diff --git a/app/jobs/data_import_job.rb b/app/jobs/data_import_job.rb
index 6d0de7c89..b14996fba 100644
--- a/app/jobs/data_import_job.rb
+++ b/app/jobs/data_import_job.rb
@@ -27,7 +27,11 @@ class DataImportJob < ApplicationJob
     rejected_contacts = []
     # Ensuring that importing non utf-8 characters will not throw error
     data = @data_import.import_file.download
-    clean_data = data.encode('UTF-8', 'binary', invalid: :replace, undef: :replace, replace: '')
+    utf8_data = data.force_encoding('UTF-8')
+
+    # Ensure that the data is valid UTF-8, preserving valid characters
+    clean_data = utf8_data.valid_encoding? ? utf8_data : utf8_data.encode('UTF-16le', invalid: :replace, replace: '').encode('UTF-8')
+
     csv = CSV.parse(clean_data, headers: true)
 
     csv.each do |row|
diff --git a/spec/fixtures/data_import/with_emoji.csv b/spec/fixtures/data_import/with_emoji.csv
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..f891e348b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/spec/fixtures/data_import/with_emoji.csv
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+phone_number,name
++123456,T 🏠 🔥 Test
diff --git a/spec/jobs/data_import_job_spec.rb b/spec/jobs/data_import_job_spec.rb
index 032858029..67ca4dd73 100644
--- a/spec/jobs/data_import_job_spec.rb
+++ b/spec/jobs/data_import_job_spec.rb
@@ -48,6 +48,19 @@ RSpec.describe DataImportJob do
         expect(invalid_data_import.reload.processed_records).to eq(csv_length)
       end
 
+      it 'will preserve emojis' do
+        data_import = create(:data_import,
+                             import_file: Rack::Test::UploadedFile.new(Rails.root.join('spec/fixtures/data_import/with_emoji.csv'),
+                                                                       'text/csv'))
+        csv_data = CSV.parse(data_import.import_file.download, headers: true)
+        csv_length = csv_data.length
+
+        described_class.perform_now(data_import)
+        expect(data_import.account.contacts.count).to eq(csv_length)
+
+        expect(data_import.account.contacts.first.name).to eq('T 🏠 🔥 Test')
+      end
+
       it 'will not throw error for non utf-8 characters' do
         invalid_data_import = create(:data_import,
                                      import_file: Rack::Test::UploadedFile.new(Rails.root.join('spec/fixtures/data_import/invalid_bytes.csv'),