Tag Archives: symbols

Trending: Emoji usage in email subject lines increased by more than 40% YOY

Emojis still gain popularity among email marketers. In November, nearly every 10th subject line in my email inbox – that’s 9.72% out of 8,804 newsletters – used unicode symbols to draw attention. Previous year’s figure was only 6.92%. All the signs are that the trend will continue in 2017… Continue reading

How animated symbols in Gmail subject lines increased my open rate

As announced in the “Email Gurus” board on LinkedIn, I put Gmail’s animated emoji symbols to the subject line test last Friday:

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Here’s how I did it and what the results were. So much is revealed, they’re like…
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Popular Emoji combinations in email subject lines

Did you download the Email Emoji Cheat Sheet? If so, then you might also remember @dataNeel’s research on combined Emoji usage in subject lines. His map is cool on its own, but even cooler now that he also published a Gephi export of the network in the comments section, so that everyone can play with the data.

Gephi is a popular free network visualization tool. I used it for example to create this and this plot of email experts on Twitter. It’s rather intuitive and comparably fast, so give it a try. Want something more programmatic? Then you should go on to Python and/or R. Followers of this blog already know R and its superb visualization and data shaping capabilities.

Here’s one example of how you can use R to explore @dataNeel’s Emoji network. Continue reading

822 Emoji for your Newsletter Subject Lines: Gmail & Outlook.com Cheat Sheet

Emoji created lots of buzz lately. For example, Google now shows emoji characters on its search engine result pages, and Instagram and MailChimp did some interesting research:
Instagram Emoji Research MailChimp Emoji Research
But what emoji could you use in your subject lines, and how do you use them? Continue reading

358 symbols tested in subject lines – iPhone, Hotmail & more [incl. Cheat sheet]

Many have been debating the use of symbols for months, now. To my knowledge however, one question remains: Which symbols are safe to use, and which ones trigger colorful emojis on iPhones/iPads and in Hotmail/Outlook.com? I put it to the test on emailmarketing.de last week. Here is a summary plus a little add-on. Continue reading

Specials characters and symbols in email subject lines – does it work?

Did you notice a raft of hearts in your inbox around Valentine’s Day? If so, this may also be a good sign that something “special” works in email subject lines. Namely special characters, like the ♥ (♥). So – are such symbols generally safe to use in emails and email subject lines? Continue reading