Emojis as we all know are little digital representations of people, things, emotions, weather, etc. Their rise from unknown to a critical part of our communication and slipping into our social consciousness has kind of gone unnoticed. Developed in the late 90’s in Japan by NTT DoCoMo they sat in relative isolation in Japan until the late 00’s. Emoji roughly translated means pictograph. As of 2019 Facebook says we send 5 billion emojis per day. Yet, some of us neglect and refuse to use them in our digital marketing.
The biggest reason to use emojis is engagement.
- Tweets with emojis get 25% more engagement
- Facebook posts get 57% more likes, 33% more comments and 33% more shares
- 50% of brands saw an increase in their emails being opened if they contained an emoji in the subject line
Why does this happen? Well there are a few reasons.
- Humans give most of their focus to faces. When we look at an emoji our brain reacts in the same way as if we see an actual human face, thus we build a connection.
- We actually kind of like emojis, they make us feel happier. People who interact with what they see will feel happier due to the emojis.
- We can read images quicker than we can text. The human brain can process an image in as little time as 13 milliseconds according to a study by MIT. In a time where our attention span is shorter than ever the quicker we can convey our message the better.
- Emojis are a universal language. Symbols are a near universal language bar a few. We can all understand them even if the text is written in a different language.
Even with all of this information a lot of people feel emojis still aren’t for them or their company. They fear it will devalue their brand or not represent them. In reality though emojis let us speak to our audience in a different way and connect with them. In an ever competitive market you have to take every advantage you can get, and if an emoji is worth a thousand words then use it because not many people are going to read your thousand word post about your product or service. If an emoji can improve your digital marketing that much then why not use it?
