Have icons with special emotes attached to them be permanent.
The recent (2016 for me) Snowdown event allows a person to create icons through candies that they receive through crates. The most expensive icon being ~30 dollars worth of candies for an icon and emote that is temporary. To make something temporary like this seems ridiculous for the price that one has to pay for it.
By making these emotes permanent or even allowing a player to switch between mastery emote and icon's emote would incentivise people to actively try and purchase these icons making our Lord and Savior Rito more money, it's a win/win situation.
Math for candies: ~15$ for 11 crates. Let's give them 100% chance to drop 2 candies each (they have chance to drop 1 to 3). That's 15 dollars for 22 candies. Another 15$ gives you another 22 candies to finally allow you to purchase the most expensive icon (36 candies). That's about the same as an ultimate skin except... it would be temporary.