Editorial
The Gist
- Emojis cheapen brand perception in CRM contexts. Research shows that using emojis in customer retention campaigns, B2B email sequences, and CRM communications makes organizations appear less competent, less credible and less trustworthy.
- Emojis were never designed to carry meaning. They solved a technical problem in 1999, saving space, not adding emotion.
- The effectiveness data is inconsistent across CRM campaigns. Some B2B studies show higher open rates, but those gains come with real costs: more negative reactions, lower trust and more spam complaints.
- Accessibility and rendering create operational risk in CRM platforms. Screen readers read emojis awkwardly, email clients show them differently and platforms like Salesforce Marketing Cloud and HubSpot interpret them in unpredictable ways.
- Emojis magnify existing message quality in CRM. Good subject lines may gain slightly; bad ones fail harder.
- For CRM marketing, emojis create uncontrolled variance. They make results more unpredictable without improving average performance across retention, reactivation or conversion campaigns.
- The disciplined path is clarity over decoration. Write with precision. Measure meaning, not motion.
Total transparency. I’m going into writing this article with a prejudice against emojis. I don’t like them. Never have, never will. Yes, I sometimes use a smiley face and a winky emoji, but that’s where it ends for me. But in this context, I’m less worried about what we all do in our personal lives and am focused on our CRM messaging.
Emojis now show up in subject lines, preview text and email body copy across CRM platforms from Salesforce Marketing Cloud to HubSpot to Microsoft Dynamics. CRM marketers add them to boost onboarding email open rates, increase engagement in retention campaigns or make reactivation sequences feel more "human." But this practice misunderstands what emojis were built for and ignores growing evidence that these visual shortcuts hurt brand credibility and marketing discipline in CRM contexts.
Table of Contents
- The Origin: Solving a Space Problem, Not Adding Expression
- Why CRM Marketers Confuse Decoration with Strategy
- How Emojis Reduce Perceived Competence in Customer Communications
- How Emojis Damage Credibility and Trust in CRM Campaigns
- Reputation Risk by the Numbers in B2B CRM
- What the CRM Data Actually Shows
- The Negative Sentiment Cost in Customer Email
- Accessibility Problems in CRM Platforms
- Display Inconsistency Across CRM Email Clients
- The Operational Cost of Unpredictable Variables in CRM
- Action Framework: Discipline Over Decoration in CRM
- When Emojis Fail in CRM, When Clarity Wins
- The Verdict on Emojis in Email Marketing
The Origin: Solving a Space Problem, Not Adding Expression
Shigetaka Kurita created the first emoji set in 1999 for Japan's NTT DoCoMo mobile internet platform. The platform only allowed 250 characters per message. Kurita's solution was practical: 176 icons, each 12x12 pixels, designed to show weather, transit updates and basic activities without using up character space. The original purpose was saving data, not adding emotion.
Emojis served as space-saving symbols. They were never meant to replace words or add tone to CRM communications for customers or business clients. That shift came later, driven by social media platforms and consumer messaging apps, and it flipped emoji's core purpose. What started as efficiency became inflation: more symbols, less meaning.
Why CRM Marketers Confuse Decoration with Strategy
CRM marketers use emojis in customer retention campaigns, B2B email sequences, reactivation messages and more, because quick metrics seem to reward them. A spike in open rates, a brief lift in clicks, or seeing competitors use them creates the illusion of value.
But this mirrors the same mistake CRM teams make when they confuse activity with progress: they do what feels productive rather than what drives measurable outcomes like retained revenue, customer lifetime value or activation rates.
Emojis exploit the desire for novelty. They grab attention without delivering clarity. The problem is structural, not stylistic. When CRM teams focus on decorative elements rather than clear messages that drive retention or conversion, they boost vanity metrics while weakening the signal of what actually matters: customer reactivation, subscription renewal or pipeline progression.
How Emojis Reduce Perceived Competence in Customer Communications
The Psychology of Emojis in CRM
Key psychological reactions customers have when encountering emojis in retention and B2B CRM communications.
| Response Type | Customer Reaction | Impact on CRM Goals |
|---|---|---|
| Perceived informality | View messages as less professional or credible | Lower trust and engagement |
| Manipulation fatigue | Feel emotionally coerced or “sold to” | Higher unsubscribe or opt-out rates |
| Novelty bias | Initial curiosity spike fades quickly | Short-term open rate lift, long-term decline |
| Attention dilution | Focus shifts from content to symbol | Reduced message clarity and comprehension |
The Nielsen Norman Group study found that emojis in email subject lines increase negative sentiment by 26%. Recipients described emoji emails using more negative words like "annoying," "boring" and "dull" compared to plain text versions. This finding applies directly to CRM contexts where B2B companies engage enterprise clients, SaaS platforms onboard new customers, or ecommerce brands manage retention campaigns.
While emojis attract attention (33% consideration rate versus 9% for plain text), they don't increase actual intent to open and make people see emails as less valuable. In CRM contexts (customer onboarding emails, renewal reminders, reactivation sequences, or account updates), emojis trigger negative perceptions without delivering the warmth or engagement CRM marketers seek.
How Emojis Damage Credibility and Trust in CRM Campaigns
Emoji Use and Brand Credibility Scores
Measured credibility and trustworthiness ratings from the Koch et al. (2023) study, applied to CRM marketing contexts.
| Emoji Frequency | Credibility Rating | Trustworthiness Rating |
|---|---|---|
| No emojis | 4.20 | 3.94 |
| Few emojis | 3.40 | 3.57 |
| Many emojis | 3.10 | 3.26 |
A detailed study by Koch et al. (2023) in Social Media + Society showed that using emojis directly damages message credibility and how much people trust the source. This has direct implications for CRM email campaigns where trust drives customer retention, lifetime value, and renewal rates. Their research across multiple experiments found:
- Messages with no emojis scored 4.20 for credibility
- Messages with few emojis dropped to 3.40
- Messages with many emojis fell to 3.10
How much people trusted the source followed the same pattern. Messages without emojis got 3.94 trustworthiness ratings, while messages with many emojis dropped to 3.26.
The psychological reason is reactance. Heavy emoji use in CRM campaigns triggers feelings of manipulation, activating both mental resistance and anger. Customers receiving renewal reminders decorated with celebratory icons, or prospects receiving onboarding sequences filled with emojis, see these as attempts to manufacture emotion rather than share real substance. That perception damages trust, the foundation of retention and lifetime value in CRM.
Related Article: How CDPs Bridge the Customer Data Gap CRM Can't
Reputation Risk by the Numbers in B2B CRM
Brand reputation research shows real consequences for CRM marketing:
- 41% of consumers believe inappropriate or insensitive emoji use damages brand reputation
- 25% of consumers would consider not buying from a brand that used emojis inappropriately
- 22% of consumers have muted or unfollowed brands because of poor emoji usage
For B2B CRM, this means pipeline leakage and lower conversion rates. Cross-cultural research makes the risk worse. 38% of consumers say brands don't understand how emojis are interpreted across cultures, and 81% believe emojis carry deeper cultural meaning beyond what they look like. A B2B company with global clients faces higher misinterpretation risk, creating embarrassment, confusion, and negative brand associations that persist beyond the immediate interaction.
What the CRM Data Actually Shows
The most common claim in CRM email circles is that 56% of brands using emojis in subject lines saw higher open rates. This statistic appears across B2B email guides and marketing blogs. But the underlying methods aren't transparent, and the claim confuses correlation with causation.
Return Path's study found that in 60% of tests, subject lines with emojis outperformed the same subject lines without emojis. But that also means 40% showed no improvement or got worse. The inconsistency signals high unpredictability, not reliable improvement for CRM campaigns focused on retention, reactivation or customer lifetime value.
Campaign Monitor reported that emails with emojis achieved a 56% higher open rate and 96% higher click-through rate compared to those without. Yet other studies show contradictory results. Return Path’s research found that while emojis may increase read rates, they also match up with more spam complaints. For CRM marketers managing deliverability in platforms like Salesforce Marketing Cloud or HubSpot, increased spam complaints damage sender reputation and reduce inbox placement for all future campaigns.
The pattern across studies is clear: emojis create unpredictability in CRM campaigns. Some see small gains. Others see declines. The net effect is noise, not signal.
The Negative Sentiment Cost in Customer Email
Phrasee's 2024 benchmark study reached a conclusion relevant to CRM: emojis magnify what's already true. A strong CRM subject line performs slightly better with the right emoji. A weak one fails harder. Emojis are amplifiers, not fixers. If the customer onboarding message or renewal reminder lacks clarity, emojis make it worse.
For CRM contexts, where customer retention depends on perceived product value, and subscription renewal depends on service credibility, the negative sentiment tax identified by Nielsen Norman Group is a strategic liability. Recipients don't interpret emojis as warmth or friendliness in CRM communications. They trigger irritation and reduce how seriously customers take the message.
Consider that 7 out of 10 campaigns with emojis in subject lines had more abuse reports than campaigns without emojis.
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Accessibility Problems in CRM Platforms
Operational Risks of Emoji Use in CRM Platforms
Common functional and accessibility challenges caused by emoji use across leading CRM systems.
| CRM Platform | Emoji Rendering Issue | Resulting Risk |
|---|---|---|
| Salesforce Marketing Cloud | Encoding errors turn emojis into Chinese characters on iOS | Brand inconsistency and message confusion |
| HubSpot | Platform removes or replaces emojis with placeholder text | Incomplete or broken subject lines |
| Microsoft Dynamics | Older Outlook clients display grayscale emojis only | Reduced professionalism and clarity |
| Gmail Web Client | Fails to merge multi-character emojis | Broken or partial icons across devices |
Emojis create accessibility barriers that most CRM marketers never think about. Screen readers announce emojis by reading their descriptions out loud. A single crying-laughing emoji (😂) is announced as "face with tears of joy". When CRM marketers use multiple emojis in a row in customer campaigns, common in subject lines, screen reader users hear a disruptive string of descriptive text that interrupts understanding.
Examples of accessibility failures in CRM email:
- Repetition overload: Using three celebration emojis in a customer milestone email becomes "party popper, party popper, party popper" — annoying and time-consuming for screen reader users.
- Mismatched meaning: A B2B SaaS onboarding email using a clock emoji might be announced as "eight thirty" or "eleven o'clock" rather than conveying "time" or "deadline".
- Context loss: When CRM emails replace words mid-sentence with emojis, screen readers announce the emoji description, disrupting sentence flow and hiding meaning.
Nearly two million people in the UK alone live with sight loss. In the United States, about 7.6 million people use screen readers. CRM marketers in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, HubSpot or Microsoft Dynamics using emojis without accessibility testing exclude a significant portion of their customer list.
Display Inconsistency Across CRM Email Clients
Emojis don't display the same way across email clients, operating systems or devices used by customers. This creates uncontrolled visual differences that undermine brand consistency and user experience in CRM campaigns.
Platform-specific display issues affecting CRM email:
- Gmail's web client can't properly combine multiple Unicode characters into single emojis, breaking gender- and skin-tone-inclusive emojis into strange boxes or incomplete symbols. Customers using Gmail see broken visuals.
- Microsoft 365 Outlook users see different emoji rendering depending on their client version and operating system. Classic Outlook for Windows (desktop versions of Outlook 2016/2019/Microsoft 365) displays emojis in grayscale in subject lines due to its Word-based rendering engine, while modern Outlook clients (Outlook on the Web, New Outlook for Windows, Outlook for Mac) render emojis in full color.
- Older operating systems may not support emojis at all, showing blank boxes or question marks instead. Enterprise clients using older devices see broken subject lines.
- Gmail on desktop shows emojis in Google's style, which looks different from Apple, Windows, and Android emoji sets. A customer onboarding email looks different to every recipient.
Encoding errors in CRM platforms also create unpredictable outcomes. Incorrectly coded emojis in Salesforce Marketing Cloud or HubSpot subject lines can turn into Chinese characters on iOS devices or show as "Twitter-style" emojis instead of native platform emojis. Some email clients remove emojis entirely or replace them with placeholder text.
These inconsistencies mean that CRM marketers can't control how their customer retention message or reactivation email looks to recipients. The same subject line may look polished on one platform and broken on another. That unpredictability hurts trust and professionalism, the foundation of CRM success.
The Operational Cost of Unpredictable Variables in CRM
CRM organizations pursuing operational maturity must eliminate noise from their improvement process. Emojis introduce variables that make measurement harder and reduce predictability in campaigns focused on customer retention, lifetime value, or pipeline conversion:
- Display inconsistencies mean the same CRM campaign looks different across customer segments, making performance attribution unreliable.
- Accessibility limitations exclude screen reader users and violate inclusive design principles, increasing legal and reputation risk for B2B companies and ecommerce brands.
- Meaning drift happens as emoji meanings shift over time and across cultures. An emoji that shows friendliness to one customer segment may signal immaturity or confusion to another.
- Measurement pollution happens when emojis widen unpredictability without improving average performance. Every variant in CRM testing should reduce uncertainty, not add to it. Emojis violate that principle.
In CRM systems like Salesforce Marketing Cloud, HubSpot, or Microsoft Dynamics, where data discipline drives retention and customer lifetime value, adding uncontrolled inputs hurts improvement. The result is noisy A/B tests, unreliable segment analysis, and weaker predictive models for retention and reactivation campaigns.
Action Framework: Discipline Over Decoration in CRM
- Audit current emoji usage in CRM campaigns: Review the past six months of customer retention emails, onboarding sequences and reactivation campaigns. Identify every instance of emoji use. Measure open rates, click-through rates, unsubscribe rates, spam complaints and conversion to renewal or purchase. Compare emoji campaigns to emoji-free controls. Look for unpredictability, not just average improvement.
- Eliminate emojis from CRM subject lines: Replace visual cues with clear language. Use specificity, hierarchy and brevity. If an emoji is required to clarify tone in a customer onboarding email or renewal reminder, the copy is already weak. Rewrite it.
- Test accessibility in CRM platforms: Run every campaign through screen reader software (NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver). Listen to how emojis disrupt message flow in customer milestone emails or renewal reminders. If the experience is jarring or confusing for screen reader users, remove the emoji.
- Track display consistency across CRM email clients: Use tools like Litmus or Email on Acid to preview how emojis display across email clients and operating systems used by customers. If inconsistencies appear, eliminate the emoji or replace it with text.
- Measure brand perception in CRM segments: Survey customers to measure how professional, trustworthy and competent they think your organization is. Compare responses between emoji and non-emoji cohorts. If emojis reduce perception scores among high-value customers, stop using them.
- Enforce a no-emoji policy for CRM: For B2B customer campaigns and enterprise client outreach, default to emoji-free communication. Reserve emojis — if used at all — for highly casual consumer campaigns where brand risk is low.
When Emojis Fail in CRM, When Clarity Wins
The Emoji-Led Decline in B2C CRM
An ecommerce brand tried to increase customer engagement by "modernizing" email tone in their retention campaigns. They added emojis to subject lines: stars for product launches, celebration icons for milestone emails, shopping bags for promotional campaigns. Open rates initially rose by 8%. The team celebrated.
Within three campaign cycles, unsubscribe rates climbed 14%. Customer survey feedback showed that long-time customers, the brand's highest lifetime value segment, described the emails as "unprofessional" and "trying too hard." High-value customers stopped responding. Revenue from email campaigns declined 22% year-over-year.
The team removed emojis, refocused on clarity and customer-focused messaging and rebuilt customer trust through consistent, professional communication. Open rates stabilized. Unsubscribes declined. Revenue recovered within six months.
The Clarity-Led Reset in B2B CRM
A B2B SaaS company tested emojis in customer onboarding emails. Early tests showed small open rate improvements but no change in activation rates, the actual business goal tied to customer lifetime value. The team shifted focus from open rates to message clarity.
They removed emojis entirely. They rewrote subject lines to emphasize user outcomes: "Your first report is ready" instead of "🎉 Welcome aboard!" They optimized preview text for specificity. They reduced email frequency and increased message relevance.
Activation rates improved 18%. Customer support inquiries declined 12%. Net Promoter Score among new users rose from 42 to 56. Clarity drove real business results in CRM. Emojis did not.
The Verdict on Emojis in Email Marketing
Emojis were born out of necessity, not expression. Their original function was saving space: compressing data within technical limits. Modern CRM marketing has flipped that purpose, using emojis to amplify tone, attract attention in customer inboxes or mimic consumer platforms.
The evidence shows that emojis cheapen brand perception in CRM contexts, reduce credibility with customers, create accessibility barriers and cause display inconsistencies across email clients. They widen performance unpredictability without improving average outcomes in retention, reactivation or conversion campaigns. They boost vanity metrics like open rates while damaging trust, the foundation of customer lifetime value and retention.
For CRM marketing leaders focused on operational discipline in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, or other platforms, the fix is clear: eliminate emojis from customer retention campaigns and B2B outreach. Write with precision. Design for clarity. Measure meaning, not motion. The goal was never decoration. It was density, information compressed with intent.
Strategy is choice. Choose clarity. Drop the emojis.
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