Emojis, those little pictures that add emotions to text, are typically used in text messaging or push notifications and add a lot of fun and context to your message (they say a picture is worth a thousand words!). They represent many different topics, from emotions to animals, food, weather, or even country flags. That said, emojis are sometimes seen as inappropriate, especially messaging that’s from financial institutions (let’s face it, they aren’t usually seen as casual places to hang out when the people who run them wear suits every day) so for these businesses, is it too inappropriate to use emojis when communicating with their account holders, or should they let loose?

Emojis ⬆️ click-through rates

First, it depends on the message that’s being sent, and how it’s being sent. While financial institutions may be wary of using emojis as a general rule, it is ok to inject a bit of lightheartedness in some communications. For the most part, people find them fun and tend to engage with the message more when emojis are used. In fact, the financial industry enjoys a more successful engagement rate with emojis in mobile messaging than you might expect. Mobile marketing firm CleverTap recently analyzed nearly 200 million push notifications that included emojis. They found that the business and finance sector saw the largest improvement in click-through rates after adding emojis to their messages – growing from 5.46 percent (already quite strong) to 12.45 percent—an incredible 128 percent increase.

It's all about context

Does this mean that you should run right out and start using emoji-only messaging to increase engagement with account holders? It depends on your brand and how you present yourself. If you present yourself as a community-oriented and there’s a local event in town that you’re sponsoring, emojis may be a great way to engage with your audience. On the other hand, if you’re alerting people to fraud on their accounts or even a security breach within your own systems, your audience might see you as tone-deaf if you include emojis in your message. It’s ultimately your discretion, but we recommend trying them out in a couple of messages (to a smaller audience, if you prefer) and seeing how well they perform. You may be surprised!

At Larky, we love emojis. They’re fun 😀, take up little space (important in messages that have a character limit) and can provide important emotional context to a message that might not otherwise be received. That’s why we’ve included an emoji keyboard within our platform so that when clients create their own mobile push notification messaging, they too, can easily get in on the action. For example, are you alerting your audience to new ways they can save money? Try including💰, 🤑 or 💸.

It may be easy to dismiss emojis as only for casual messaging between teenagers, but the most important thing to remember is to listen to your customers and respond to what they like. Try sending emojis in your next message and see what happens!

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