Emojis in Business: Why Brands That Use Emojis Win Online 📈

If you run a social media page for a brand, a small business, or even just your personal brand, here's a data point that will immediately change how you think about your next post: Facebook posts with emojis receive 57% more engagement than those without. Instagram posts with emojis? 48% more. A tweet with an emoji drives 25.4% better engagement than an identical tweet without one.

Those aren't gut feelings or marketer intuition. They're documented findings from research into real-world social media performance. And they're just the start of the emoji-marketing story.

Why Emojis Work in Marketing — The Psychology

Understanding why emojis work in marketing requires understanding what they're doing cognitively. Research in 2025 (published in the Future Business Journal) specifically modelling emoji online marketing found that emoji use increases user trust, involvement, and perceived usefulness of marketing content — all of which contribute directly to customer engagement and, ultimately, purchase intention.

There's a concept researchers call "paralanguage" — the non-verbal layers of communication that give flat text emotional texture. Emojis are digital paralanguage. When a brand writes "We're so excited to share our new product 🎉," the 🎉 isn't just decoration. It signals authenticity, emotion, and humanity. It says: there are real people behind this account who are actually enthusiastic. In a world of corporate-speak, that's powerful.

A 2024 benchmark study by Phrasee reached a conclusion that's worth bookmarking for any marketer: emojis don't create engagement on their own. They amplify what's already there. A strong message gets better with the right emoji. A weak message gets worse. Emojis are a magnifier, not a saviour.

The Numbers Every Marketer Should Know

Beyond social media, emoji influence extends into email marketing, push notifications, and customer service. Subject lines containing emoji consistently show higher open rates — with roughly half of brands reporting measurable lifts when they test emoji vs. no-emoji subject lines. In customer service chat, emoji usage by support agents tends to make interactions feel warmer and more personable, improving satisfaction scores.

Which Emojis Dominate Professional Content?

Buffer's analysis of social media posts in 2025 revealed a clear pattern in professional content. The most used emoji in brand and business posts were functional rather than emotional: ✨ Sparkles was the absolute runaway winner, used by over 207,768 Buffer users — 57.7% more popular than the second-place emoji. Others dominating professional feeds include 👉 (directing attention), 🔥 (urgency/importance), ✅ (confirmation/completion), and 🚀 (growth/launch).

Meanwhile, on social media overall in 2025, 😭 Loudly Crying Face was the most used emoji with approximately 814 million mentions — almost always used not to express genuine sadness, but extreme amusement or emotional overwhelm (as in "I'm dying 😭"). Understanding this dual life of emoji — official meaning vs. actual cultural usage — is important for brands to avoid seeming out of touch.

The Generational Dimension

Research consistently shows that emoji marketing is most effective with younger audiences — particularly Millennials and Gen Z. A 2025 study in the Future Business Journal specifically modelling emoji marketing for Generation Z found that older Gen Z respondents (those closer to 25 than 13) showed the strongest positive associations between emoji content, trust, engagement, and purchase intent.

But it would be a mistake to assume emoji are irrelevant to older audiences. The 2024 Adobe global survey found that 73% of all emoji users — across age groups — believed that including emoji in messages makes the sender seem cooler, friendlier, and funnier. That's a strong baseline of positive sentiment across demographics.

How to Actually Use Emoji Well in Your Marketing

The research on "best practice" is fairly clear. Start by ensuring your emoji are relevant to the content — congruence between the emoji and the message is critical. Random emoji scattered through content don't just fail to help, they actively reduce the quality of the communication. Use emoji to highlight key points, add emotional context, or break up longer text — not as substitutes for actual information.

Be aware of platform context. Instagram and Twitter/X reward playful, expressive emoji use. LinkedIn is more conservative, though emoji use has become more normalised there over the past few years. Email subject lines benefit from one or two well-chosen emoji at most. Push notifications respond well to a leading emoji that grabs attention before the text.

Cultural context matters enormously in international campaigns. An emoji that's light-hearted in one market can carry unintended connotations in another. Always localise your emoji strategy for each market, not just your copy.

The Systematic Review That Changed Emoji Marketing Thinking

A landmark 2025 systematic literature review, analysing 140 studies on emoji in marketing and advertising from 2002 to 2025 (published via INPLASY and discussed across major marketing journals), found that emoji research in marketing is experiencing rapid growth — 2024 was a peak year for publications — but that the field is still maturing. The review concluded that emoji consistently show positive results for user engagement across studies, but that their effectiveness varies substantially by cultural context, consumer demographics, and the specific communication platform used.

The takeaway for marketers is both encouraging and appropriately nuanced: emoji work, but they aren't magic. Used thoughtfully, in the right context, for the right audience, they're one of the most accessible engagement tools available. Used carelessly, they can undermine credibility and confuse your message.