Dive Brief:

• Appboy, a mobile marketing automation firm, research marketers’ use of emojis in mobile messaging and found it increased 775% year-over-year, and continuing to rise 20% month-over-month this year.
• The study found that retail and e-commerce marketers are most likely to include emojis in marketing messages.
• One data point that illustrates how widespread emojis are becoming is that Appboy clients sent five billion messages containing emojis last year.

Dive Insight:

“Brands shouldn’t be looking at emojis as the singular driver of a consumer’s action — open rates, engagement rates, etc.,” Marissa Aydlett, VP of marketing at Appboy, told Venture Beat. “There are many other factors that contribute to the success of a message: tone, goal of campaign, message content, images, what the landing page or deep-linked mobile experience is like when the user arrives there. Everything needs to connect.”

Last fall Twitter began offering brands the opportunity to create custom branded emojis the social media company called “hashflags,” a capability that Coca-Cola first took advantage of as part of its #ShareaCoke promotion.

Ross Hoffman, senior director of global brand strategy at Twitter, told TechCrunch at the time, “We know that people love using emojis and usage has been significantly increasing over time on our platform. This was a perfect opportunity to work with a nimble and smart marketer to make this happen.”