Emojam: Revolutionizing Communication with Music-Infused Emojis
In a world where digital communication has become a dominant force, finding innovative ways to engage and connect with others is essential. Enter Louise-Marie Marguet, the visionary CEO of Emojam, a groundbreaking platform that revolutionizes communication by infusing music into emojis. With a passion for bridging the gap between artists and fans, Louise-Marie has created a unique solution that enables individuals to express their emotions through the universal language of music. Join us as we delve into her inspiring journey and discover how Emojam is transforming the way we interact and engage in the digital age.
What inspired you to start this particular venture?
My inspiration behind Emojam was related to work frustration.
To give you some background, I was part of the eCRM team at Universal Music Group where my job was focused on fans acquisition and retention through digital solutions Universal had in-house. Concretely, when an artist was coming up with a new song, album, merch, we would send newsletters to fans. But kids don’t really care about email, thus those newsletters would get such a low opening rate that I feel I was not correctly helping artists connect with fans. I took a step back and started reflecting on what young generations do the most on their phone. Well, they text: we spend 91% of our time on mobile texting via 7 apps. So I was like: we must find a way to get music in text messages. However, the problem is that messaging is a private ecosystem and you can’t push ads the same way you do on social media or buy purchasing keywords… But there is a beloved format that we are using in most of our text since the 80s: the emojis! It was clear to me that emoji was the most organic format to inject music into everyday conversation and that’s how we decided to add music into emoji. By combining a custom animation with up to 10 seconds of music we enable artists to join fans' conversations while enabling fans to better convey emotions as music is the ultimate language of emotions.
What milestones has your startup achieved since its inception?
First of all, as easy as it sounds, adding sound to emoji was almost impossible. Indeed, when you pair a visual with sound, it returns a video. We did not want people to send videos but we wanted them to send emoji with sound, with a transparent background, and not in a video frame.
After months of research, we finally found a hack to stream the audio alongside the visual.
So our first milestone was to build a proprietary and innovative Emojam format.
Then we had to test the impact of sound on consumer engagement. We teamed up with a few superstars from Run The Jewels to Gwen Stefani and we noticed that emoji with sound were twice more sent than silent GIFs, thus we could conclude that Emojam is the most expressive and engaging language since emojis and our second milestone was achieved.
From there, we thought we would stay a music fan engagement platform until YouTube discovered Emojam and invited us to create custom audio stickers for YouTube creators from all backgrounds and all sizes. YouTube encouraged us to monetize exclusive audio stickers via monthly subscriptions that fans would pay to unlock. We ran a pilot and discovered that 5% of the die-hard fans were paying monthly to use exclusive audio stickers. We found our product market fit and YouTube integrated Emojam. 2 pretty strong new milestones achieved!! Today, Emojam is one of the six solutions that YouTube chose to help creators earn revenue, and we see 10% of the die-hard fans paying monthly to get exclusive Emojams. Our top creators make over $7k a month just from Emojam, assessing the Emojam format to be a strong new revenue stream for creators and artists. Basically, Emojam is like digital merch!
What is your long-term vision for the company?
The long-term vision is to be the number solution for creators and IPs to engage and monetize fandom across messaging, gaming, and metaverse platforms. Basically, wherever there is emoji, there could be Emojam and wherever fans buy products from their favorite creators, they could buy Emojam!
Louise-Marie Marguet's entrepreneurial spirit and relentless pursuit of meaningful fan engagement have led to the creation of Emojam, a game-changing platform at the forefront of digital communication. By seamlessly integrating music into emojis, Emojam empowers artists, creators, and fans alike to express themselves and connect on a deeper level. With a focus on continuous innovation and a vision for expanding Emojam's reach into messaging, gaming, and the metaverse, Louise-Marie is driving the company toward a future where the power of music and emojis unite. As Emojam continues to evolve and inspire, Louise-Marie's leadership serves as a testament to the transformative impact of blending technology and creativity to shape the way we communicate in the modern world.