Do not expect emoji characters, or rich text to work when using SMS. This universal text messaging standard is the default standard that all phones and operators support, so keep it simple.
Language is constantly evolving and today that includes the use of emoji. What are you actually saying when you send your contacts or colleagues a little smiling face along with your text message?
We’ll explore the technological perils of various messaging clients, why you should not use them for professional business communications and how emoji characters are perceived by personal recipients today.
Interoperability Concerns For Emoji
Firstly, understand SMS does not support emojis. Sending text messaging via aggregators on A2P (Application to Person) is different than traditional P2P (Person to Person) messaging. Before you even think about hitting send on a message that contains a thumbs-up depiction, ask yourself: Do I know this image will not display for all of my mass recipients?
With personal A2P messaging on mass, a rich text with emojis will reach approximately 50% of your audience. This is based on native handset marketshare statistics that split the mass market evenly between Apple’s iPhone and Android’s platforms. Said simple: If you send a rich text to a friend that you know is using the same mobile platform you have a reasonable degree of certainty that your friend will receive your message as intended.
However, if there is variation with a mix of your audience on different platforms, the message will not display properly, because Apple and Google do not share, or peer their operating systems of their phone mobile platforms. A clever emoji is lost to a string of unintelligible characters on SMS. Keep it professional and avoid their use in business communications.
In these scenarios, it’s best to stick to alphanumeric text and standard characters like conventional punctuation.
Variation In Images
In personal communication with in situations where you can be certain that your recipients will receive the emoji, you should be aware that various software versions and apps may display slightly different illustrations. As such, it’s best to avoid complicated configurations of multiple emoji, and don’t rely too heavily on these illustrations to convey meaning. Simply allow them to enhance the message rather than using them to communicate essential information.
How Emoji Are Perceived
Assuming you can be certain your personal friends equipped to receive messages that include emoji as intended, you’ll have to consider how they will perceive your use of these characters.
Fortunately, there are a couple of recent studies that can help us understand these facts a little bit better.
A 2019 study published in Computers in Human Behavior found that when senders and recipients mirrored each other’s emoji usage or lack of use, senders felt more positively about their contact and believed that they were perceived more positively. This displays the importance of meeting your contacts where they are — whether they use emoji or not — especially in one-on-one interactions.
In the same journal, a study originally made available in February 2021 reported that positive and negative emoji intensified perceptions of the relative negativity or positivity being communicated in text. Communications that contained emoji aligning with the information presented in a message were also understood more quickly. These findings demonstrate the value of using emoji to enhance communication and encourage positive impressions in personal communications.
Brand Alignment And Topics
Studies like these illustrate that emoji are useful for personal text messages in contexts where it can be certain the recipient will receive them correctly and:
- The other party uses emoji.
- Positive information is being communicated.
With 50% of the mass audience split between mobile platforms of iPhone and Android, SMS remains the default standard of professional communications. Businesses that have ignored this have created garbled messaging and frustrated recipients, which in turn has resulted in a negative experience and damage to their communications and business.
Business Texts Sent Among Colleagues
Similar guidelines apply for exchanging messages with co-workers as you might expect for communicating with prospects, clients, customers and industry partners. Align your practices to use short, effective communications with basic SMS messaging that you know will be received by everyone. Remember communicating across different devices and apps requires you to forgo emojis and rich text characters.
Get Started With Group Texting Today
Stick with simple text-based SMS under all circumstances outside of personal communications. If you’re looking for a simple solution to get started with group business text messages, contact Swift SMS Gateway today. We’re here to help whenever you’re ready.
