We can’t imagine our digital world without emojis. These cute characters have firmly planted themselves into our online conversations, and now, we use them as frequently as actual words – upwards of 10 billion times per day 🤯.
While emojis are intrinsic to our communication with friends, using emojis for marketing is still a hot topic for brands and businesses. Many love ‘em, some hate ‘em, but most social media marketers rightly argue it’s all about context. After all, a trustworthy finance brand is going to show up very differently online to a playful beverage company, and while emojis might fly in an email headline, they’re not appropriate for a solemn press release.
If you’re wondering how to use emojis to give your brand some personality without making any missteps, we’ve rounded up our best advice.
What are emojis?
Starting from the beginning, what do emojis mean in 2024’s digital landscape? Well, emojis are teeny-tiny digital characters that, over the last decade or so, have become a critical part of the internet zeitgeist. You’ll find ‘em all over the World Wide Web, from text messages (their original home) to social media platforms, emails, and websites.
The word ‘emoji’ is Japanese in origin, and comes from pairing ‘e’ (picture) and ‘moji’ (character or letter). Japan is where the first 180 emojis were created back in 1999, using a character encoding system called Unicode Standard. They were adopted by Japanese telcos to use in texting and on the internet, before hitting the global mainstream in 2010 as we know them today.
Billions of emojis are sent every day, and usage stats tell us these little pictures are more than just for fun. They’ve become a powerful tool for conveying sentiment – even when they’re misconstrued or develop hidden meanings – and adding authenticity to your communications.
Emojis have become inherent to the way we communicate with each other, adding complexity and emotion to a sentiment.
A fun fact before we get into the emoji guide: something unique about emojis that reinforces their popularity is our brains process them as non-verbal communication – that is, when we see an emoji, we interpret them emotionally rather than assigning a specific word or phrase to them. This explains why emojis can brighten our days or, when interpreted incorrectly, can send us into a state of panic or frustration.
Why should brands use emojis in marketing?
We promise they’re more than just cute icons – emojis pose a string of benefits for your brand or small business’s digital marketing strategy.
Here’s why you should be using emojis in your marketing:
- Humanize your brand: Because we interpret emojis as feelings, not facts, they do wonders to make our words appear more human. And the stats don’t lie – a trend report by Adobe showed that 78% of people think emoji use makes you seem more likable.
- Add context and nuance: When you’re dealing with limited text placements in ads or punchy email subject lines, emojis can be helpful contextualizers. They’re also a way to add some nuance in these short but sweet situations, especially if your words don’t give away your intention (e.g., if you’re using sarcasm or irony).
- Make text visually interesting: In 2024, a text-only paragraph is – let’s face it – kinda boring. Emojis spice up monotonous lines of text and draw the eye to something visual to hook readers from the jump.
- Hold reader attention: In long-form mediums like blog posts or email newsletters, emojis are a fantastic way to maintain your readers’ attention so they don’t get bored and click away. They’re also an easy signposting tool for the skim readers amongst us.
- Participate in social and cultural moments: Every now and then, an emoji will have its moment – just ask the Face with Tears of Joy emoji, which has been heralded as a ‘hallmark of millennial culture’ that gives Gen Z the ick. By staying ahead of the emoji curve 📈you can weigh in on these moments and add your brand’s two cents to the conversation.
- Speak directly to digital natives: tl;dr, the kids love emojis, so using them for your brand’s digital marketing will help you get them on your side and build an affinity with this prime group of consumers. Just beware of which emojis you use because Gen Z often has different interpretations to millennials, boomers, and beyond.
Emoji dos and don’ts: how to get emojis right in marketing
If emojis are a new adventure for your brand, or you’re still navigating the challenges of using them, there are a few dos and don’ts to keep in mind that’ll help you nail it every time. Let’s break down how to use emojis for branding success.
DO use emojis that align with your brand
Just like you have a brand voice for copywriting and a brand kit for graphic design, it’s important to define your brand’s emoji style. For example, if you sell men’s apparel, your go-to emojis are going to be a biiiit different to a children’s toy company. You can also reflect your brand’s visual identity through emojis – for instance, using hearts in your brand colors.
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DON’T go ham with the emojis
Accessibility is an important yet often overlooked component of digital marketing, and it extends to your emoji use!
Text-to-speech readers read the description for an emoji aloud (think ‘smiling face with sunglasses’ 😎or ‘face with symbols on mouth’ 🤬), so if you include five emojis, a hard-of-hearing or deaf person will have to listen to five different descriptions.
While this mightn’t matter too much if each emoji is different, we can imagine it’s a bit exhausting to listen to ‘frowning face with open mouth’ times five for 😦😦😦😦😦.
Be sparing with your choice of emojis so that you don’t overwhelm people using text-to-speech readers.
DO check what your emojis mean before you use them
As internet culture evolves, so does emoji use – which means some emojis now have different connotations to what they did originally. Gen Z has their own emoji lexicon, where the dotted line face emoji 🫥 means something is embarrassing, this 👁️👄👁️ is a shocked face, and the cowboy emoji 🤠 is an unexplainable meme, just to name a few.
So, always do a quick search for your chosen emojis if you’re not 100% sure how they might be perceived.
Plann tip: If you’re not sure what an emoji actually means, you can search its Unicode description on sites like Emojipedia to confirm. This will also tell you exactly what text-to-speech readers will read aloud.
DON’T use emojis just for the sake of it
While we could wax lyrical about emojis for days, that doesn’t mean they’re appropriate – or necessary – in every single situation. The truth is, some copy just doesn’t need emojis to get your message across. Plus, in some cases, emojis can do more harm than good.
You wouldn’t include emojis in an obituary or a legal contract, so they probably don’t need to feature in a press release or a serious social media post, either.
Best practice tips for using emojis in your marketing
Use emojis in email marketing (eDM) subject lines
When your inbox is an endless sea of text-heavy subject lines, the fun stuff (like emails from cool brands and businesses) can be hard to find. So, why not add an emoji or two to help your subject line stand out?
According to Experian, people are 56% more likely to click on an email subject line if it contains an emoji. Just don’t go overboard – pick one to two brand-aligned emojis to include, and always A/B test with an emoji-free subject line to see what your audience prefers.
Create visual lists in your social media post captions
Using emojis in place of bullet points can be a great way to add visual excitement and clarity to longer social media captions. They break up the text for readability and to cut through any visual monotony. Add one relevant emoji at the beginning of each list item, like creator Ryan Nordheimer does to show off his menu in this fun foodie Reel.
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Harness the power of emojis in social media graphics
Looking for a way to spice up your Canva tiles? Hmm, we think it’s time to sprinkle in some emojis for good measure. Use these fun characters to add personality to text-heavy social media graphics, or simply to carry your brand style across from the caption to the image.
You could even create social media moments that center around emojis, like this ingenious emoji guessing game from The Daily Aus. While they were certainly polarizing (just check the comments), they attracted heaps of engagement.
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Use emoji marketing to give your website personality
If your website needs a little character, consider adding a couple of emojis to the mix. This can give a page pizzazz, draw the eye to specific sections, and endear (in particular) younger audiences. Just make sure you solidify how to use emojis for your brand before you hit ‘go live’. We love this landing page design from yet-to-launch wellness company Sugar, who have used a combination of traditional and custom emojis to create an eclectic yet slick design.
Sugar pairs a range of new and recognized emojis to liven up their waitlist landing page, proving emoji marketing doesn’t have to look childish!
Include emojis for flair in Instagram Stories
Instagram is a pretty relaxed platform, and Stories even more so – which makes it the perfect medium for using emojis to your heart’s content. Sprinkle a few emojis into your Story text, use them to embellish your photo, or incorporate them into your polls and question boxes.
Travel creator Crosby Grace Travels uses the down arrow emoji to encourage her followers to ask questions using an Instagram Stories question box.
Keep Reading: Discover the best emojis to use on Instagram in this complete guide.
Plann tip: Need to access the emoji keyboard on your desktop? There’s a shortcut for that!
How to use emojis on Mac: ctrl-cmd-space or fn-E.
How to use emojis on Windows: the Windows logo + . (period).
Emoji guide FAQs: your questions, answered
Should I use emojis in marketing emails?
Absolutely – in fact, we insist that you do! You can also use them in the body copy of your marketing email to add flair to the occasional sentence, to jazz up your titles and section headers, or to signpost important parts of the email for readers.
Is it unprofessional to use emojis?
This one depends on who you ask… while 46% of young people aged 18-29 think it’s perfectly acceptable to use emojis in professional contexts such as the office, 29% of older users aged 45+ think it makes their colleagues look unprofessional. Our advice? Know your audience.
What are the best emojis to use?
Ooh, there are so many great ones – but statistically, some trump others. If by best, you mean the most used emojis, then here are the top ten according to Unicode: 😂❤️🤣👍😭🙏😘🥰😍😊. However, if you’re wondering which ones will be best to use for your brand, that’s a different story. Social media users (and algorithms!) love consistency, so why not pick a few that represent your brand the best and make them your official emojis?
Keep Reading: Dive into our complete guide to the most popular emojis to use in 2024.
Level-up your social media content with Plann
Whether you’re struggling to keep up with the fast-paced nature of social media or simply want to devote more time to growing your business and focusing on those tasks that take place offline, Plann’s range of features is sure to help save you time with an automated social media strategy.
From AI-generated captions to cross-posting, analytics, hashtags and more, Plann can help you maintain a consistent posting schedule while you remain focused on business growth. We even auto-post your Instagram Reels to take the hassle out of growing organically on the platform!
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