Mobiniti added Emojis to our marketing platform last year and our users have found tremendous success with them. When used right, they engage with subscribers and lead to an uptick in revenue.
That being said, Emojis need to be used right. There is such a thing as under or over-using them in your marketing message. Doing that can have the opposite effect of turning subscribers away, something no marketer wants.
Baseline Emojis: Missing the Point
Subscribers join your marketing groups for a reason. They want content related to your service or product, and they want an easy way to consume it. Don’t use Emojis just to use them, or just to add some visuals to a message. Subscribers can actually be hindered and annoyed when reading your message if you do that. That’s the last thing marketing should do.
Examples of this would be adding Emojis that only tangentially relate to the content of your message, and adding them into the middle of a sentence.
In this Baseline example, the Cool Shades Emoji is used for no reason but because the message thinks it’s cool. It’s not, and your subscribers are not going to think it is. Your subscribers are going to wonder why the phrase “Call now” has been interrupted by an Emoji.
You can use an Emoji to prompt an emotional reaction, but it has to be around content that would warrant it. There will be an example of this towards the end.
Meeting Expectations: Doing the Bare Minimum
Your subscribers aren’t dumb, they know when you’re putting effort into a message and when you aren’t. Don’t add Emojis, or anything else, to one of your marketing messages just because they reiterate a word in your message. When you do that, you run the risk of annoying and alienating your subscribers.
Doing something like, adding a banana Emoji after the word ‘banana,’ that’s redundant. You’re essentially saying the same word twice, and this does two things wrong. First, it’s a waste of characters in your SMS message which is a waste of your money. Second, it disrespects the intelligence of your subscribers. They will have read the word fine the first time. If you think you need an Emoji show what a word means, don’t use that word. It’s always best to keep it simple.
Here’s another example of Meeting Expectations. The Bread Emoji is reiterating the word ‘bread.’ At best, it’s ignored by the subscriber reading it, and at worst, it’s annoying. You always want to add to a message with an Emoji, never risk taking away.
Exceeding Expectations: Looking Good
To exceed expectations, use Emojis to say what you could have said in far more words. Some Emojis can give a subscriber useful information. The worst only remind readers of an emotion. Prepare the subscriber for what the message is about before they finish reading it with your Emojis.
Using a Basketball Emoji next to the name of a sports team is perfect. It says this message is about a basketball game without saying it. You don’t have to treat your subscribers like children. A name like the “Darwin Ducks” is clearly a sports team to anyone who would be subscribed to sports reminders. But, instead of using a bunch of characters to say which sport, a single Emoji cuts out what could have been a whole sentence.
The Lit Emoji at the end, only adds to the excitement, because it’s a symbol that stands for excitement. It does what the Basketball Emoji did to a lesser extent. It told the subscriber how to feel, but be careful, using multiple of them in a row, could have easily been too much.
Exceptional Emojis: Above and Beyond
The best way to use Emojis is to pair them with the right content, and that includes images, not only text.
Everything works in tandem in the Exceptional example. The image that appears first shows you what’s on sale, the text tells you when it starts and what the subscriber can save, while the Emojis tell the subscriber how to feel.
The Emojis are at the end of the sentence too, so they’re not intrusive. They don’t repeat any words said in the messages, and they promote feelings subscribers should and want to have. It avoids the worst mistakes of using Emojis and uses them sparingly to the best of the message’s ability.
Emojis are like any marketing tool, use them right and you can see tremendous growth in revenue and success. We at Mobiniti want you to use them to the best of your ability, and to do that we have a fully featured guide to reference for best practices, facts, and instructions on how to use Emojis.
Check out the guide here, and contact us if you have any questions on how to upgrade your text marketing to the next level!
