Over 6 billion emojis are sent every day. * We use them for casual messages, quick reactions, single picture replies, and as a way to inject excitement, emotion or humor into our conversations.

The emojis were first created in the late 1990s by Shigetaka Kurita, who invented language out of frustration with plain text information. * Kurita realized she would rather see images of the shining sun than text that said “the weather is fine.”

He and his team created a set of 176 pictographs, each × 12 pixels, which can encapsulate a series of human emotions. Today, the initial set of 176 has exploded to over 3,300 official emojis. *

Read on to learn more about emojis or jump straight to our infographic.

What is Emoji?

Emoji, or emoticons, are visual representations of emotions, objects, or symbols. They are rendered digitally on web and mobile devices to communicate messages.

Emojis are logoographical, meaning each emoji represents a word or phrase. Emojis have grown in use and popularity with the fast adoption of smartphones and the rise of SMS text messaging. In fact, more than 5 billion emojis are sent in messenger. 1

The earliest emojis originated in the late 1990s on early Japanese cell phones, and quickly gained popularity in teen conversations

Even though emojis are used globally today, it is not always clear that they will surpass the Japanese market. When Apple released their iOS 2.2 update, the emoji keyboard was made exclusively for users in Japan. It wasn’t until 2011 that Apple opened up international emojis.

Like most pop culture trends, marketers seek to connect with customers on the basis of shared interests – and emojis are no different. Marketing teams in nearly every industry have adopted emojis … but should they?

Emoji Marketing Analysis: Findings of Our Data Study

After analyzing more than 191 million push notifications using emojis, we found some key insights into emoji use across the industry.

Some industries can include emojis in push notifications and enjoy a 100x increase in click-through rate (CTR), while others see their CTR cut in half.

push notification industry click rate and emoji CTR side by side mobile devices

In a previous study of more than 40 billion push notifications, we found the benchmark click-through rate across all industries to be 2.74%.

In this emoji data study, we found the average CTR to be 3.48%, an industry-wide average increase of 38%. While these results look great on the surface, depending on the industry, the numbers tell a different story.

Emoji Marketing Top Three Industries

The top three industries that have benefited from implementing emojis in their marketing campaigns are:

• Business and Finance
• Utilities and Services
• Retail

Mobile apps in the business and finance industries that use emojis in their push notifications saw a 128% boost in CTR.