Cracking the Emoji Code: Key Insights to Maximize Marketing Performance in Honor of World Emoji Day

Since 2015, Phrasee’s customers have live-tested emojis on billions of customer interactions 

LONDON – July 17, 2023 – Phrasee, the complete AI content platform for enterprise marketers, is announcing the release of new findings from the Phrasee data vault measuring the effectiveness of emojis in marketing campaigns. The proprietary data, collected over the past five years, reviews 179,865 English subject lines across 22,101 experiments – providing unique insights into the impact of emojis on customer engagement. 

Phrasee’s AI-powered platform generates high-performing content at scale and with enterprise-grade controls across digital channels to realize the most effective results. In honor of World Emoji Day, Phrasee turned specifically to emoji-based marketing strategies, revealing surprising trends and patterns. By analyzing a vast array of email campaigns across diverse industries, the data highlights the emojis that consistently yield the highest levels of customer engagement and those that underperform. The findings underscore the potential of emojis as powerful communication tools for marketers seeking to enhance their outreach and resonate with their target audiences when used correctly.  

The findings include: 

Your money or your chocolate bar? The most popular emojis don’t align with the ones that are the highest performing. 

Flower emojis drop in usage while clocks ascend. Some of the least expected emojis saw the highest performance improvements, while others experienced a significant drop in performance.

Timing matters – Christmas trees in January aren’t going to be effective. Beyond year-over-year trends, an emoji’s success depends on when you are using it. Here are the top and bottom performing emojis by month.

Phrasee has been working with the world’s leading brands for years to generate personalized on-brand content that is analyzed and optimized via AI capabilities to deliver proven high-performing content. 

“By leveraging our proprietary data vault, we were able to determine the various trends year-over-year as it pertains to emojis,” said Neil Yager, co-founder and chief data scientist at Phrasee. “Our research shows there is no consistent recipe for success when using emojis in marketing material. What works one year may not work the next. Most marketing decisions today are based on assumptions or prior data. Technology that consistently analyzes and optimizes in real-time will drive the best results.”

Phrasee recently launched its AI Content Engine, built on three core elements that distinguishes it from every other tool on the market. Powerful large language models (LLMs) combined with its proprietary controlled natural language generation (NLG); performance prediction technology trained on billions of data points; and on-brand content proven to drive engagement, embedded within industry-leading brand controls.