Smiley : A SMILE A DAY KEEPS THE BLUES AWAY

This is one of those things that you'd think as ridiculous and nonsensical at first, but later on, you would realize the sheer magnitude of its effects. Believe it or not, though no public discussions have been made about the topic, Internet marketers have always been baffled by this question.

To Use Or Not To Use Smileys?

Smileys, of course, are those happy faces formed through the use of alphanumerical characters to convey happiness and goodwill. Were it that simple, smileys should be used in every manner of written conversations.

The problem is, smileys are often associated with informal colloquies. They are frequently used in discussions between friends, lovers, and acquaintances engaged in small talks. To say that smileys are quite informal would be an understatement. Smilyes have been

designed for casual conversations instead of ceremonious affairs like business talk.

There is always the danger that when you use smileys in your marketing campaigns, your target market might not take you seriously. They are the ones who have to part with their hard earned money after all, and that might not be something that they are willing to do for a business that does not project itself in a proper manner.

The Experiment

But a lot of Internet marketers do have the propensity of using smileys. At first, I thought that they simply didn't know what they were doing. Being friends with some of them, I became privy to their earnings statistics. Lo and behold, their conversion rate is more than what I expected to see!

These are people who wantonly use smileys in their blogs, RSS feeds and follow-up messages.

So I investigated further. I was about to launch a special report about public domain information, you see. I decided to split test my follow-up messages for its promotion. Half of my mailing list would receive a straightforward message advertising the product. The other half would receive the very same message, albeit, with the usage of a dozen or so smileys.

After three weeks, I decided to study the results.

Initial Findings

To my surprise, the message that contained smileys fetched more sales! It was a soft launch, and I manage to garner 17 purchases from the said message. This was more than the 5 sales I got from the other, more professional letter.

Granted that these numbers are by no means determinative of a trend, they are nonetheless telling for my hypotheses. Smileys actually help build a connection between people, whether they be lovers, friends, family members, or sellers and buyers. Somehow, smileys, albeit informal, make the message feel more personal and hence more special.

Perhaps this is what is missing from most marketing campaigns: putting people above everything else, being mindful of their feelings, and genuinely establishing a sincere relationship with them. And smileys are perfect tools to establish such.

When To Use And When Not To Use Smileys

Though smileys seem effective for follow-up feeds and other similar avenues like blogs and RSS feeds, they aren't really appropriate for more formal channels.

With sales copies, for example, using smileys is a definite no-no. People in general expect sales copies to be serious and formal, though slight humor is almost, always welcome as long as it is cleverly delivered. Using smileys in sales copies would just make it seem that it was amateurishly made. Sales copies are expected to be professionally crafted.

Smileys won't work well with articles for an article marketing campaign. Case in point: this article talks about the usage of smileys but none has yet to be used in these paragraphs. Articles are long term investments, and any attempts at personalization might just shorten their market life. Remember, the essence of an article marketing campaign is the hope that your articles would get picked up by various eZines and websites over and over again. Your articles would have a better chance of getting picked up if they are designed for general applicability, and this excludes the use of smileys.

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