Commentary

Are Marketers Overdosing On Emojis?

Emojis are everywhere.

Indeed, the number of active campaigns containing the cartoonish images has increased by 557% in the last 12 months, according to fresh findings from Appboy.

That means more than 700 million emoji messages were sent last month alone -- compared to 145 million 12 months ago, the mobile marketing automation firm calculates.

How are consumers responding to this emoji avalanche?

Well, they’re not quite thrilled about it.

While 63% have a positive view of emojis, only about half (51%) report a positive impression of brands who use them.

These findings are not exactly definitive, considering the fact that Appboy only polled 500 people. Yet they do suggest that brands should walk a fine line when considering the addition of emojis.

To their credit, brands do appear to be refining their use of emojis. Since October of last year, the average size of an emoji marketing campaign has stabilized at around 325,000 recipients, according to Appboy.

That compares to early 2015, when emoji messaging campaigns were commonly  blasted out to millions of consumers.

“That suggests that brands are increasingly taking advantage of segmentation and message targeting to deliver messages with emojis to customers who are likely to be interested in receiving them,” Todd Grennan, senior content producer at Appboy, notes in the new report.

The approach appears to be paying off. In fact, since June 2015, the open rates for iOS and Android push notifications containing emojis have increased by 210% and 1,063%, year-over-year.

Meanwhile, conversion rates associated with emoji messaging campaigns have increased 135% during that time -- although, Grennan concedes, other factors beyond the use of emojis could potentially be impacting the number of conversions produced by individual campaigns.

1 comment about "Are Marketers Overdosing On Emojis?".
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  1. Neil Mahoney from Mahoney/Marketing, July 15, 2016 at 8:37 a.m.

    It's not the Marketers.  It's the Social Media people.  That's why I streess my "16 Commandments for a Truly Aligned Social Media-Marketing-Sales Process.  Things like this must be coordinated among these key groups to assure the proper company image is being portrayed. 

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