This podcast is all about using emojis effectively in marketing emails and other digital content. Jay provides data and convincing examples of how emojis can help grab attention and boost engagement, even in professional business-to-business communications. Listeners can expect to learn best practices for utilizing emojis in subject lines, preheaders, social media, and more to stand out and connect with their audience.
Key Discussion Points:
– Over 95% of email recipients can view emojis, so technical display issues are not a concern.
– Emojis in subject lines can increase open rates by over 20% for business emails and 25% for consumer emails versus the same subject without an emoji.
– Conservatively branded companies like Goldman Sachs, ISACA, and AARP use emojis successfully in their email marketing.
– For business emails, use emojis like the calendar, clock, and checkmark that act as graphical symbols rather than emotional icons.
– Emojis that convey urgency like the hourglass perform best, increasing subject line open rates.
– Always put the emoji as the first character of the subject line for maximum impact.
– Despite increased use around holidays, under 5% of emails actually use emojis currently so they still stand out.
And MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Marigold!!
Marigold is a relationship marketing platform designed to help you acquire new customers and turn them into superfans with their best-in-class loyalty solutions. Don’t take my word for it though, American Airlines, Honeybaked Ham, Title Boxing, and Notre Dame University are also customers!
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Transcript
Foreign. Welcome to do this, not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.
You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. Also, dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this. Not that.
All right, Today we're going to have some fun. We're going to have some fun because we're going to talk about something that seems ridiculous, but it works incredibly well, and that is emojis.
I have just lost at least half the audience because some of you are business marketers out there, and you're like, I'm never using an emoji. They're not going to work for me. But I'm going to break this down for you.
Whether you're a business marketer, consumer marketer, whether you're marketing in regulated industries to professionals that you don't think would ever react to an emoji, I want to break it down for you, give you the stats, give you the information, because I don't care what industry you're in or how conservative a market you're in, emojis work. So I want to go through the data, where you should use them, where you shouldn't use them, how to use them. We are going to talk emojis.
So first off, over 95% of all people that receive email, that means everybody that gets email. So all receiving email networks can view emojis just fine in their subject line. Over 95%. So it's no longer will this show up?
It will show up just fine. So let's dispel that myth now. Let's just talk about some general stats, and then we'll get into some specifics.
When you put emojis in your subject line, what we're really trying to do is get your email to stand out. Every time you hit send, you have to say to yourself, whether it's using an emoji or not.
You say to yourself the same thing, what am I doing right now to make sure when I send out my email that my email is going to stand out and not everybody else's. It is this little inbox battle that you're in, and if you're not focused on how you're going to stand out, you will lose that battle.
And an emoji is really just a graphical symbol that allows you to capture the person's attention, that millisecond attention. So when you put an emoji in the subject line first for a business marketer. Yes, a B2B email.
When you put an emoji in the subject line, it will lift your open rate percentage, the percentage of people opening up your emails on average by over 20% versus the same subject line that does not have an emoji. On the consumer side, on average, depending on which emoji use, it can lift your open rate up over 25% percent.
When you have an emoji in the subject line versus same subject line, no emoji. And if you think, for example, that emojis are ridiculous. No, I could never do that.
If you go to, let's say look at like Goldman Sachs, okay, Goldman Sachs and all, almost all of their newsletter subject lines, they use an emoji. How about isaca? ISACA is the largest trade association for IT security professionals. Really? I mean these people are not emoji people.
They use emojis all the time. How about aarp? So seniors, they won't care about emojis. Yes, they do. They use it a ton. So when you think that you can't, you're wrong.
Now emojis, it really depends on how you use them and which emojis that you use. So first off, let's break down the B2B side, the business side of using emojis, because I think that's the audience that is most suspect.
On the business to business side, what you want to be thinking about is, yes, emojis are ridiculous and they're dumb and they have a stupid name and all of that. But in your mind what you want to say is, let's just say they weren't called emojis. Let's say they were called business icons.
And you're like, oh, I want to use a business icon in my subject line. How do I do that? Right? Because it just has a bad pr, has bad branding. Right? There are emojis.
I'm not telling you, you should go and use a happy face in your subject line.
And if you look at every major SaaS company or every major financial accounting software company or all these really, really boring categories, they use emojis all the time. But what do they use? They don't use the smiley face. They use things like the calendar emoji, the countdown clock emoji, the check mark emoji.
They use more of it being a graphical symbol to grab attention rather than something being haha funny. So that's the way we want to be utilizing emojis on the business side on the consumer side, obviously, you can be more liberal.
What we use fire emoji, heart emoji.
But for both categories, business or consumer, the emojis that elicit the highest open rate, what actually, which emojis actually generate the highest open rate, or anything that gives a view of urgency. Okay, so the hourglass emoji is the number one performing emoji, and a very close second is the clock emoji.
Because both of those things are saying, time is running out, last chance registered for the webinar, last chance to get the 20% off discount. And any emoji that is related to time works better than any other emoji. Now, here are the things that marketers do wrong when it comes to emoji.
Where do you put the emoji? Do not put your emoji at the end of your subject line. It has to be the first character of your subject line.
If we did a million studies, looked at first character subject line versus last character subject line, when is first character subject line for both business and consumer, it radically changes engagement. So it's got to be the first character.
Now, another thing that people say a lot is, well, during the holiday time, during this time of year, emoji use by marketers goes up over 50%, which you'll see in your own inbox. You'll see a lot more emojis.
So what marketers make the mistake of in their head is they say, well, Jay, if everybody's using an emoji, then if I use the emoji, it won't stand out because everybody's using an emoji. And that may feel that way to you because you're looking at everything from a marketer perspective.
But in reality, less than 5% of all emails that go out utilize an emoji in the subject line, less than 5%. So while it may feel like a lot to you, it's still a very small fraction.
So using an emoji for both business and consumer emails will allow you to stand out. The overwhelming majority of marketers are still not using emojis in their subject line at all.
The other thing that marketers do, especially on the consumer side, this is a little bit harder on the B2B side, is bookend emojis. You start your subject line and finish your subject line with an emoji, and it does incredibly well.
An emoji will not cause you to go to the junk folder. It will not cause you to go to the spam folder. It will not hurt your deliverability at all. Actually, because you get more opens.
People open up your email more because of the excitement or awareness that emoji causes. It will generate more engagement. Okay? Which is why you stay in the inbox.
You stay in the inbox because all these technical receiving networks and systems are looking at are people opening and clicking on your emails. And by generating more people opening and interacting with your emails, you're generating more engagement.
So the likelihood of you staying in the inbox goes up when use an emoji, not goes down. All right, now, there are other places that you can use an emoji. I've said emoji, I think 37,000 times in this episode already. It's, like, weird.
Anyway, there are other places you can use an emoji. Did you know that you can put an emoji in your pre header? Okay. The pre header is the second subject line.
That little gray subject line below the subject line. You can put emojis in your pre header.
So if you write a regular subject line and then you put as the first character in your pre header an emoji, it'll actually lift your open rate on that email by over 10% by putting an emoji in your pre header. And by the way, a great resource for all data, information, and emojis is a website called Emojipedia. I love emojipedia.
And listen, this is also stupid. I know how stupid this all sounds. And I text with my teenage kids with emojis. I never know what the appropriate emoji was.
I mean, I was using a peach long after I shouldn't have been using a peach. And don't use an eggplant. And I just learned I can't use an avocado. I don't know. There's 75 things you can't use.
So check with your teenage kids before you use any of this. And let's stick with the hourglasses and the clocks and all that, because it gets a little crazy.
By the way, bonus, if you use emojis on LinkedIn in your profile and you bookend your name, you put your name in your actual profile, and you put an emoji to start and end your name, like a little symbol.
When you actually post things, we see engagement on posts from people that bookend emojis on their profile name on LinkedIn go up over 10% because it stands out. When people get notifications. Emojis work. They get stuff to stand out. Stop the nonsense. Oh, my goodness. Get going. Can't stop. Can't stop.
All right, before we get into the segment of this thing called since you didn't ask, which goes off the rails. Okay, before we get into that, because I got something I got to talk about I wanted to share with everybody. I'm excited to share that this.
This podcast, do this, not that, is now exclusively presented by Marigold. Marigold is super cool. It is super cool. What is Marigold? For me, Marigold is an email platform that I use to send out my emails.
I send out billions of emails. I love this platform. And you don't need to be a giant sender of email. They have systems for small, medium, large marketers.
And if you're thinking about what's the right email platform to be sending out my email, you need to be considering and. And checking out Marigold. They're across every industry. They do the work for American Airlines and Notre Dame and all these different categories.
And it's not just email. They do. They have a loyalty marketing platform and a relationship marketing platform. It's great. So go to meet marigold.com. that is meet marigold.com.
you have to consider them for whatever platform you're sending out your email on. Now let's get into. Since you didn't ask. Since you didn't ask.
I've been traveling a lot lately because I've been going to a lot of conferences and events and all this stuff. And I've been flying a lot. And so the other day, I'm on the plane, and I really like having an aisle seat.
And now I will never fly again if it's not an aisle seat ever, for the rest of my life. And here's why. So I'm sitting. I didn't have an aisle seat. I was a window seat. So we're like mid flight. It was a long flight. And I turned.
I had to get up. I had to go. I had to go there. Hello. So I get up, and I wanted to get up. I turned to the dude next to me who had his computer out.
He was fully taking over the whole area. And I said, excuse me, I need to get up. And you know what he said to me? He looked at me. He goes, really? That's what he said. He goes, really?
I looked at him and go, excuse me. He goes, seriously? I go, yes. I have to get up. What is your problem, dude? And super uncomfortable, super awkward. I want to. I couldn't take it.
Okay, whatever. Then next flight, one of these, you know, connecting situations. Window seat again, dude next to me, big dude, whatever. Falls asleep.
I mean, he's out and it Wasn't one of these situations. I mean, I wanted to climb over him like I was bear gorillas on those shows where you have to, like, survive, but it was like impossible.
Try to wake this dude up. He wanted to kill me. It was not good. So I am not going to ever sit in a window seat or a middle school if I just. I don't know what to do.
I need to be on an aisle. I have to be. You know what else I can't take? I just can't shut up.
I sit down and this woman next to me on this other flight, she starts talking to me. I mean, she's like, where are you from? What do you do? Oh, that's so interesting. And then this is the line that I use and it's so rude.
And I actually don't care. Whenever somebody. I don't like talking an airplane at all. I can't take it. I don't. I just don't care, okay?
So whenever someone starts to talk to me, I say this to them. I look at them, I go, I'm not a talker. So sorry. And the look that I always get back when I go, I'm not a talker.
You would think I just said, hi, you smell like garbage or something. I don't know.
Because the person will look back at me with these, stare at me like they want to beat me up, and they probably should because it's kind of rude. But I don't care. I don't want to talk to them. So get an aisle seat, don't talk to people. Don't talk to me on an airplane.
And give this thing a five star review. Because, hey, you're here and I'm here. And maybe it wasn't terrible. I don't know. All right, thanks for being here. You did it. You made it to the end.
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