In celebration of World Emoji Day on 17th July (yes, there is such a thing!), we’re looking at how to use Emojis in email marketing.  If you didn’t already know, the idea behind Emojis is to express emotion through digital communication and, if used properly, can attract dividends in terms of customer engagement and open rates.

Five reasons to use Emojis is email subject lines

  1. Increased open rates – A study by Experian found that including emoji in email subject lines lead to a 56% higher open rate compared to text-based subject lines.
  2. Attention-grabbing –  Some carefully chosen emojis will make your email stand out in a crowded inbox
  3. Space-saving – On a mobile device, you only have 30-40 characters available for your subject line – an emoji image can save you valuable real estate.
  4. Storytelling – The expressive power of emojis can amplify the impact of your message.
  5. Emotive – Emojis be used to associate positive emotions with your business.

How do you insert an Emoji in a subject line?

It’s easy to add emojis from the emoticon menu on your mobile keyboard but how can you do it from a desktop? Here’s how:

To add emojis on your Mac desktop:

Place your cursor in the text where you want to add the emoji. Press the Command and Control keys on your Mac keyboard and then press Space. Select your emoji from the list.

For Windows, open the touch keyboard icon on the bottom right of your screen.
Click the icon on your property bar to access the Touch keyboard

Click on the smiley face icon and your keyboard will switch to an emoji keyboard and you can select the emoji you’d like to add.
Another easy way is to navigate over to Get Emoji where you can simply copy and paste the emoji of your choice.

Tips for using Emojis

  • Make sure they fit the tone of your business and subject matter and use positive emojis.
  • Using emoji in your email newsletter subject line can increase open rates but overusing them can make your email look (and be treated) like spam. Here are some examples of how you can use emojis in your subject line:

📌 Save the date 📅

You’re going to 😍 love our latest offers!

Top 🎓study tips 💡

  • Audience demographics – Millennials may use emojis to communicate as part of their daily life, but an older demographic may not be so appreciative.
  • Lost in translation – People use their own experience to interpret an emoji. For example, an emoji with streaming tears may be interpreted by one person as something really funny but another person may wonder what’s upsetting you.
  • Be professional – For general business correspondence, we advise that you avoid using emojis with people you don’t know very well.
  • Rendering issues ⚠ – There are hundreds of emojis to choose from, but not all of them show up properly on different devices and email clients. If you think of emojis as a type of font, if the browser, email client, or mobile device doesn’t support the emoji, it won’t display it and may replace it with a generic square ⬜. Emojis will also look different on Android and Apple mobile phones. Some email clients — most notably Outlook 2003 — will not display emojis.

Find the perfect Emoji

This chart provides a list of the Unicode emoji characters and symbols with the corresponding images displayed across different browsers and platforms.
Take a look at how you can join the 🎉 celebration this World Emoji Day or get in touch with the team to see how we can help you boost your digital marketing campaign.

Resources:

https://www.experian.com/assets/cheetahmail/white-papers/symbols-in-subject-lines-cheetahmail.pdf
https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html
https://getemoji.com/
https://worldemojiday.com/