Prevent Html Entity Conversion To Emoji

I've coded an HTML email and use '▶' to code a right-pointing triangle in place of an image in a call-to-action. This renders as anticipated except in iOS devices where t

Solution 1:

▶︎

U+FE0F and U+FE0E are ‘variation selectors’, signalling that, respectively, an emoji-like (coloured/animated) or text-like rendering is preferred, if available. If neither is used, the renderer can choose at will. Unfortunately iOS in certain scenarios defaults to the emoji variant and has to be manually put right.

(Hex vs decimal character reference is immaterial. You can include the raw characters too, you don't necessarily have to encode them as character or entity references, but as raw characters the existance of the variant selector would be hard to see in an editor.)