Emoji Marketing: How Brands Use Emoji on Social Media

Why Brands Cannot Ignore Emoji

When Domino's launched their tweet-to-order campaign in May 2015 — letting customers order pizza by simply tweeting 🍕 to @Dominos — it was not just a clever gimmick. It was the moment a major brand proved that a single emoji could replace an entire checkout flow. The campaign won a Titanium Grand Prix at Cannes Lions, generated 500+ earned media placements in the first week, and let people literally order dinner with one character.

I have been tracking how brands use (and abuse) emoji in their marketing for years, and the pattern is clear: emoji are not decoration. They are a strategic communication tool that, when deployed well, can meaningfully boost engagement and brand personality. When deployed badly — and oh, do brands deploy them badly — they make you look like a fellow-kids meme come to life.

Here is what actually works, what absolutely does not, and how to tell the difference.

The Data: Emoji and Engagement

The numbers tell a clear story:

Social Media Engagement

The numbers are consistent across multiple studies:

• Instagram: Posts with emoji receive ~48% higher engagement (Quintly study of 20,000+ accounts, 2019). The effect is strongest for accounts with under 1,000 followers and diminishes as account size grows — suggesting emoji help smaller brands punch above their weight.
• Twitter/X: Tweets with emoji see ~25% higher engagement (HubSpot analysis, 2021). But there is a cliff: more than 4 emoji per tweet and engagement drops below baseline. Restraint wins.
• Facebook: Posts with emoji get ~57% more likes, ~33% more comments, and ~33% more shares (Zazzle Media study, 2017).

These are not small numbers. A 25-57% engagement boost from adding a few Unicode characters is staggering in a marketing world where brands spend millions optimizing for single-digit percentage improvements in click-through rates.

Email Marketing

Emoji in email subject lines can increase open rates by 29 percent according to some studies, though results vary significantly by industry and audience. The key finding is that novelty matters — if every email in someone's inbox has emoji in the subject line, the attention-grabbing effect diminishes.

In my experience managing email campaigns, emoji in subject lines work best when used selectively — perhaps one in every four or five emails — and when the emoji is directly relevant to the content. A 🎄 in a December holiday sale email feels natural. Random emoji in every subject line feels desperate.

Push Notifications

Push notifications with emoji see up to 85 percent higher open rates. This is perhaps the most dramatic effect, likely because push notifications are so short that a well-chosen emoji can communicate tone and urgency more efficiently than additional words.

Case Studies: Brands Getting It Right

Taco Bell and the Taco Emoji Campaign

In 2015, before 🌮 existed in Unicode, Taco Bell launched a Change.org petition to get a taco emoji added. The petition received 33,000+ signatures. When the Unicode Consortium approved the taco emoji in Unicode 8.0 (June 2015), Taco Bell was perfectly positioned to own it. They created the "Taco Emoji Engine" — tweet 🌮 at @TacoBell and get a custom mashup GIF combining the taco with any other emoji you included. The engine generated 700,000+ interactions in its first five days.

What made this work: Taco Bell identified a genuine gap, mobilized their community around a fun cause, and then capitalized when it landed. It felt authentic because tacos are literally their product. The brand did not adopt an emoji — the emoji was born from the brand.

Coca-Cola's Custom Hashtag Emoji

In September 2015, Coca-Cola became the first brand to buy a custom Twitter emoji — technically called a "hashflag." Tweet #ShareACoke and a custom pair of clinking Coke bottles appeared next to your hashtag. Twitter reportedly charged brands around $1 million for these custom hashflags (the price has varied), and Coca-Cola considered it a bargain — the campaign generated 170,000+ mentions in the first day alone.

The campaign worked because it gamified the experience. People tweeted the hashtag *just to see the emoji appear*, which organically spread the brand across millions of timelines. It was the digital equivalent of a collectible toy in a cereal box.

WWF's Endangered Emoji

In 2015, the World Wildlife Fund launched #EndangeredEmoji, identifying 17 animal emoji representing endangered species: 🐼 🐘 🐋 🐯 🐧 and others. Users retweeted the campaign post, then every time they tweeted one of these 17 animal emoji, WWF tallied a symbolic 11-pence (~$0.15) donation and sent a monthly total. Over 200,000 people signed up in the first two months.

The campaign was brilliant because it turned every casual animal emoji into a micro-moment of conservation awareness. The barrier to "donation" was literally one tap. People who would never fill out a donation form were drawn in by the sheer simplicity of the interaction.

Deadpool's Emoji Billboard

To promote the Deadpool) movie in February 2016, the marketing team created a billboard that read simply: 💀💩L (skull + poop + L = "Dead-poo-L"). That is it. No movie title, no actors' names, no release date. The billboard generated millions of social media impressions because people *had* to decode it, then *had* to share it because they felt clever for getting it.

This worked because it matched the character's personality with zero compromise. Deadpool is crude and self-aware — an emoji rebus on a billboard is exactly the kind of fourth-wall-breaking stunt the character himself would pull. The brand alignment was not just good; it was perfect.

Case Studies: Brands Getting It Wrong

Goldman Sachs Millennial Report

In March 2015, Goldman Sachs published a research report about millennials that used emoji throughout the document — a multi-billion-dollar investment bank explaining economic trends with smiley faces and pizza icons. Financial Twitter eviscerated it. Headlines ranged from "Goldman Sachs Thinks Millennials Are Stupid" to "Please Make It Stop." The report became a case study in condescension.

The lesson is brutal but simple: know your context. If your brand is built on gravitas and expertise, adding 🍕 to a research document does not make you relatable. It makes you look like you hired an intern and told them to "make it fun."

The Chevrolet Press Release

Chevrolet issued an entire press release written exclusively in emoji for the 2016 Cruze launch in June 2015. It was literally unreadable. The company had to issue a decoded version the next day because no journalist could figure out what it said. Coverage focused entirely on how confusing and gimmicky the release was — not on the actual car.

The lesson: emoji should enhance communication, not replace it. When your audience needs a decoder ring to understand your message, you have made art, not marketing. And probably not very good art.

Generic Brand Emoji Spam

We have all seen it — brands that stuff every social media post with five to ten random emoji in an attempt to appear fun and relatable. Fast food chains are frequent offenders: "Our new burger is HERE 🔥🔥🔥😍😍👏👏🎉🎉💯💯" This approach reads as inauthentic and try-hard.

The lesson: restraint is a virtue. One or two well-chosen emoji are far more effective than a wall of them.

Building an Emoji Marketing Strategy

Based on everything I have observed and analyzed, here is a framework for incorporating emoji into your brand's marketing:

Step 1: Define Your Brand's Emoji Voice

Just as your brand has a written voice (formal, casual, witty, authoritative), it should have an emoji voice. Ask yourself:

How many emoji per post fit your brand personality? A fun lifestyle brand might use two to four. A B2B software company might use zero to one.

Which specific emoji represent your brand? Choose five to ten emoji that you will use consistently. A travel company might own ✈🌍🏖☀🗺. A fitness brand might claim 💪🏋🔥💯🏃.

What emoji does your brand never use? This is equally important. A luxury brand probably should not use 💀 or 🤡 regardless of trends.

Step 2: Know Your Platform

Each social media platform has different emoji norms and expectations:

Instagram is the most emoji-friendly. Captions can include several emoji naturally, and emoji in stories and reels are expected. LinkedIn requires the lightest touch. One emoji in a post is fine; more than two starts to feel unprofessional. The checkbox ✅ and pointing hand 👉 work well for list-style posts. Twitter/X benefits from one to two emoji per tweet. They help your tweet stand out in a fast-scrolling feed. Facebook is moderate. One to three emoji per post works well. The platform's own reaction system (like, love, haha, wow, sad, angry) means users are already emoji-literate. TikTok captions benefit from emoji that match the platform's culture — skull, fire, crying face. Being current with TikTok emoji trends is important here.

Step 3: Test and Measure

Do not assume — test. Run A/B tests on email subject lines with and without emoji. Track engagement rates on social posts with different emoji counts. Measure whether specific emoji outperform others for your audience.

In my experience, the data often surprises. I have seen brands where emoji hurt engagement because their audience perceived it as unprofessional. I have seen other brands where a single fire emoji in a subject line doubled their click-through rate. Your mileage will vary — let the data guide you.

Step 4: Stay Current but Not Trendy

Emoji meanings evolve. The skull 💀 meaning "that is hilarious" is relatively recent. The cap 🧢 meaning "lie" is even newer. Your marketing team needs to stay aware of these shifts to avoid using emoji in ways that communicate something different than intended.

But jumping on every emoji trend can backfire. If a brand starts using 🗿 because it is trending on TikTok, but their audience is primarily 35-plus professionals on LinkedIn, the disconnect will be obvious.

Stay aware of trends. Adopt the ones that fit your brand. Ignore the ones that do not.

Step 5: Accessibility Considerations

As I discuss in detail in my accessibility article, emoji create challenges for screen reader users. Brands have a responsibility to use emoji accessibly:

Limit emoji count to avoid overwhelming assistive technology

Place emoji at the end of text rather than interspersed

Never use emoji as the only way to convey essential information

Test your content with screen readers

This is not just good practice — it is increasingly a legal consideration as digital accessibility laws evolve.

Emoji in Paid Advertising

Emoji in ads deserve special attention because the rules are slightly different from organic social media.

Meta (Facebook/Instagram) Ads

Facebook and Instagram allow emoji in ad copy, and they can be effective attention-grabbers. However, overuse can trigger lower quality scores. In my testing, one to two emoji in the primary text and zero to one in the headline performs best.

The pointing finger 👉 is particularly effective in ads for drawing attention to a call-to-action. "👉 Shop now and save 30 percent" outperforms the same text without the emoji in most cases I have tested.

Google Ads

Google Ads has historically been more restrictive with emoji. While emoji in ad copy are technically possible through various methods, they can be disapproved. Google's policies on this change periodically, so check current guidelines before investing in emoji-based ad strategies.

Email Campaigns

In subject lines, test emoji carefully. What works for a fashion brand (💄 New arrivals you will LOVE) may not work for a financial services company. Industry benchmarks suggest emoji work best for B2C brands in lifestyle, entertainment, food, and fashion verticals.

The Psychology Behind Emoji Marketing

Understanding why emoji work in marketing helps you use them more effectively:

Emotional Processing Speed

The often-cited "60,000 times faster" stat is dubious (it traces back to a 3M presentation with no primary source), but the underlying point is solid: the human visual system processes images in roughly 13 milliseconds according to MIT research (Potter et al., 2014), far faster than reading text. An emoji triggers an emotional response before the surrounding text is even fully parsed. This primes the reader's emotional state for the message that follows — a phenomenon psychologists call affective priming#Affective_priming).

Perceived Warmth

Brands that use emoji are generally perceived as friendlier and more approachable. This matters especially for brands trying to build personal connections with their audience. A single emoji can shift perception from "corporate entity" to "human communicator."

Pattern Interruption

In a feed full of text, an emoji creates a visual break that catches the eye. This pattern interruption is valuable in an attention economy where you have fractions of a second to stop someone from scrolling past.

Social Proof and In-Group Signaling

Using emoji current to your audience's communication style signals that your brand is part of their cultural in-group. It says "we speak your language." This is particularly powerful with younger demographics who are highly attuned to authentic versus performative brand communication.

Practical Recommendations

After analyzing hundreds of brand campaigns and managing emoji strategies for various clients, here are my top actionable recommendations:

Start conservative and scale up. It is easier to add more emoji than to walk back a perception of trying too hard.

Assign emoji ownership. Have specific team members responsible for keeping your emoji usage current and consistent.

Create an emoji style guide as part of your brand guidelines. Document which emoji you use, how many per post, and which to avoid.

Monitor your audience's response. Comments and engagement patterns will tell you quickly if your emoji usage is landing well or falling flat.

Never use emoji you do not fully understand. The risk of accidental innuendo or cultural offense is real. When in doubt, Google it.

Remember that emoji are seasoning, not the main course. Your content, offer, and value proposition must be strong. Emoji enhance good marketing — they cannot save bad marketing.

The brands that use emoji best are the ones that treat them as a natural extension of their voice, not a calculated tactic bolted on after the copy is written. Domino's 🍕 ordering worked because the emoji *was* the product. Deadpool's 💀💩L worked because the character *is* that irreverent. Goldman Sachs's emoji report failed because emoji and institutional finance have the chemistry of oil and water.

If emoji feel forced in your communication, your audience will sense it instantly — and the internet is merciless to brands that try too hard. But if they flow naturally from who your brand actually is, they can be one of the cheapest, most effective tools in your entire marketing stack. A few Unicode characters that cost nothing to send, boost engagement by double-digit percentages, and make your brand feel human. Hard to beat that ROI.