Emojis are a way to communicate emotions. In the past few years, emojis have gained popularity amongst all the sections of the society. Using emojis in email marketing campaigns can make your email stand out in a over-crowded inbox. Emojis can give even a most dull email a splash of a colour. A basic smiley face used in text transforms it into something unique. However, not all of your subscribers may be able to see emojis in their inboxes due to varying support across clients and operating systems.

Why Use Emojis In Email Marketing

Emojis are not only fun to use when texting, but also a great way to grab the subscribers’ attention. Emojis are a smart choice for your upcoming marketing campaigns for the reasons listed below:

• Boost visibility: Make sure your message appears in the inbox to get that open.
• Boost brand recognition: Emojis make your emails more prominent in a packed inbox, which means subscribers will see your brand name whether or not they open your email. By doing this, you raise awareness of your business and could be able to get subsequent opens and click-throughs.
• Add human-touch: Emojis can be used to simulate human body language to give communications a more human touch. Emojis can give your email a light-hearted or personal touch.
• Become a part of brand image: Emojis may integrate with your brand's personality if you select a certain set and apply it consistently throughout campaigns.

Do Your Emojis Appear To Your Subscribers

There is nothing new that emails appear differently across different clients and devices, but emojis add more complexities to it.

Emojis are based on unicode characters, a computing industry standard that seeks to ensure that text and symbols are encoded and shown consistently on all digital devices. This standard ensures that everyone else will understand when you use the Unicode symbol U+1F6OA that you're referring to the well-known emoji Smiling face with smiling eyes.

However, the devices used by your subscribers will probably translate those Unicode characters differently; some of them might not even be able to "read" emoji Unicode.

Which Operating Systems Support Emojis

Emoji in emails will appear differently depending on the operating system being used by the recipients who open it on desktop and laptop.

• Windows supports emoji on Windows 7 or above, including Windows 8, Windows 10, and Windows 11. Windows Vista does not support emoji, nor does any version prior to it.Your subscribers won't see any emojis at all if they fall within the category of Windows XP  or windows Vista users. Instead of smiley faces, all they’ll see is a ☐.

• Apple's OS X 10.7 Lion  (launched in 2011) and their later versions support emojis.

Thus, the emoji support varies in different operating systems. Windows 8.1 and Apple's OS X 10.11, both operating systems can read the emoji Unicode and interpret it in their own unique style. Also, Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8 and Windows RT consist of an emoji keyboard or emoji picker for emoji input. Windows 7 requires the use of copy and paste.

Therefore, the subscribers can see different emoji results depending on the operating system they use.

Emoji Visibility On Your Mobile Devices

The majority of individuals who receive emails on mobile devices can view emojis since mobile devices are generally more emoji-friendly. Emojis, however, will appear differently on mobile devices as well. 

The picture below will help you to understand how the same emoji can look different on each of the platforms respectively.

This is what a “grinning face with smiling eyes” emoji looks like on different devices and the respective platforms.

Gmail Is An Exception To Emoji Visibility

No matter what Operating system your subscribers use, the Gmail online client displays the emojis. In most cases, the operating system is responsible for reading Unicode and converting it into an emoji. However, Google handles this task within Gmail by substituting its own set of emojis for the Unicode characters. Client emojis are always displayed within Gmail's web interface, regardless of how or where your readers open your message.

It’s also worth noting that emojis will look different in Gmail inbox as opposed to the opened email message in Gmail. This is because the inbox depends on the Android version of the emojis compared to the opened message using Google’s emojis. Check out the examples below:

Emojis in the Gmail inbox (Android emojis)

Emojis in the opened message (Google’s emojis)

How To Add Emojis In Your Email Campaign

NotifyVisitors provides the feature to insert emoji into your email campaigns.

• Just go to campaigns on the NotifyVisitors panel and choose email campaign.

• Enter campaign information and recipients.

• Further enter campaign content where you can add emojis to Email subject and Email Preheader.

It is as simple as clicking on the Emoji icon available on the Email subject box to display the option and selecting the emoji you require!

Similarly, you can also add emoji in the email Preheader text. Simply click on the emoji icon available on the Email Preheader option and select the emoji you want to use.

Furthermore, while designing your Email you can insert emoji to the body of the Email.

Just make sure before running your Email campaign you test your Email with NotifyVisitors A/B testing so that you can preview how the emojis in the email will look when you send them to recipients using different Operating Systems. This step is  quite important as it will help you to know whether the emoji used in the Email is conveying the right message or not.

Now you are ready to use Emoji in your NotifyVisitors Email campaign and create better emails more efficiently.