4 Tips for Using Emojis in Your Email Marketing Strategy

Let’s pause for a moment: Go ahead and reach for your phone and take a look at the last few text messages you’ve sent and received. Chances are pretty high that emojis were used to enhance communication. Emojis were once only thought of as fun ways to enhance text messages, but now they have entered the world of email marketing. In fact, using emojis in your marketing campaigns isn’t just trendy but becoming essential for getting more clicks and higher conversions. Emojis, when used correctly, can take campaigns with lackluster results and turn them into an overnight success. These four tips will help.

1. Know Which Emojis Connect with the Right Audiences

One of the first things a top-performing inbound marketing agency specializing in custom growth stacks does is create comprehensive buyer personas for their client. These are used to create unique content directed to specific buyers to help increase CTRs and conversion rates. Buyer personas can also help marketers use the right emojis for the right target audience.

With hundreds of emojis to choose from it’s important that you understand the meaning behind each one you intend using. Simply peppering your email subject line with emojis will not help (in fact, this could make things worse). You will need to develop a strategy and determine which emojis best align with your audience. For example, the thought process behind using emojis to target teens is going to be very different from one targeting millennials. Edgy emojis that promote action and excitement might be ideal for a skateboard company targeting 14 to 18 year olds, as opposed to a simple emoji wearing sunglasses next to a palm tree from a travel agency targeting people in their 30s and 40s.

2. Don’t Let Emojis Over-Complicate Your Message

Emojis are relatively new in marketing, so the tendency to go overboard using them is a lingering temptation. Flooding email copy and social media posts with emojis can confuse your audience and turn them off completely. Using too many emojis and even the wrong ones can complicate your message presenting total confusion that pushes potential customers away. Be sure to only use a few that make sense within the context of your email line and post title. Using too many can come across as obnoxious and awkward.

3. Your Emojis Should Inspire User Engagement

Remember, every consumer has a pain or a need, and they are looking for the best solution. You can use emojis to leverage your brand’s products as the ultimate solution to your customer’s pains. Your emojis need to encourage immediate engagement that draws attention to a CTA, while inspiring an emotional connection. We already know that using the right emojis dramatically increases open rates, but using carefully thought-out emojis to inspire engagement will lead to an increase in conversions.

4. Know the Right Time and Place to Use Emoji Marketing

Just like smoking a cigar, there’s a time and a place to use emojis. A business like a family resort can use emojis all day long. However, a business like a funeral service provider should probably never use them. Then there are businesses that face times when it is appropriate to use them, and times when it is best to leave them to the side. For example, a veterinary clinic may have a segmented email list of clients who have healthy pets and they want to encourage them to come back for a routine checkup. Using an emoji of a cat with a lollipop would be fine. But for segmented lists of people with dying pets undergoing pain management, it is best not to use them.

If you aren’t sure whether or not it is appropriate to use emojis in a certain context or situation, do some split-testing. Compare email open rates with emojis in your subject line with those that are void of emojis. Each audience is different and they are inspired by different triggers. Take advantage of any place you can scoop up some data in order to best understand your audience.

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