Emojis help us convey even the most hard-to-decode messages! Be it happy, sad, frustrating, or surprising news; emojis are always there to portray what we feel. Today, there are around 6 billion emojis, and they are the fastest-growing language in history. They have invaded our conversations across diverse social media platforms — love them or hate them, you just can’t ignore them!
Emojis have now become an indispensable part of brand’s content marketing strategies. They yield tangible results for brands, such as increased conversion rates. In this blog, let’s learn more about digital emoji marketing and ways to use it for an enhanced online presence.
Understanding The Emoji Market
Before we dive into how to leverage emojis, here are some facts you can’t afford to overlook.
- Over 60% of online consumers communicate at work using emojis.
- There has been a 775% year-over-year increase in emoji usage in marketing messages.
- Emojis increase the open rates of mobile push notifications by 85%.
- Almost 60% of consumers open emails containing their favorite emojis in the subject line.
- 64% of customers are likely to open emails with their favorite emojis in the subject line.
- 60% of emoji users are highly likely to engage with brands online using emojis.
This data indicates that emojis are a powerful way to stand out from your competitors and make your marketing message heard. These tiny icons enrich conversations, ensure the readers understand your intent and keep ambiguity at bay.
Domino’s is one of the best examples of emoji marketing. The pizza-selling brand introduced a new order placement strategy wherein customers can place orders using the Twitter pizza emoji.
5 Effective Ways To Use Emojis in Your Content Strategy
1. Know what the emoji stands for
Almost 5 billion emojis are sent daily on Messenger, and over 60 million are sent on Facebook. Emoji use is skyrocketing — all thanks to the positive results emoji marketing brings to the table.
Using emojis in marketing messages can backfire if the audience doesn’t understand the context or misinterprets an emoji. Remember, not everything is as it seems. Therefore, before you start inundating your social media captions and posts with different emojis, understand what the emoji stands for. Only after understanding what the emoji signifies and ensuring your audience understands the real meaning of an emoji can you use it to engage the readers.
Unfortunately, emojis easily get lost in translation, especially today when they are linked to varied pop culture references. For example, the crying emoji (?) doesn’t only indicate a person crying loudly. It is often used to convey dramatic feelings, such as the fear of missing out (FOMO) or excitement. So is the case with the smiling emoji (?), which is often a sign of passive aggression or sarcasm. You’d have to be well aware of the everyday uses of these emojis to prevent confusion.
2. Establish an emoji marketing strategy
You’re unlikely to succeed without a powerful marketing strategy like any other marketing tactic! So, once you’ve understood the traditional and modern meaning of the emojis you’d use, you need a sustainable plan for your emoji marketing campaigns. This plan is your roadmap to a successful campaign and staying coherent across different social media channels.
One of the most critical steps in your emoji marketing strategy creation is to determine ways to integrate emoticons. You’ll also have to choose the right emojis connecting you with your existing followers and the newer audience.
Sephora’s emoji marketing is an excellent case to study here. The famous beauty product retailer is known for its incredible emoji marketing strategy. Almost all of their social media posts are coordinated with matching emojis. They often use different colored hearts or pop in a cucumber or papaya emoji to signify the secret ingredient of a product. There is a transparent emoji scheme in all of their marketing messages. Whether it’s their seasonal campaigns or new product announcements, their emoji usage builds excitement and puts their products in the best light.
Sephora’s emoji marketing strategy shows that it doesn’t randomly throw emojis in its social media posts. But it has a fun, and recognizable voice expressed through the right emojis. The best part, though, is that Sephora is consistent with its emoji usage across all social platforms.
3. Add relevant emojis to social media posts and stories
Emojis have dominated all popular social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. They are everywhere, from IG comments to FB posts to Snapchat stories. Almost 90% of online customers use emojis. Therefore, it only makes sense to use emojis in your social media posts — textual posts are boring, anyway!
Emojis will help your followers resonate better with your posts. They will add context to your content and give audiences a visual indication of your message’s tone. Besides, tossing an emoji or two in your social media posts isn’t a tedious task!
That said, solely using emojis in your posts isn’t enough to drive engagement. Encourage your followers to use emojis for enhanced engagement on your social media posts. For instance, ask them to respond with a thumbs up (?) or down (?) in the comment section. You can even give them an emoji message or song to decode. This will increase your engagement rate and make your content fun and unique.
When including emojis in your caption, choose their position carefully — yes, where you place your emoji is as essential as which emoji you select. Resist your temptation to sprinkle a couple of emojis in your caption randomly. To make your captions more accessible, save your emojis for the end of your captions.
Lastly, don’t forget that not every caption needs an emoji. Since emojis have a fun connotation, avoid using them when talking about serious topics to keep the “seriousness” intact.
4. Use emojis on email subject lines
Today, most brands use emojis in their emails, especially in the subject lines. Interestingly, this emoji usage is not only for the sake of it but backed by science. The human brain reacts to emojis as it would with a human face. It also retains 80% of images compared to 20% of text. And our brain processes visual materials 60,000 times faster than text content.
These statistics mean that including emojis in the subject lines helps customers quickly decide whether or not to open the email. Besides, adding emojis to the subject line has many more benefits. For one, it saves writing space. Emojis also make your email stand out in the inbox, helping you portray your feelings without ambiguity. Not to forget, emojis boost email open rates.
Nonetheless, be extremely careful when using emojis in your emails. Ensure they’re relevant and align with your message. Moreover, don’t use emojis in your emails if you don’t use them in your social media posts. This will help keep your brand consistent. Emojis are more natural when your audience has seen them elsewhere.
5. Don’t over-use these icons
One essential emoji marketing tip is to avoid over-using them. Emojis increase your email open rates and boost engagement but use them cautiously. Excessive use of emojis will backfire, creating a negative impression of your brand and conveying a wrong message. To that end, you can lose your followers and may not get the anticipated results from your brand endorsement endeavors.
Many influencers and brands also overly use emojis to flaunt that they’re up-to-date with communication trends. Bombarding your message with emojis “just for fun” is the worst mistake of social media marketing. Irrelevant emojis are hazardous for your brand and will ruin your influence. Always consider functionality when crafting a message with emojis. Remember, emojis convey non-verbal information. And you’ll end up sharing the wrong message with your playful use of emojis. Therefore, keep your emojis minimal and always be mindful of their meaning. Ensure the emojis add to the intent of your message rather than taking the meaning away.
Sway Your Followers With Emoji-Based Social Media Content!
When used rightly, emojis increase visibility and help you connect better with your audience. They make your social media posts appealing and deliver the right message to your fans, and once you’ve built a stronger connection with your audience, you can successfully make them follow a specific call to action.
Now that your followers trust you and purchase products recommended by you, it’s time that you partner with notable brands. And how to reach out to renowned brands? This is where Atisfyre comes into play! Atisfyre is an advanced, AI-based influencer marketing platform connecting influencers with brands looking for endorsements.
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