Using symbols and emoticons in your message isn’t something new, but which of these works (in most clients) and which not is still a hazy issue.

The condition is, as the parenthesis suggests, to use them gingerly because the symbols may not be supported by all devices. The good news is, despite some marketer’s fear, that their usage doesn’t affect the Spam Score.

How to use emoticons on Email Marketing?

Using them in your email’s subject is a strategy to stand out in crowded inboxes. Which one attracts your attention first?

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Emoticons can be a great help when it comes to synthesis the email subject. This shouldn’t exceed 30/40 characters to allow its reading even from mobile devices and using emojis can help you to save some of them:

– Fall in love with the new collection
– Fall in ❤ with the new collection

or, as long as your campaign does not provide financial products which requires a certain accuracy, using emojis can help to identify its category:

– ✿ Garden Decor: unleash your instincts
– ♫ Listen the premiere new single of…
– ☂ Waterproof capes for a warm November

A creative way to use emoticons is also to insert them in the body of an image free message. Certainly they cannot replace a true image, but nevertheless, they’re a valid support against image blocking and besides this, can help you to establish an empathic relationship with your readers:

shop-the-masks

Which email clients support emoji?

Excluding Outlook and Live, where the results are not absolute, emoji are generally well supported by the most popular email clients.
If you decide to introduce them in your content strategy, choose them carefully and test them in most of the email clients used by your readers.
The risk that they cannot be implemented by the client, may have unaesthetic results. In fact, the improperly reinterpreted emoticons are represented with simple empty rectangles.