Without Digital Stickers Marketers Are Missing Out On Reaching 3 Billion Users

Do you understand the significance of being in the right place at the right time?

Well, that is exactly what marketing with stickers or conversation media marketing is these days.

People love using conversation media forms like stickers, emojis, GIFs. These visuals enhance conversations and communications on all digital fronts by giving them a touch of emotions.

Tenor's report says that in the US, 77 per cent of people believe that using visuals makes them feel that they are understood better.

Just go to this site to see for yourself the use of emojis every second.

Just like emojis, stickers are a big part of users communication nowadays. This is the reason why all social media and messaging apps have integrated stickers.

Facebook Messenger sees 380 million stickers shares daily whereas Line App sees more than 1 billion stickers shares each day.

Stickers are nothing but a more sophisticated form of emojis that we are so fond of.

What Makes Stickers More Sophisticated?

• Stickers are just better at displaying human emotion or reactions than emojis. Guess which of the above visuals represents a virtual hug better.

• The possibilities with stickers are endless. They can be grouped into different packs catering to different audiences or emotions.

• Stickers packs have a range of characters that people can fall in love with. My favourite is the cute milk bear and mocha bear stickers.

But another use of these sophisticated stickers is their infinite possibilities to integrate with brands in order to reach people at the right time.

Marketing With Stickers

Stickers were used for marketing way before we even had emojis.

People were more loyal to the brands that they used and hence loved to show off their loyalty with stickers or maybe just use them for fun.

Stickers were creative and colourful ways of self-expression. So people loved stickers.

Remember those stickers that came with chewing gums. Or perhaps the ones with your favourite cartoons that you would stick to your diary as a child.

The point is, brands were using stickers for marketing way before the digital era. But with the internet came the accessibility to use emojis and stickers at the right time during our conversations.

And brand marketers couldn't miss out on an opportunity like this.

Journey of Stickers In Marketing

One of the first stickers to be used for branding by Pepsico on Twitter was actually a set of emojis.

Before PepsiCo, Disney launched a sticker pack to market the animated movie Inside Out on Facebook. The stickers had characters from the movie representing different emotions a person feels. This campaign was just done right.

And even though these campaigns are a good fit for social media it is not on these broadcasting forums that they saw the best results. Instead of Facebook, the Inside Out stickers saw a boost in Messenger.

Swyft Media said that 6 billion stickers being sent around the world every day on mobile messaging apps.

It soon became clear that people use stickers more in personal messages making messaging apps the right platform for their use in marketing.

Not only messaging apps see better results when it comes to sharing conversation media forms (stickers, emoji, gifs) but they are also more popular amongst the current audience.

Even though the younger generation thrives on social media platforms stats show that active users on messaging apps surpass those on social media apps by 20%.

According to Statista, there would be more than 3 Billions users using top messaging apps by 2022. That is a pretty big audience to miss out on.

So of course marketers couldn't miss out on messaging apps when it came to conversation media marketing with stickers.

Korean messaging app Line is a pioneer when it comes to stickers or in-app sticker marketing. Garfield stickers created by Bare Media for Line is one of many branded stickers packs.

Dunkin' Donuts also released a bunch of branded stickers featuring their most loved products that users can share via imessages.

Valiant Entertainment in collaboration with Swyft Media brought Valiant’s comic book icons to fans conversations with a new sticker pack. The sticker pack features renditions of famous Valian comic superheroes - X-O Manowar, Bloodshot, Ninjak, Faith, and more.

Indian Keyboard App Bobble AI also helps brands in leveraging conversation media marketing. Along with its flagship application, it also uses its multiple regional language keyboard apps to reach its users. Its recent campaign for the cookie giant Oreo saw more than 145 million views and more than 1.1 million shares in March.

Why Brands Market With Stickers

• Stickers are non-intrusive like most forms of conversation media. In a world of aggressive market pitches on the internet, these stickers are there to enrich user conversations. So when people are annoyed by stalking internet ads they find relief and enjoyment in the authenticity of stickers.

• Stickers as a source of revenue generation In addition to being a fun marketing tool, marketing with stickers is also a source of revenue generation. Although most platforms have a good number of free stickers packs some of them do charge a one-time fee for premium stickers. In 2016 alone Line generated almost $270 millions in stickers revenue.

• Stickers are a getaway. Digital stickers have evolved and now can be animated, geotagged, redirect users to e-commerce sites and so much more. For instance, Instagram added location-based stickers to its stories feature.

• Stickers and GIFs are more accessible forms of conversation media. It is far easier for users to find new stickers than to install an app and get new emojis.

• Cross-platforms usage of stickers. Platforms like Bobble AI provide users with tons of stickers that can be shared across various platforms. This means an opportunity for brands to reach many more conversations.

• Measurable success

When stickers marketing first came into the picture one of the challenges was to measure the success of these stickers campaigns. But with continuous improvement, it has become possible.

Brands now get regular updates on downloads, usage, and reach of their stickers to see if these campaigns stick.

• Stickers are getting better Snapchat has been making personalised shareable cartoon versions of users that represent different emotions. Bobble AI also allows users to create cartoonized stickers (static or animated) and personalize them further with custom texts. The quality, accessibility, and popularity of stickers have all seen massive growth and continue to grow.