When was the last time an email subject line made you smile? Thanks to emoji, email subject lines are getting a lot more expressive with everything from 😍, to 🍕 and even 💩 making appearances in our inboxes.
By using emoji in place of words, or to complement words, marketers have unlocked a new way to engage and connect with their subscribers. And engagement is the name of the game when it comes to email marketing.
Brands using emoji in their subject lines have seen a 45% increase in their unique open rates according to a report by Experion.com.
Emoji are popping up all over. In fact, Jess Nelson of Email Marketing Daily reports that “the use of emojis in mobile and email marketing messages has increased 775% year-over-year” and “triggered email messages containing emojis have jumped more than 7,000% in recent months and emoji use in marketing messages has shown a steady 20% increase month-to-month in 2016.”
The benefits of emoji
in subject lines
Increased open rates
Save space
Convey emotion
Stand out in a crowded inbox
How to use emoji in
your email subject lines
Create a new campaign and add the emoji in the subject line field by copying and pasting it from the sites above.
Things to keep in mind when using
emoji in email subject lines
Email client support for emoji
As marketers, we have to keep in mind that there are many different email clients out there like Outlook, Gmail, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, etc. And, all these email clients don’t render email the same way (wouldn’t that be a dream!)
Because we can’t force all the email clients to play nice and render our emails the same way, it’s important to know that your emoji may look different in the different clients. So how do you know which email clients are particularly problematic for emoji?
To see what would happen when we included emoji in our email subject lines, we tested a variety in the most popular email clients and found they were generally well supported:
With the exception of Outlook 2003, there was near-universal support. Outlook.com and iOS devices included an additional twist – instead of displaying the basic characters, some symbols like ❤ are replaced by the word ’emoji’, or a small graphic instead.
With an Android device, you can insert an emoji using the appropriate button on the standard Android keyboard. However, emoji inserted in this way will be visible in Inbox on Android but not necessarily in the web version.
Keep in mind that if a emoji isn’t supported in the email client, the recipient may see a ☐ character instead.
Using emoji in your email subject lines can be an effective and attention-generating technique to increase your email open rates 🎉 and get more people engaging with your campaigns.
