With 1,394 official emoji’s and 435 modified emojis noted to date, the emoji continues to make an impression in the world of online communications.
It is thought that the emoji was first created around 1998 or 1999 in Japan, although mankind has been communicating and documenting experiences using images and hieroglyphics (arguably the earliest, most primitive example of an ‘emoji’) since the days of our Egyptian ancestors!
Emoji usage stats recorded back in May 2015 had suggested that more than 6 billion emojis were sent out daily using mobile messaging apps via smartphone devices. With more and more devices and applications now offering support for this image-driven font, a continuous increase in uptake and popularity is unquestionable.
Using the emoji to connect with your audience
The emoji defines a new digital language, one that is simpler and one that makes it easier for brands to communicate and engage with their online audience; particularly (although not exclusively) the younger, more tech-savvy digital users.
The emoji allows for an effective representation of an increasing number of emotions and the emoji trend is being leveraged by more brands in their daily online communications. By including an appropriate emoji in your social media communications, such as within a tweet, it is suggested that you can increase engagement by 25.4% - while careful use of the emoji has also been proven to increase engagement for Facebook posts.
Will using an emoji enhance user engagement?
Put simply, yes. By utilising emojis within your online communications, much of the data published recently online would suggest that, people are more likely to engage with it when compared directly against similar content which doesn’t contain these graphical representations of emotions!
The addition of a colourful emoji to your content instantly improves the aesthetics of your text updates whilst also adding the ‘fun’ factor.
Throughout 2016, emoji usage in push notifications sent by apps increased by 163%; push notifications containing emojis saw a 4.51% open rate compared to a lower open rate of 2.44% for notifications without emojis! The clearly demonstraes the powerful, attention-grabbing influence these little pictures can have on your readers inclination to take a favourable action from within your app or when engaging with your social updates and email marketing communications!
Which brands are successfully seizing opportunities offered by the emoji trend?
Norwegian Air Shuttle:
The airline created an emoji URL to target a specific audience – people wanting to fly from Copenhagen to LA. The URL was pushed out on Instagram and reached over 500,000 people.
The airline’s marketing spokesperson reflected on how the unique URL comprising emojis helped to “capture curiosity and communicate the message in an innovative and humorous way”.
WWF: #EndangeredEmoji
The wildlife organisation saw an opportunity using emojis and implemented a fun Twitter #EndangeredEmoji campaign to raise awareness and to help save animals from extinction.
The objective behind the fundraising campaign was to encourage people to donate 10p every time they retweeted one of the 17 emojis they used to represent endangered species.
This campaign was a huge success by triggering more than 500,000 social mentions and 59,000 sign-ups to WWF. This forward thinking social campaign has been widely regarded as a pioneering step into online social fundraising. We anticipate many other charities to follow suit and start to adopt new communication strategies aimed at attracting new, younger audiences.
Intelligent Environments
Sticking to the fun factor the emoji brings to online communications, fin-tech company ‘Intelligent Environments’ created the world’s first emoji-only passcode; this enables people to log into their bank accounts using an emoji passcode rather than a traditional 4-digit pin code!
Google Adwords introducing Emojis into PPC Listings
Google have recently announced that, very shortly, advertisers making use of the Adwords platform will have the ability to add emojis to their ad titles globally.
Which emoji/s could you use to represent your business in the online ads you’re setting up?
The inclusion of appropriate emojis within the next PPC ad titles you and your marketing team create could have a significant positive impact on the performance of your campaigns – with increased CTRs being the obvious stand out metric to keep an eye on! When you look at the statistics associated with engagement on social media posts featuring emoji characters, it’s not hard to understand why we’re so excited to see how brands and marketing agencies start to take advantage of this much more visual form of interaction in their marketing communications strategies.
Are you interested in measuring the impact of introducing emojis into the communications your brand is pushing out on email, social and now in paid search ads too? Contact Ascensor today and learn more about how our marketing team can
Finally, World Emoji Day is on 17th July 2017, so there really is no time like the present to consider implementing the engagement boosting emoji trend into your online communications strategy – just remember to exercise caution as you don’t want to overuse or misuse as this could lead to emoji fatigue amongst your audiences!