Colour has powerful associations and affects the way in which people see and process data. It makes sense that reinforcing your direct mail campaign with appropriate colour envelope applications will boost the memory retention of correctly emphasised words and pictures.
Here are some common colour associations:
Red features a variety of connotations: passion, love, desire, danger, courage, strength, power plus much more. Red brings elements such as text and photographs towards the fore and often demand quick.
Yellow is bright and cheerful which is related to happiness, contentment, clarity of thought and energy. Yellow disappears on light backgrounds frequently must be along with dark greys, dark blue or black backgrounds. The negative connotations of bright yellow are childishness and instability.
Orange combines the advantages of yellow with the vigour of red. This warm colour is assigned to enthusiasm, recreation, creativity, youth and an energy which is not as forceful as red. Orange is also of a healthy appetite, harvest and autumn in the purest shades. Golden shades are associated with prestige, wealth and wisdom.
Green often associates with growth, freshness, and fruitfulness. Bright greens in many cases are the ‘colour of nature’ whilst dark greens are associated with money. Green is stable and recessive because it is easy about the eye.
Blue is easily the most stable of colours using its connotations of tranquillity, heaven, royalty confidence, faith, truth and sincerity. Blue often leads to a feeling of purity and precision. Blue also suppressed the appetite which is more appealing to corporate entities generally.
Purple is a mixture of blue’s stability and red’s energy. This results in a general feeling of purpose, power, nobility and ambition. Deep purple is not often contained in nature and it is related to mysticism and magic.
The following excerpt from Consumer Behavior: Product Characteristics and Quality Perception by Ricardo Pires Gon sums up effective colour usage quite well:
“According to the cue consistency theory, the prediction is always that multiple resources tend to be more useful when they provide corroborating information than when they offer disparate conclusions. Within this sense, particular colors and shapes combinations which are consistent have to enhance consumers´ product quality perception, while other combinations which are inconsistent will decrease it.”
Basically this amounts to brand consistency and reinforcing not many (preferably one) strong theme per direct mail send.
Sometimes you’re limited to your colour use since your direct mail envelopes have to retain branding continuity together with your corporate stationary along with other promotions. Whether you go searching for a complete colour envelope, a foil envelope having a colour logo or perhaps a white envelope with coloured branding onto it, it’s a good idea to make use of passive colours to balance bold colours.
Colours should compliment goals not overshadow them. A lot of colour selections or colour focus on the backdrop colour will often increase the risk for end user not reading your text. Frequently confusing or falsely coloured images have lower memory rentention than ‘logically coloured ones’. For instance a red apple tree in inverted colours features a lower memory value compared to same scene in monochrome with red tinting on all the apples.
Utilising appropriate colours using a corresponding tactile element for example glossy or even a distinguished matt can make the killer combination that direct mail marketers desire to. Something as simple as selective transparency not only entices but has better visual memory retention than an ordinary envelope. Whatever one last colour and envelope selection opt for your instincts and steer clear of the temptation to use too many techniques simultaneously.