Emoji Marketing: How to Use Emoji in Marketing – Are We Speaking the Same Language?
In this era of digitalization, where people are constantly texting each other through messaging and social media apps, Emojis have become a part of everyone’s life. Emojis are everywhere, text messages on messaging apps, emails, social media, online ads, and more. You can communicate your expressions with anyone anywhere through emojis.
Emoji lights up a dull conversation and pours emotions into the typed words. Why is everyone so fond of emoji? Because human brains are capable of perceiving visual content more quickly than textual content. Online content consisting of emojis will grab users’ attention more quickly and for a longer period of time. That’s the reason Emoji marketing is gaining popularity among brands.
Every enterprise owner or a digital marketing manager wishes to make their marketing campaigns as engaging as possible. It is this engagement that helps them convert the leads into probable clients.
Realizing that only emotionless statements and tedious call-to-actions are not enough to convey the message in a marketing campaign, marketing leaders opted to use emojis in the campaigns, and that hit right!
Conveying emotions to customers is essential because unless you convey your emotions in your marketing campaigns, influencing and persuading a customer is next to impossible.
This blog post is for all who want to know about emoji marketing. Here you will find answers to all your questions like how to use emoji in marketing, how emoji marketing works, emoji marketing strategy, how various brands are incorporating emoji marketing, emoji marketing examples, how to grab users’ attention through emoji marketing, and more.
Emoji – The Definition – History – Emoji Marketing Statistics
Emojis are expressions and graphic symbols of various kinds, which can be used while sending a text message in supported applications. The inception of emojis is dated back to the 1990s.
It started from a Japanese communications firm and happened to become a most sought after functionality in all kinds of digital media. It is a successor of the emoticons or smileys that were used in chat applications for a long time.
First time in the US, emojis became the talk of the town when Apple added the emoji feature in iOS 5. Since 2011, the change in emojis in the Apple keyboard shows how emojis have evolved.
Currently, the Apple keyboard supports an emoji for almost every theme that you can think of. The company boasts around 3K emojis in its iOS14 upgrade.
There has been a sea-change in the way users use emojis to enhance their communication. This led to the development of emojis over the years. The next generation emojis are already doing rounds in our smartphone messengers.
Statistics show that approximately half of the comments and remarks on social media platforms contain emoji characters.
Research conducted by WordStream showed how an emoji in a Tweet increases the attention of the viewer by 25 percent. Results of research with Facebook presented that around 35 percent of the users find it intriguing to respond to texts with emojis. 57 percent use emojis when they send a message to someone else.
Emoji Demographics
- Around 50 percent of Instagram captions include emoji
- 63 percent of social media content is images
- July 17 is the World Emoji Day
- Around 60 percent of women love and use emoji
- 41 percent of men often use emojis
But not just these statistics, emoji can empower your brand, making it customer-friendly, add meaning to your messages, and entice viewers for a deeper connection.
Emoji vs. Emoticon
The emoticons of yesteryears inspired the idea of today’s emojis.
Emojis are miniature forms of images consisting of pixels. They have a variety of designs and forms that depict different kinds of faces, moods, activities, and objects.
The newest variety of emojis is animated. These animated emojis or animojis are replacing the un-animated ones, and they depict a variety of faces, activities, and objects.
A contrast between emoticons and emojis is that the latter adds more depth and authenticity to the former.
What is Emoji Marketing?
Yes, emoji marketing is a thing now! And it is helping businesses to create more engagement online. This form of marketing lets organizations promote brands, products, services through creative emoji contents. The immense use of Emojis on social media platforms has made it an essential part of digital as well as traditional marketing.
What are the Benefits of Using Emoji in Marketing?
Humanize the Brand
Your brand should be able to connect with your customers’ emotions. It is almost unachievable without using emojis in your promotional messages. People trust and rely on a brand when they see that the promotional offers and posts are made to beckon their attention. The name of the brand spreads by word of mouth as more and more people start recommending it.
Using emojis in notifications and alerts add an additional layer of personal touch and relatability. Entrepreneurs thus humanize their brands and reach out to the audience by speaking their lingo using emojis.
Food delivery apps like Swiggy and Zomato reflected this change by adopting emojis in their messaging and notifications. As the lunch hour strikes, notifications from Swiggy arrive on our mobile with emojis of food, dishes, etc. which make foodies dash for their phones and order their food. Indeed it is an intelligent strategy to boost business.
Increase Users Engagement
User engagement on social media scales your brand image online. Good content with correct emojis will help you get more engagement on social media – which is what social media marketing all about. Right?
Statistics show brands incorporating emojis on Twitter have increased user engagement by 25.4 percent. For Facebook, the engagement rate is over 57 percent, and for Instagram, it is 48 percent. Amazing, isn’t it! The facts say it all: emojis can grab users’ attention on your social media posts, emails, sales copies, and thus increase user engagement.
Less is More
Social media platforms like Twitter allow limited characters and even shorter when you add a link – this is when you can make most of your emoji keypad. Using emoji, you can intensely convey the message to your audience with limited characters. Save both time and space on social media posts using emoji.
Give Expression to Your Messages
When you publish digital content online, your audience must understand your expression and the tone of your message. Sometimes a hilarious text can appear rude. Emojis can help you in this situation by conveying your emotion to your audience and the tone of the message.
These days, online contents are incomplete without the right emoji. Social media emojis can add immense gravity and significance to what we want to deliver using non-verbal communication.
It is Appealing to All Age Group
Texting has now become an essential part of everyone’s’ life; it doesn’t matter what age group they belong to or where they live – Emoji is loved by everyone. According to stats, young adults and millennials are the most frequent emoji users. However, the difference is minor between the three age categories.
Below are stats of frequent and rare emoji users categorized into the major age groups.
Teens and youngsters (Age group below 25)
Frequent users: 72 percent
Rare users: 22 percent
Young adults (Age group between 25 to 28 years)
Frequent users: 76 percent
Rare users: 21 percent
Adults (Age group between 30 to 35 years)
Frequent users: 68 percent
Rare users: 25 percent
Retain User Attention
Like said earlier, visual content is more pleasing to the eyes than dull text messages or text-only ad copies. If you are posting texts, make sure you add emojis, especially if you do not add photos or videos to your content. This will make your audience stick to your content until the end.
How Brands are Using Emoji in Marketing? Great Emoji Marketing Examples
It is really surprising how small emoji in text wires the emotion in our brain. Emojis not only express your text, but it can cheer your mood – it holds the capability to humanize messages. Hence, several brands are including emoji marketing in their digital marketing strategies.
Here is the list of top brands using emoji marketing. Also, find out how they are making most of it and creating engagement.
Domino’s Pizza
Apart from taste, the best thing about Domino’s pizza is easy orders – it keeps on simplifying order placement for users. Domino’s has introduced a new way to order pizza with pizza slice emoji.
You can order your Domino’s pizza through Twitter in three simple steps. Here is what you need to do:
- Follow Domino’s Twitter handle.
- Register for easy order – set up order preferences and select payment methods.
- That’s all! Now send pizza emoji to Domino’s and expect a call-back or message from their end for order confirmation.
Note that to use the easy order method, you will have to use the online Domino’s platform for pizza order once. After this, you are all set to enjoy your favorite Domino’s pizza with quick order placement.
Mac Donald’s
Another popular food brand using emoji is McDonald’s. The giant food chain came up with an emoji campaign called Good Times to bring positivity in users; here, they connect their products with happiness.
They curate creative emoji ads featuring long chains of emojis. These emojis show how a McDonald’s burger and fries creates happiness in a stressful or hectic situation.
WWF
WWF or World Wide Fund is known to be one of the biggest and respected organizations that work for sustaining the environment, pollution control, degradation resistance, and more. The organization is run successfully in more than a hundred countries with over five million active supporters.
The popular and resourceful organization created an emoji campaign in the year 2015 on Twitter – the video featured emojis of seventeen endangered species and habitats. The campaign was aimed to raise funds for protecting precious earth species.
White House
Emoji marketing is not only loved by the top brands and digital marketers but is also by America’s President. In the year 2014, Economic Advisors of the White House Council made a report on millennials, which showcased important stats like education, health care debts, and much more. In order to make the report appealing to teens and youngsters, they used emojis to showcase the infographics.
It’s a perfect example of how you can transform your informative content from dull to exciting.
Things You Should Consider When Using Emoji Marketing
Use Minimal Emoji to Define Your Brand or Product
There are hundreds of emojis available online; there are emojis for almost every emotion; in fact, several emojis for the same expression. Although the use of different emojis makes text messages fun, you should be a bit choosy when you use emoji for your brands’ content.
Select some key emojis to define your brand – choose strategic emojis that represent your products and services the most. Use minimal emojis like 4 to 5 groups of emojis – this will show consistency, and customers will be able to quickly and easily identify your brand.
Maintain Balance
Social media marketing statistics and numbers are a great deal. Every minor detail counts, such as Emoji posts, links, hashtags, images, and more. In order to attract a potential audience, you have to make sure that you maintain a balance and relevancy on your content. Overdoing anything will make your content appear bulky and ugly.
Similarly, when it comes to selecting emojis for your brand, do not overuse them. Check if emojis are empowering your content – curate a balanced message with appropriate text and the right amount of visual elements.
Know the Emoji Before You Post It
With the increasing use of emojis, new emojis are being launched very often. There are now thousands of emojis available online or on your keypad – also, there are several emoji apps available as well. There might be many functions you see on your keyboard but don’t know what it means. So don’t use an emoji if you don’t understand what meaning it conveys, as this might get you in trouble or make a bizarre statement.
Know When to Use Emoji in Marketing
We have talked so much about the importance of using emoji in digital content, but that doesn’t mean you will use it everywhere. It should not be used on every message you send to your customer, or emoji should not be a replacement for your message. When you talk with your customers, be clear with your words and don’t forcibly use emoji where it isn’t required as it can confuse them much.
Know How Your Audience Use Emoji
Emoji marketing is a part of social media marketing, so if you are incorporating social media marketing for your business, you must be aware of the importance of audience statistics. Knowing your audience is the key to engagement, and the same applies to emojis. Know how your audience uses or perceives certain emojis.
After you understand your audiences’ reaction to emojis, you will be able to use the most relevant emoji and also well strategize emoji marketing.
Final Thoughts on Emoji Marketing
Emojis will soon become a classification under which several graphical entities will fall. Incorporating the right emojis in your marketing campaigns, ads, emails, and messages will give you an edge over your competitors. Try to make the conversations with your audience more engaging using emojis and see your fortunes changing.
About the Author
Bhavik Soni is a creative writer at Auto Monkey. We provide an original analysis of the latest happenings in the social media industry. Connect with the latest social media trends and news plus tips on Twitter, Facebook, and other social tools on the web.
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