Using Emojis inside Emails and Email Deliverability

Communication is continuing to evolve, and as marketers or senders, it is becoming crucial for us to get our messages across in an uninterrupted way. Emojis are one way to convey your message with emotions subtly and are widely accepted across social media. 

Not only do they look appealing but also grab attention. What else do we need? Moreover, emojis prove to be a great way to cut long paragraphs short as well as get your message across more powerfully.

Let us now see how emojis work in Aritic PinPoint.

Email Campaign’s Performance with Emojis

In 2017, an extensive analysis was conducted by Return Path that emphasized the use of emojis in the subject line. A/B testing was carried out, and targeted promotional messages regarding the holidays in the current month were sent using emojis in the subject line. The findings revealed that while on the one hand, it lead to an increase in inbox placement and read rate, depending on the message; there was also an increase in the spam complaint rate. 

Surprisingly, they make complete sense now. Emojis spark your otherwise bland subject lines. The rate of your messages being ignored is less when you use emojis. They are colorful, and playful, and convey a certain sense of emotion. Now, with this comes the risk of spamming as well. If you are not cleaning your contact lists on a regular basis, the chances are high that your emails would land up in the inboxes where they are not welcomed.

Hence, it is imperative to clean your lists as well as add content that tells the contacts why they signed up in the first place. Now, the other part of Return Path’s finding noted that various emojis could also lead to higher inbox placement, few delivery professionals are convinced that there exists a correlation.

According to the context and time of the messages, the subject lines were also altered in the research. Changing the subject lines mean inconsistent data, and it is lesser convincing to believe that adding an emoji to the subject line will make a difference in email delivery into the inbox.

Testing Emojis in campaigns

It is a decision you make – whether to use emojis in your email or not. Whatever the case is, it should align with your message, branding, and recipients. Here are several reasons to use emojis in the subject line:

To substitute a word or a phrase

Emojis can be used to add more text to your subject, or pre-header text without consuming valuable character space. However, it is advisable not to put emojis in place of key phrases as they might not make sense to your contacts.

Back messages with emotions

To clarify the meaning of certain phrases or to make them evocative, you can use emojis in the headline.

Emphasize words with emojis

Undoubtedly, emojis can make a message strong and similarly, emphasize a word. Something like this: 

Now, let us move forward and see how can emojis be used and when to use them.

• Branding

While emojis are a great way to make your messages creative, you need to note that they do not clash with your branding. In a few cases, you might feel the emojis clashing with the brand message, logo, tagline, recipients, and/or engagement – which you need to avoid at all costs. You do not want the contacts to misinterpret those little faces.

• Messaging

Emojis are fun, and casual, and have a non-professional vibe to them. While this would work perfectly with laid-back brands, using it with more professional brands like doctors, lawyers, etc. might not be a good idea.

The decision depends on brand integrity.

• Recipients

Now, this is where targeted segments would really come in handy. Tracking the contact’s age, and their interest in the use of custom fields is essential to determine if emojis are worth testing.

Now, it is great if you have an extensive list – that can be segmented and sent with two different messages. Targeting and testing will get you better results.

Now, one thing you need to keep in check is that, in no case, should your recipients take your message in the wrong way; therefore, keep your message clear and use emojis precisely.

How to implement emojis in your email campaigns?

Before you send emails with emojis, it is advisable to get them checked to know if various email providers support these little faces or not.

Also, you need to keep an eye on the often-used email providers on your list so that you can check emoji rendering before implementing them. Furthermore, you can use our Split test Campaigns to see how your contacts would respond to emojis. This will give you better insights into how emojis work.  Also, the more you segment and target, the finer your campaigns will perform