• by Jess Nelson , March 28, 2016

Snapchat snagged up Toronto-based Bitstrips for a cool $100 million, Fortune first reported on Friday. With the acquisition, Snapchat gains Bitstrips’ Bitmojis emoji-creating mobile applications on both iOS and Android.

Emojis are increasingly in demand in the marketing realm, and Snapchat’s acquisition makes sense for a company that has been seeking to optimize its advertising business and revenue.  

Emojis enable marketers to appeal to specific emotions in a way that other content may fail to do. They are also short and expedient -- a perfect resolution for mobile messages and distracted consumers on-the-go.

Brands have turned to creating original emojis to promote new products and events, such as Burger King’s 2015 chicken fries emojis and Star Wars’ use of droid emojis to promote the release of The Force Awakens.

Forrester suggests that appealing to emotion is key to improving overall customer experiences and brand loyalty, and emotion has been shown to significantly improve the return of investment of email marketing campaigns. Emotional content can increase the effectiveness of marketing as much as 70%, according to a recent Persado report.

The use of emojis in mobile and email marketing messages has increased 775% year-over-year, according to a recent report by Appboy.

The marketing automation company analyzed 9,400 mobile marketing campaigns, suggesting that emoji use grew 1,071% on Android and 662% on iOS within the past year.

In addition, triggered email messages containing emojis have jumped more than 7,000% in recent months and emoji use in marketing messages has shown a steady 20% increase month-to-month in 2016.