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.
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.
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.
Key psychological reactions customers have when encountering emojis in retention and B2B CRM communications.
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.
Measured credibility and trustworthiness ratings from the Koch et al. (2023) study, applied to CRM marketing contexts.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
Related Article: 4 Hallmarks of Today's Best Email Marketing Strategies
Common functional and accessibility challenges caused by emoji use across leading CRM systems.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.