Emojis in your Email: will your subscribers be able to see them?
Emojis take the standard text smiley face and transform it into something special. Emojis give you the option to express your feelings in a colorful and visual way. Well-used emojis might help your email stand out in a crowded inbox.
However, due to inconsistent support across clients and operating systems, not all of your subscribers will be able to see emojis in their inboxes. The fact that emails are displayed very differently across clients and devices is nothing new, but emojis add a whole new layer of complexity.
Emojis are based on Unicode characters, a standard that makes sure that whenever you use the Unicode symbol U+1F609, everybody else will know that you’re referring to one of the most popular emojis - Winking face
While your subscribers’ devices most probably will interpret those Unicode characters in different ways, some of them will not be able to ‘read’ the emoji Unicode at all.
If you’re sending an email with emojis to people who open it on a desktop computer or laptop, your emojis will look very different depending on what operating system is in use. If your subscribers belong to the group of users who still use Windows XP, they won’t see any emojis at all. Instead of smiley faces, all they’ll see is a ☐.
Windows 7 offers very limited support for emojis, displaying in black and white or not displaying them at all. Windows 8.1 is the first Windows operating system that supports all emojis and displays them in color instead of black and white only.
Apple’s OS X supports emoji on 10.7 Lion (launched in 2011) and above.
Here’s how our favorite emojis will be displayed in Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and OS X 10.11.
Thanks to this comparison, we have a very important piece of information: Even though operating systems offer full emoji support (like Windows 8.1 or OS X 10.11 and above do) this doesn’t mean that emojis will look in the same way everywhere. Depending on the operating system, subscribers can see very different results displayed, even though they are using the same email client.
Gmail
The Gmail web client displays the emojis regardless of which operating system your subscribers use. Typically, it’s the operating system that takes care of reading the Unicode and translating it into an emoji. Within Gmail, however, Google does this job and replaces the Unicode characters with its own set of emojis. No matter how and where your readers open your message, within Gmail’s web, client emojis are always displayed.
However, it is important to know that Google’s emoji set looks different from those used by Windows and Apple.
Emojis on Your Mobile Devices
In general, mobile devices are more emoji-friendly, that's why the majority of people who read on mobile devices are able to see emojis in their emails. However, also on mobile devices, Emojis will look different.
How to add emojis to your Campaigns and Automated Emails?
It is as easy as simply clicking on the Emoji icon to display the option and select the emoji you need!
In campaigns, you will find it in Step 1 - Settings, right next to a Subject line.
The same goes for the Automation workflows.
If you can't find the needed emoji in this window, copy the emojis from the following service: https://emojipedia.org/.