When a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

I was against emojis at first. After all, I am a writer and editor. I know the power of the written word and grammar. (In fact, a missing Oxford comma could end up costing a company $10 million. Seriously. Grammar is important.) Also, I am not a 12-year-old girl anymore, thank god. Anyway. Why write with pictures when you could use actual words? OK, sometimes you need to show you’re joking, so a colon and parenthesis works as a smiley face. Right?

But then emojis were showing up in all of my social media feeds. And, I’ll admit it, I got a little curious. I wanted to see what the fuss was about. So I dipped my toe in the emoji pool. A 😀 here to show I was happy. A 🎉 to celebrate someone’s birthday. A 🍷to talk about the weekend. And a whole bunch of 💩💩💩 for everything, because it is hilarious, and I might actually be a 12-year-old girl after all.

I was hooked.

And why not? They’re fun. They’re attention grabbing. And, sometimes you just really need to see a cartoon picture of the three monkeys doing the “see no evil” thing to really get your point across. 🐵🙈🙉. I mean, right?

And it’s not just me. Everyone is using emojis nowadays. It’s not just Millennials or kids. An article on CNBC states:

In fact, people over 65 years old are more likely than any other age group to say it is “always appropriate” to send emojis to a direct manager, peer or subordinate, according to data from a recent survey by Adobe about email habits among white-collar workers.

Apartment marketers, take note: You should try incorporating emojis into your marketing emails.

According to an article on Marketing Dive, “customer messaging marketing campaigns including emojis were up 609% between June 2015 and 2016, hitting 800 million emoji messages total.”

It’s certainly not something to use for every single campaign. Then the images would stop making an impact, and people would stop noticing. But when used judiciously, it can bring a lot of attention to your brand. Plus, they say a picture is worth a thousand words. For example: 🏢👨‍👩‍👧‍👦🐩🎉, which could mean an apartment that is family and pet friendly and offers a lot of celebrations.

And, you don’t have to use emojis strictly for subject lines. Have fun with it! How about a social media contest where residents are encouraged to describe the community using three emojis?

Of course, there is a time and a place for these. For example, I probably wouldn’t recommend using them to let a resident know you’re raising their rents. But that’s just me.

Do you use emojis in your apartment marketing? How do you incorporate them? And what reaction have you gotten to them?  We’d love to hear your thoughts! Post your comments on our Facebook page or send a tweet to @MHNOnline or @jfiur. 😀👋👋👋💩