Do Emojis in Newsletters Improve Engagement? Here’s the Answer 👌

With most texts and social media messages containing at least a few smileys now and again, emojis have become a huge part of communication in the 21st century.

We all have that one friend who can’t type a sentence without including at least one emoji, but are they that helpful when it comes to email marketing?

Emojis became huge in email newsletters around 10 years ago, due to the rise of social media platforms and short-form messaging.

They were known for drawing attention to your email in an abyss of boring subject lines, however, as trends always do the emoji trend began to wilt, with many marketers believing them to be tacky and even damaging to a brand.

In this guide, we’ll explore whether emojis are still worth using in email newsletters in 2023, with a primary focus on how they affect engagement rates. We’ll look at subject lines, open-rates, and also discuss some pros and cons of emojis to give you the tools you need to decide whether emojis are key within your email campaigns, or if they’re best left in the past.

Do Emojis Increase Engagement in Email?

To determine whether engagement levels increase if an email contains emojis, we need to look at the following Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

• Open Rate

• Conversion Rate

• Click Through Rate (CTR)

Together, these three KPIs demonstrate whether an email has achieved good engagement with an audience or not. Let’s take a look at some studies that have analyzed these three KPIs concerning including emojis within emails/subject lines.

A study by MyClever Agency has shown that open rates have increased by as much as 56% when including an emoji in the subject line. This is a huge figure, and it shows that it may be worth including an emoji within an email subject line to increase the chances of your emails being opened.

In terms of conversion rate, a study by Adobe showed that 44% of users were more likely to purchase a product if an emoji was used within the email.

Lastly, a study by Search Engine Journal has shown that there was a significant increase in CTR when emails contained an emoji in the subject line, with 64.71% of campaigns having higher CTRs due to a simple emoji in the subject line.

So ultimately yes, emojis do seem to increase engagement in email in 2023. In the next sections, we’ll delve a little deeper into some of these metrics to understand why these figures have come to pass.

Take a look at this beehiiv blog for more email marketing statistics to improve your email campaigns.

Do Emojis Help Email Open Rates?

From the figures mentioned above, it’s clear that emojis are helpful when it comes to increased open rates.

However, this will largely depend on the industry, your audience, and context.

Let’s start with the industry. If you’re based in an industry that is considered to be ‘serious’, such as business, law, or finance, emojis may likely harm open rates. This is because the type of subscriber you’re likely to be emailing may avoid emails with emojis in the subject line, or perhaps they don’t see a correlation between your brand and the use of emojis.

You need to think about whether your audience is likely to appreciate an emoji, or whether this may in fact dissuade them from opening your email.

For example, younger people may be potentially more accustomed to emojis and therefore are likely to respond more positively to them, however, if you have an audience that you know expects to receive emails of a more serious nature from your brand, it’s probably best to avoid the use of emojis anywhere in your emails.

Lastly, we have context. This is a huge one, as in the right context emojis may go down a treat, however, in the wrong context they may be very negative for your campaign.

Here are some examples. You’re sending out an email promoting a musical event your brand is organizing - in this scenario, some emojis with musical notes or celebration-style emojis would fit in very well.

However, if your brand is selling financial advice or business tips and tricks, it may be best to steer clear of emojis to ensure your brand is taken seriously.

Why listen to me? I have been working in the digital marketing space for nearly 8 years, predominantly helping brands with their email marketing and online presence. I now specialize in creating great content surrounding email newsletters to help individuals and companies nail their email strategies.

Do Emojis in Email Subject Lines Work?

As we now know, emojis in subject lines do tend to improve the open rate of emails. There are a few reasons for this including the following:

• Eye-catching - By including an emoji within a subject line, you’re making your email stand out from the crowd. A bright emoji is more likely to grab the attention of your subscribers, so this could contribute to improved open rates. If you’re keen to make a great first impression, check out this blog on The Power of First Impressions: Create a Sign-Up Boosting Landing Page.

• Welcoming - Some studies have shown that emojis can induce emotions such as happiness and enjoyment, which can subtly encourage your audience to open your emails.

• Space-saving - With subject lines being very limited in terms of characters, emojis can be a great way of showing a user what an email contains in short-hand. For example, if your email is promoting your clothing brand, you could include emojis demonstrating different items of clothing that will appear in the email, such as the following: 🕶👖👙👗

While the evidence supports the numerous benefits of including emojis in your emails, it’s important to remember that emojis have a time and a place. Some marketers believe that seasonal emails are better suited to emojis, as subscribers may be more susceptible to a light-hearted subject line.

Make sure to fully consider your brand and the type of email you’re sending before going full steam ahead with emojis in your newsletters.

Do Emojis Help in Emails?

Let’s go through some pros and cons as to whether emojis help in email marketing, to give you a full understanding of whether you should be trying out the occasional smiley in your newsletters:

Pros

The advantages of emojis in email marketing include the following:

• Improved open rate - There’s no doubt that in some circumstances emojis have been shown to improve open rate, particularly when used in the subject line of an email.

If you’re interested in learning more about improving open rates for your emails, check out this blog on how to get more emails opened.

• May increase conversion rate - Emojis may help to increase conversion rate, by improving your brand perception and encouraging users to purchase from you over a competitor.

• Understood universally - One of the great things about emojis is that they’re understood in most languages, making them a great way to connect with audiences that may not speak your native language.

• Brand awareness/branding - If your brand suits emojis, it’s likely that they will help to improve your brand presence when used in newsletters. Plus they make emails stand out in a user’s inbox, which may encourage them to remember your brand even if they haven’t opened a specific email from you.

• Space-saving - Emojis use far fewer characters than standard text, so they can be a great way of implying what an email contains while remaining within the character limit.

Cons

Here are the disadvantages that you should consider prior to including emojis in your newsletters:

• Tacky/unprofessional - If your brand isn’t suited to emojis, or your industry/audience isn’t generally accustomed to them, emojis within your emails may make your brand look unprofessional or even tacky.

• Detrimental to brand - Similarly to the above point, using emojis may be detrimental to your brand if they don’t fit in well with your brand guidelines. Be sure to analyze your brand or consult with your branding team to ensure that emojis are coherent with your branding prior to using them in emails.

• Spam - As emojis are technically images, overuse of emojis can increase the likelihood of your email landing in a subscriber’s spam folder. Make sure to use them sparingly or not at all if you’re concerned about the spam score of your newsletters.

Wrap-up - How beehiiv Can Help

If this guide has inspired you to reassess your email marketing campaigns, look no further than the beehiiv platform.

We offer a whole host of benefits to our customers to make their newsletters stand out, with features including custom newsletters, a user-friendly platform, and email templates that you can get your teeth into.

Sign-up for a free trial today and put some oomph back into your newsletters.