If you want to reach your target audience you have to speak their language. As it turns out, that language is in a constant state of evolution – and nowhere is this more apparent than social media, where brightly hued, cartooned faces are increasingly replacing the humble, thumb-tapped word.

As reported by the New York Times, advertisers are racing to adapt to the shifting media habits of Millennials – a generation that is notoriously hard to reach given their intolerance for traditional advertising, and who are increasingly engaging with pictures rather than words.

You know where we’re going with this, right?

If you’re not already using emojis in your messaging, now’s the time to trial it. In Part 1 of this 2-part series, we’ll explore the WHY…

What’s an Emoji?

If you’re yet to have seen an emoji for yourself, we’ll assume you’ve never used social media and you’re still clinging onto your trusty Nokia 1100 from 2003. Bless. We’re not judging! Emojis are these:

Recognise ‘em? These small, cartoony symbols are essentially the new internet slang. In fact, they’re so popular it’s estimated that 92% of the online population has used emojis at least once.

While the original concept for emojis dates back to late ’90s Japan, the expressive yellow faces and heart symbols we now know and love launched in 2011, following Apple’s decision to add emoji support to the iPhone. Android and other mobile operating systems quickly followed suit, and over the past five years emojis have seeped into mainstream culture, peppering texts, tweets, and Facebook and Instagram posts around the world.

Emojis have become a fixture in our day-to-day lives – so much so that the term ’emoji’ was named by Oxford Dictionaries as Word of the Year for 2015. That’s not all. World Emoji Day is celebrated every July 17 (because that’s the date shown on the iOS calendar emoji). Emoji URLs are now a thing. There’s even a big budget Hollywood film – Emojimovie – in the works… we kid you not!

Emojis have infiltrated modern communication – which means brands have taken notice and begun to capitalise on the craze.

Why Use Emojis?

No business should jump on the current bandwagon and use emojis for emojis’ sake, but there are some good reasons to consider adding emojis to your brand messaging.

Emojis can:

  • Help to add personality to your marketing messages

  • Make text feel friendlier and more informal

  • Help convey some of the cues and sentiment that may get lost in text

  • Make your business seem more human, and remind customers that there are people behind your brand

  • Draw attention and help your message to stand out

People – your customers and prospects – use emojis to improve online communication and be understood, to add a sentiment, or to express themselves as fast as possible in the most appropriate way.

Therefore, when a brand uses emojis in their messages, they are positioning themselves on the same level as their customers, and creating a personal connection while making their brand seem open and accessible.

Perhaps most interestingly, emojis are designed to trigger our cuteness response, which is hard-wired into us by evolution and automatically makes us more susceptible to their sentiment. Not convinced? Take 5 minutes out of your day to check out this video…

Cuteness aside, here’s the kicker:

Emojis are POWERFUL

Like ‘em or loathe ‘em, there’s no denying it. Emojis are everywhere – and they’re being increasingly used in marketing and brand messaging because they work.

The mobile marketing experts at Appboy have researched the effects of emojis and their estimated return on investment in marketing, and released some convincing key stats:

More than 800 million emoji messages were sent in June 2016, up from 145 million in June 2015.

Conversion rates associated with emoji messaging campaigns have increased 135% since June 2015.

More than 64% of people like or love emojis, compared to only 6% who dislike or hate them.

Since June 2015, the open rates for iOS and Android push notifications containing emojis have increased by 210% and 1,063%, respectively, year over year.

Those are some pretty compelling stats! Why wouldn’t you want to give emojis a go?! Read our next post, How to Use Emoji in Marketing.