Emoji Marketing - Does It Work?

One of the pillars of marketing is the adage that a picture's worth a thousand words.

Depending on what medium you're using, images sometimes aren't an option, which is where emojis come in.

What's an Emoji? 🤔

Emojis have been gaining in popularity since their creation in the 1990s by a Japanese marketing agency.

Emojis are images that gave personality to the emoticons—or keyboard characters—to convey emotion during digital communication.

In 2011, Apple made emojis a permanent part of their keyboard, with new ones joining the current 1,620 emoji each year.

Emojis are small images that showcase various faces, skin tones, hair colors, and textures, not to mention a wide array of activities and things, such as a slice of pizza and an amusement park.

Why should you include them in your marketing? 👨‍💻

More and more companies are adopting emoji into their marketing lexicon. A recent study by WordStream found that Tweets that include an emoji can increase engagement by 25% compared to those without one. Additionally, emojis can increase Facebook post shares by 33% and post interactions by 57%.

Emojis make your brand relatable, provide context when your character count is limited, and appeal to a broader audience.

Emojis to Boost Engagement

Emojis to Encourage Click-Through

Bring a personal touch to your brand 🤗

People tend to recommend and actively engage with brands that they trust, which is why in marketing, it's so important to make sure you're appealing to your target audience. Using a mix of hashtags and emojis that your customers likely use in their everyday life humanizes your brand—making interactions more personal.

On the flip side of that, everything in moderation—including emoji use. Screen readers can read and translate the emojis you use, but overloading your content with a string of them in a row can dilute and confuse your message.

Using emojis on professional platforms such as LinkedIn can make your posts stand out in a sea of texts, especially when mixed with the appropriate hashtags.

Before you dive into the world of emojis, ensure the ones you choose to use will work with your target demographic. Do your research, just as you would with keywords, so you aren't using emojis that will resonate with your audience.

Communication is Key 🔑

You might be asking yourself why emoji are so popular. Emoji are fun, universal, and an easy way for your audience to engage!

Emojis make your brand approachable and appear casual, like a friend you would text.

Another reason to try emojis? Push notifications that use emojis can get up to 85% more opens and 9% more conversions than ones that don't include them.

Using emoji in social media posts can add more context to your content, which is excellent when you have a limited number of characters at your disposal.

As Easy As 🔢 

As we mentioned earlier, knowing who your audience is will have a considerable impact on what type of emojis (if any) you incorporate in your marketing. Utilizing research and analytical data, you'll form a better idea of what kind of content will resonate best with your audience.

Something to consider is that not all emojis are created equal - you'll want to preview your message on various platforms and devices to make sure that it's displaying the correct emoji and doesn't come across as a random exed out character.

Fun ways to incorporate emoji in your content would be to use them when posing a question, or if you're asking for engagement. You could use the thumbs up emoji if you're asking for likes on Facebook and the heart emoji if you're asking for likes on Twitter.

Do you offer a variety of services? Use emoji in a social post. An example could be something like:

At Imagewërks, we offer a variety of digital services. What can we help you with? Reply with an emoji below!

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