Smileys, or emoticons, are now an essential part of digital communication: social networking, instant messaging… This technique has also been adopted in e-mail, especially in web marketing. In fact, emojis are increasingly integrated into prospecting emails.
The benefits of emailing with emoji
Smileys are no longer reserved for discussions between young people; they can now be integrated into emailings for different categories of prospects. They even make it easier to express emotions: a single emoji can sum up the content of several lines of text.
Nowadays, written communication has become too banal, even poor. To be able to converse effectively with a person and convey the desired idea, it’s necessary to convey emotions through gestures or facial expressions. These criteria, however, are not visible in emails that only contain characters. The use of emoticons seems ideal in such cases.
The integration of these special characters is effective for conveying the sender’s state of mind at the time of writing the message: joy, optimism or anger. The reader will be able to better understand the sender’s words simply by reading the email, without looking for any additional information. This will avoid any ambiguity of interpretation on the part of the person receiving the e-mail.
Adding emoji to a prospecting email also makes it possible to have more complicity with the prospect. These characters have the same effect as a smile when talking to someone. The latter will feel personally concerned by the message you’re conveying to them. You’re more likely to get a response from the person you’re contacting if they perceive a sense of closeness in your message.
How do I use emoticons in emails?
The effectiveness of emoticons in prospecting emails has already been proven. It’s just a question of knowing how to use these special characters to avoid sending a message that’s too busy.
First of all, you need to place the emoticons correctly within the sentences, so that the message is understandable. Usually, emojis are inserted at the end of each character string, so as not to interrupt the flow of ideas. However, they can also be placed in the middle of a sentence, if appropriate. This type of character can also be used in the body or subject of an e-mail.
Before choosing which emoticon to insert, you need to find out for yourself what it means, and whether it’s really appropriate for the subject at hand. The wrong smiley can cause even more ambiguity in the prospect.
The number of returns you receive will depend on the quality of the messages you send. That’s why it’s a good idea to test each e-mail on a draft before sending it. By putting yourself in the shoes of a prospect reading your message, you can find out for yourself whether there are too many or too few emoticons in each e-mail.
To find out how to insert an emoticon in a message, read our dedicated article.
How to ensure that messages with emoticons are effective?
What if prospecting worked better using simple emails? And what if the use of emoticons had the opposite effect on the prospect? To answer these questions, we need to go through a test phase.
Send some of your prospecting emails with emoticons and some without. By analyzing the response rate for each method used, you’ll be able to determine which technique works best.
Some examples of smiley faces for emailing
👨💻 smiley keyboard
😀 smiley optimist
😀 smiley smiling
😎 smiley sunglasses
🙈 smiley monkey hiding his eyes
🏖 smiley vacation
⛔ smiley forbidden direction
😬 smiley grimacing
😠 smiley furious
You can copy and paste any of these smiley faces into an email message or its subject line.
