Emojis in your marketing

Emojis make people smile 😃. They're fun. But they're not very professional? 

Using them in your marketing - whether it's in an email, or your social media - would be like speaking slang in a business meeting instead of 'proper' English. Or? 

If you target very traditional people who are perhaps quite formal, they may not react very positively if you pepper your marketing communications with emojis.

However, most tourism-related businesses have an audience who are now very used to seeing plenty of emojis. My 83-year old mother still uses xxx to end her texts to her grand-daughters, but she's perfectly adapted to understanding when they respond 😘. 

How and when should you use emojis? 

They don't work when you over-use them. They do work to grab attention, and build engagement when you use them sparingly. 

You can build followers on social media by encouraging plenty of engagement, particularly comments. An easy way to do this could be by showing a photo of something and asking people to respond with 👍🏽 or 👎🏽.

You can also use them to grab attention in the subject line of an email, or to target people with a particular interest such as 🐶 or 🚴‍♀️.

Another use is to break up text so it's easier and more fun to read. Emojis draw in the reader and encourage them to think about the text a little more - there's a useful moment where the brain assesses the emoji and context. Some people are more likely to respond to pictures than words. 

You can also use emojis to show your personality and be less formal, encouraging more engagement. 

Which emojis? 

Facial expressions can quickly help to convey feelings. Some emojis, such as smiley faces, are already very familiar and comforting.

Emojis like hearts convey positivity. If you want to use emojis to grab attention, then it's worth hunting for something that's a little less obvious. I used a 🌷 in the subject line for a Spring mailing and open rates were considerably higher than useful. 

Perhaps there's an emoji that people will particularly associate with your business? You can easily experiment to see what gets the best response - or even do a social media post to ask which emojis make people smile or feel most positive?