Dive Brief:
- Appboy’s study of emoji use in marketing found that active campaigns containing emojis have increased by 609% year-over-year.
- In raw numbers, this means that 800 million marketing messages with emojis were sent last month, compared to 145 million a year ago.
- However, it's unclear how effective emoji marketing really is. 51% of people surveyed have a positive impression of brands using emojis in marketing, seeing those brands as “fun” or “relatable.”
Dive Insight:
Once emojis came into popular culture, emoji marketing wasn't far behind. On Twitter, marketers now have the option to target users who tweet using certain icons. Previously, Twitter has offered selected brands an opportunity to run custom branded emoji campaigns, such as Coca-Cola’s campaign last fall.
Emojis have become a mainstream part of communication and a shorthand for expressing emotion, especially on social media and mobile. Of the 500 people AppBoy polled on emoji sentiment, over 63% claimed they have a positive view of emoji marketing, and 87% of respondents use them in their personal messages. 68% stated they received one or more emojis each day.
But despite the positive sentiment and the uptick in brands using emojis in their marketing, it's unclear how effective emoji marketing is.
Meghan McCormick, the social strategy director at marketing and communications agency Deutsch, recently told Marketing Dive that their clients are curious about emojis but there’s “no solid use case for them to compare.” Emojis are still met with a dose of trepidation for McCormick’s clients.
According to Appboy, emoji use is trending upwards and brands are beginning to understand how to target emoji campaigns to their audience, using segmentation and message targeting to reach people who are most likely to respond to emoji campaigns.
