign.
Having an established strategy will make your marketing campaign run smoothly, because you already have a framework in place. More importantly, it will enable you to maintain consistency across channels. As you may already know, consistency is crucial to the success of your marketing campaigns.
3. Add a personal touch to your marketing campaigns with emojis.
Use emojis as an extension for your brand voice by personalizing your emoji marketing strategy. This will help you to achieve more personalization in your overall marketing strategy. And as you know, personalization is a remarkable way to create bonds and long-term relationships with your customers.
Therefore, ensure that you use emojis relevant to your brand message, and make sure that you maintain a certain frequency of emoji usage.
Determining the frequency of your use of emojis doesn’t have to be difficult. Simply run a test drive on social media, text messages, and other marketing channels where applicable. This will help you identify what frequency works best for your campaign.
4. Use emojis on your social media accounts.
Because more people are on social media, it is essential to add emoticons to your social media accounts across channels, and on the content you share on social platforms.
However, before you embark on your emoji marketing strategy, it is important that you outline your social media content strategy to integrate emoji marketing.
Pro tips:
- Find out what types of emojis are used by your competitors on each platform to increase engagement with their audience, because that’s essentially your targeted audience as well.
- Identify areas where they’re placing emoticons on their profiles, headlines, and body of content.
- Pinpoint the best emojis your target audience loves to engage with and compare results with your competitors.
- Be sure to study and gather this information, as it will help you boost your marketing strategy.
Here’s an example of where and how you can use emojis on your Instagram profile. The following areas are a must for emoji placement:
- Your bio
- Calls-to-action
- Body of content
- Your comments
The screenshot below shows the Instagram profile of Bernadette Coleman, CEO of Advice Local.
From her profile, you can see the emojis she used to tell her audience and potential clients who she is, what she does, and her achievements. She used emojis that represent and convey her brand message perfectly well.
The use of emojis in your bio and content will help to highlight keywords and the keyword phrases your target audience is constantly searching for.
Do you know that Facebook has offered platform users the opportunity to update their Facebook status with emoticons? Yes, you read that correctly. You can now update your status on Facebook with emojis. That’s amazing, because it will help to improve engagement and conversion.
But why is that? Because recent research found that Facebook posts containing emojis saw an increase of 57% more likes, 33% more comments, and 33% more shares. Twitter gained over 25% more increase in engagement on content that has emojis, while Instagram saw an increase of 50% in comments.
The statistics clearly show that adding emojis to your social media accounts can significantly increase conversion and sales.
5. Use emoticons in your Gmail subject lines.
According to Litmus, 2014 saw emails opened on mobile devices increase by 53%. That’s about a 500% increase in just 4 years, from 2011–2014.
In James Johnson’s article, he indicated that emails with animated emojis saw an increase of 20% more open rates.
Further studies by Rene Kulka on Gmail’s animated emojis in email subject lines found an incredible increase in email open rates, more email responses, and even more blog comments to emails that are linked to a website or blog.
Pro tip: Make sure to use relevant emojis in your email subject lines to dramatically increase your email open rates.
6. Refrain from overusing emojis.
Rightly said, because overuse of emojis can convey the wrong message and cost you money.
A typical example of a brand that overused emoticons in its marketing campaign is Chevrolet. And what was the result of their emoji marketing strategy? Losses, no ROI.
Chevrolet wanted to communicate their brand’s message to their customers and prospects, but ended up conveying the wrong message by their use of many emojis, some not relevant. Their clients and customers could not relate to their message, and that resulted in great losses.
Ready to Join the Emoji Marketing Revolution?
Emojis are present worldwide, everywhere you turn – on your smartphone, mobile devices, apps and so on. These icons help us convey messages in ways that otherwise might not be possible in text messages of just a few words.
There are many other ways to use emojis in your marketing campaigns that will help take your business to new heights. Implementing the tips in this article will dramatically skyrocket the results of your marketing efforts, so get started today!
Think emoji marketing is just a trend despite the stats? Or did the lightbulb emoji just come on for you? Post your favorite emoji and experiences in the comments!
