Using emojis to humanize your marketing

What do you do if your girlfriend is angry at you for reasons unknown even to mankind?

Don’t you continuously bombard her with and try to find out the ugly truth.

Yes you do!

You directly try to convince her with pictorial representations what you can’t do with words.

Emojis are the language we use to communicate today.

Say hello to Emojis

The word Emoji originally means a pictograph, which is the visual representation of a physical object.

The first Emoji was created by Shigetaka Kurita  who was part of the team working on NTT DoCoMo’s mobile Internet platform.

Earlier mobile operators had developed different ways of encoding characters for Emojis, resulting in a lot of confusion. Hence for the standardization, Unicode project was undertaken. As a result every smartphone, laptop and operating system is all based on Unicode.

The Unicode Consortium founded in 1991, votes on which Emoji to be included in the symbols available every year.

In 2015, Oxford Dictionary named  as Word of the year.

And, oh yes! We also have World Emoji day being celebrated on July 17.

They have been able to liven up our conversations and express our emotions.

The same can work for your marketing initiatives a well. Speak the language your customers speak and speak like you care.

Emojis are everywhere:

According to a recent report from Appboy, the use of Emojis in marketing messages sent by brands via email and mobile has increased 777% since 2015.

Take a look at how Emojis are having their moment.

New Emojis Introduced by Facebook:

Over 1200 new Emojis have been introduced by Facebook recently.

The social network company aimed at providing more diversity in skin tones and the way women  are represented in society.

The new Facebook Emojis will be standardized in Messenger across platforms.

Twitter’s Royal Emoji for The Queen: 

To mark the official 90th birthday of The Queen  , Twitter created a custom crown Emoji.

The purple and silver crown Emoji with a small ‘90’ was created to represent the people’s love and admiration for her.

Source: Twitter

Celebrity Emojis: 

Kim Kardashian, Blac Chyna, Amber Rose, Ariana Grande, Wiz Khalifa, Justin Bieber, and now gymnast Gabby Douglas has her own set of Emojis.

Yes, even celebs are jumping into this business. Celebmojis  give the fans a sense of exclusivity.

It also allows the celebrities to connect with their fans, be a part of their conversation and off-course free marketing!

The Pepsi Emoji campaign: 

Removing the language barriers with Emojis, the American multinational took a creative approach with its ‘Pepsimoji’ Campaign.

Pepsi  created a full library of Emojis to encourage conversations around the world with the campaign running in 100+ markets.

Taking it further, Pepsi also designed custom Emojis for each market with Thailand being one of the first markets to launch local Emoji. 

Humanize your messaging

You don’t need a translator to understand Emojis. This gives marketers an easy way to connect with the audience.

An understanding of how people are using Emojis in their conversation is a necessity for all marketers.

Points to Consider: 

1. Effective communication: 

‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’ ― Maya Angelou

As we continue to see messaging apps and social networks offering users a wide variety of means to express themselves. The understanding of how consumers are using Emojis is crucial for effective communication.

2. The Emotional Connect:

In today competitive online space it is important to understand the value of engaging your audience. By creating an emotional connection with your audience you have the chance to engage them better.

Think on how Emojis can help you convey the context along with the copy of your messages.

The next time you write an article, include Emojis you think the audience can relate with.

3. Storytelling:

These visual representations help you tell a story whether you are angry or happy and how much you like dancing!

Visuals help us tell our stories quickly and drive change in our behaviour. But you need to choose the right visuals.

4. Personalized Approach:

Customers expect a personalized experience and The ‘Pepsimoji’ campaign is one of the best examples of adopting a customer-centric approach.

Pepsi created Emojis which are personalized to the country based on the values, culture and preferences.

As compared to time spent on crafting messages relevant to the target market, Emojis communicate the emotion easily.

Need we say more?

Talking with your audience as they prefer, is a crucial part of your sales process. So, why not make the ‘talking’ part easy and relatable.

Emojis are a powerful way to attract attention and convey your message.

Say more with less using Emojis.