A Tale of Two Emojis

It was the best of times…Months ago, I bought a fluffy cat bed from an online company. Our cat rejected it. But I’m still on the company’s email list. Their subject lines usually include cat emojis, and when I see a beaming kitty face 😻 in my inbox otherwise filled with to-dos, I smile. Sometimes I click the email, just to check out whatever new product they’re pushing. 

It was the worst of times…My local newspaper recently emailed subscribers to promote a new recipes section. “We’re spilling the beans,” announced the subject line, followed by an emoji of brown beans 🫘. But because I saw the image before processing the message, I didn’t think, “Oooh, delicious beans.” What I thought was, “Why is The Washington Post emailing me about mouse turds?” 

It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, to continue ripping off Charles Dickens. And we’re still figuring how to tell our stories on an emoji-by-emoji basis. Last week, we talked about how emojis became a popular mode of conversation, the wide vocabulary now available, and the place they can have in your team’s internal culture. But what role should emojis play in your organization’s public-facing communications? Can they help you in sales?

THE GOOD

In my days of working at a print magazine, when giving titles to pieces, we were constantly counting characters and spaces to find the exact phrasing that fit on a line. That seemed like a lost art, until I started drafting sales emails. The way your recipient first encounters your email—the subject line in your inbox, the preview on your mobile phone app—is also limited in terms of character count. In that sense, emojis are invaluable, because they can pack a great deal of narrative or emotion within a single character. 

A statistic often cited in the discussion of emojis is that Experian reported a 56% increase in the open rate for brands that used emojis in their subject lines. I can’t find much detail on the study that number is pulled from—and a 2019 effort by Outreach.io to replicate the results didn’t pan out. But do you notice when an email with emojis arrives in your inbox? My gaze usually lingers, especially if the image is something quirkier than a heart or a star (those brown beans succeeded in grabbing my attention, for better or worse). On a basic level, we know that humans react more powerfully to visual content than “pure” text. 

Plus: emojis can be funny, when wielded skillfully. Humor is platinum currency in the sales world, and a clever use of emojis to build your brand (or promote your mission) is a beautiful thing. But do be aware of what emojis are out there and most popular because, if your logo redesign accidentally evokes one, you may find yourself the butt of the joke.  

THE BAD

We encourage sales professionals to mitigate risk and with emojis, well, risks abound. Sometimes the risk is in the clarity of the message. Interpretations of an image can vary sincerely, as when one person’s “hands clapping” is another person’s “hands in prayer,” or when “tears of joy” are confused for “loudly crying.” Sometimes the variation is euphemistic, as when one person’s peach is another person’s [enough said]. Emoji habits vary by generation. Studies have tracked the tendency for Millennials to use images literally (a thumbs-up 👍 means, “nice job!”), while Gen Z tends to use them to ironic or sarcastic effect (“nice job, jackass”). 

There is also the risk of whether the image is displayed as intended. Although Unicode emojis are standardized, there are variations in how they look on iOS, Android, and Windows operating systems. For example, the mouth on the “thinking face” varies from a flat-line neutral to a distressed frown. Also, remember that someone with low or poor vision may struggle to distinguish one emoji from another. If a newer emoji isn’t supported yet on a recipient’s system, all someone will see is a blank box. Avoid making an emoji a critical, load-bearing part of your message. They should be relevant, yes, but also somewhat redundant. 

The biggest risk, and the one mentioned to us most often, is the fear that using emojis in the subject lines or bodies of an email will make the sender seem unprofessional. If you want to build that argument, look no further than a 2020 study published by the Nielsen Norman Group, which racked up data suggesting adding emojis in subject lines can increase negative sentiments toward the recipients. But keep in mind that the exemplars they focused on were mass marketing from big-box and home-décor retailers, with no targeting based on the recipient’s identity. In other words, they tested emails predisposed to be treated as spam. 

Trust your knowledge of who you’re sending to and why. Does your industry handle matters of life and death, or designer shoes? Are you in a field, such as software design, where emojis are often employed as part of workflow? What’s the median age of your prospects, and how different is it from your own age? You can always A/B test a batch of cold emails, one version with emojis and one without. And if someone sends you an email that uses emojis, consider that permission to use them with that person going forward. 

THE UGLY (HOLIDAY SWEATER EFFECT)

Studies have revealed a few areas in which emojis are particularly helpful. One is when a customer brings a complaint to social media or 24/7 chat support—in other words, when a customer has a problem. A 2023 study published in Computers in Human Behavior showed that emojis are not always valid indicators of in-the-moment mood when it comes to happiness. But they found that using a negative emoji reliably reflects the mood of someone who is distressed, irritable, or nervous. If a customer offers up an angry face 😠 that’s an efficient way—for them and for you—to identify the need for service recovery efforts.

The welcome news, per a 2022 International Journal of Information Management study, is that emojis can also pave a path to redemption. In the trials, participants experienced difficulties using apps that provided services that were fun, e.g., streaming movies or music, or practical, e.g., paying a bill or getting a car ride. When they complained, they received a manipulated array of responses from customer-service agents. The study found that if the agent paired a sincere apology with a sincere emoji, such as the pleading face 🥺, the participant felt the agent was expressing genuine empathy. This, in turn, yielded a higher rate of customer forgiveness than words alone. 

Note that this result was demonstrable only when the “informality” of emojis felt authentic to the larger conversation. If your customer-success professionals write in stiff, labored sentences, then adding a cartoon face with welling eyes will not feel sincere. Instructing your team to use emojis is part of a larger training around establishing an appropriate tone. 

Remember the cat emoji who makes cameos in my inbox? In the last email I opened from that company, the cat was hanging out on the subject line with a Christmas tree🎄. Emojis can give you an edge when it comes to the holidays. Return Path published a study in 2018 that found adding a kiss emoji 💋to the subject line in a Valentine’s-Day promotion raised the open rate from a baseline of 20% to 24%. There was a boost of 3–4% when using other seasonal emojis as well. Think of it as the Ugly Holiday Sweater Effect: when the mood is festive and the punch bowl is overflowing, a little goofiness becomes a good idea. 

Just as the technologies available to us are always changing, our attitudes toward emojis will not only fluctuate in the short term, but they’ll evolve over time. There’s no one or “right” way for a sales professional to use them. But emojis occupy a strange and powerful place in how we’re communicating right now. They can stand in for a word, crack a joke, or add a facial expression. Only a clown would pass on them entirely.

Yes, there is an emoji for “clown,” but I had to draw the line somewhere.

We know when (and when not) to use 😂. Reach out at mastery@maestrogroup.co for more information on training, coaching, assessments, and more.