Emoji in subject line—technique doesn't always work | Community
Skip to main content
J
Jaina
Level 2
September 16, 2020
Solved

Emoji in subject line—technique doesn't always work

  • September 16, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 4728 views

I've been using the technique outlined in this blog post to use emoji in subject lines:

https://blog.teknkl.com/yes-you-can-use-emojis-in-marketo-subject-lines/

 

But it doesn't seem to always work—occasionally the emoji will appear but sometimes the raw Q code would appear in the subject line. 

 

Has anyone had any experience using this technique? Or is there a better technique?

This post is no longer active and is closed to new replies. Need help? Start a new post to ask your question.
Best answer by SanfordWhiteman

There isn’t a bug with dashes — people just don’t realize dashes themselves need to be Q-encoded.

 

This Subject line:

From me — and my 🐶 family — to yours

 

Is encoded like this:

=?UTF-8?Q?From me =E2=80=94 and my =F0=9F=90=B6 family =E2=80=94 to yours=20?=

 

Q-encoding doesn’t have anything directly to do with emojis, as it pertains to all non-ASCII characters.

2 replies

SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
September 16, 2020

It's the only way. 🙂  And used many millions of times a day.


Do you have a repro case for an emoji, and the full Subject line: including the Q-encoded segment, that doesn't work? Every time someone's mentioned this in the past, it hasn't been reproducible.

J
JainaAuthor
Level 2
September 23, 2020

I'll try to reproduce it, but it was very hard to reproduce - sometimes it'd work, sometimes not! I was wondering if there were specific emoji the technique simply didn't work with. Will keep testing. But it's a little unnerving to see this technique work sometimes when you need to send a live email.

SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
September 24, 2020

There's no Unicode code point that can't be Q-encoded. But you can't use Emojis that simply aren't supported (yet) in all mail clients & browsers.

 

For example, I received these emails the other day. Check the Subject: of the first one. I didn't bother Q-decoding the missing glyph to see what they meant, but obvs. my late-model Android phone doesn't have the glyph in the default font. Bad choice!

 

 

A
A_Savage
Level 1
November 3, 2021

This outlines 1 issue

https://nation.marketo.com/t5/product-discussions/stripping-utf-codes-emojis-in-subject/m-p/286460/highlight/true#M166570

 

TL;DR:

Something breaks with encoding and dashes. Avoid.

SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhitemanAccepted solution
Level 10
November 3, 2021

There isn’t a bug with dashes — people just don’t realize dashes themselves need to be Q-encoded.

 

This Subject line:

From me — and my 🐶 family — to yours

 

Is encoded like this:

=?UTF-8?Q?From me =E2=80=94 and my =F0=9F=90=B6 family =E2=80=94 to yours=20?=

 

Q-encoding doesn’t have anything directly to do with emojis, as it pertains to all non-ASCII characters.

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement

    Loading footer...