• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, July 17, 2018

Have you heard of World Emoji Day? It’s here—today—and Apple has announced over 70 new images to celebrate the occasion.

Forget the fact that emojis may have passed their peak in email marketing. It’s a happy day, and thanks to this gift from Apple, we will soon have emojis showing people with:  

Gray hair.

Red hair. 

No hair. 

There will be kangaroos, peacocks, parrots and lobsters. And there are emojis showing mangoes, lettuce, cupcakes, moon cakes and other foodstuffs.

And if you want more than the usual smiley face, you can choose a cold face, a party face, a pleading face and one with hearts.

But don’t get too eager—these approved images won’t be available under later this year. They are coming to iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac in a free software update, Apple says. 

“A free update to iOS 12 brings more expression to every message with new characters for sports, symbols and more,” Apple writes.

Emojis reportedly have been around since 1995, when NTT Docomo added a heart symbol to its pagers.

“These were designed by Japanese artist Shigetaka Kurita, and those original 176 emojis are now a part of the permanent collection at New York’s Museum of Modern Art,” News 18 writes.

Later, emojis came into widespread use, and the White House Council of Economic Advisors used them liberally in a report on millennials, News 18 continues.

Email marketers also used them—perhaps too much. “We’re almost at 100% where every email client can show an emoji in a subject line,” Worldata CEO Jay Schwedelson said last year.

Not to put a damper on it, but a survey of U.K. consumers late last year showed that only 5% are likely to buy from brands that use the smiling or laughing faces.

And here in the U.S.,  a Black Friday study by ContactPigeon determined that messages without emojis had a 1.5 times higher conversion rate than those with them. Still, 67% of messages had them.

Why worry? If you're one of those who are annoyed by emojis, lighten up, grab one of those moon cakes and enjoy World Emoji Day.