With millions of emails per day bouncing off the inboxes of consumers, ensuring that your message stands out in an inbox doesn’t simply require great copy and a catchy subject line. What is overlooked when we speak about email marketing is colour psychology – the application of color to affect and influence action. Marketers who grasp the mood and behaviour-related effects of colors can craft email newsletters that are striking and appealing as well as engaging and conversion-focused.
Understanding Color Psychology
Colour psychology concerns ourselves with the effect of colours on people’s thoughts, emotions and behaviours. While culture can express colour in its own peculiar ways, certain emotions are tied to particular colours. For instance:
Red: With its associations with passion, enthusiasm and ebullience, red might make you feel awake. It’s a great option for calls to action, but you should use it sparingly so as not to overwhelm the reader.
Blue: A color associated with trust and relaxation, blue is commonly used for branding and professional communication. It will make your recipients feel secure and more willing to hear from you.
Green: A colour of growth, wellness and peace, green is a perfect match for brands committed to sustainability and wellbeing. It also induces rest and can lead to exposure to eco-friendly goods or programmes.
Yellow: A colour that signifies hope and happiness, yellow can attract your attention. But this warm shade can trigger anxiety if used too much, so use it as an accent instead of a strong one.
Orange: This color symbolizes energy and innovation, so it’s a good choice for promotions and events. It incentivises and keeps things open.
Purple: Purple is associated with luxury, innovation, and spirituality, so it can be used to reach audiences looking for something special or elevated. It’s perfect for premium or niche brands.
Black: Black is the colour of class, sophistication, and dominance. It makes a good noise when used in minimalist designs and can make text easier to read if it is used with light colors.
White: A representation of innocence and simplicity, white serves as a fundamental ingredient in balance. It will clear up your design and make other colors more visible.
By carefully using these colors within your email newsletters, you can alter how individuals receive your messages and make it compelling.
The Importance of Color Consistency
You might be tempted to incorporate every single color you plan to use in your email layouts, but you do not want to repeat yourself. The consistent color strategy improves brand awareness and ensures consistency in advertising materials. Create a color scheme that matches your brand’s personality and values, and implement it for every single newsletter you send out.
If your brand values sustainability, for example, green and earthy colors will complement your sustainability message. In the same way, a technology company might play blues as a sign of trust and security. Color harmonies help your audience use visual language they already understand when expressing your brand.
Using Color Psychology to Build Your Email Newsletter.
1. Choose Colors that Express Sensation and Tone.
Before you dive into creating your email newsletter, consider how you want your emails to sound. Do you promote a new product? Do not merely use vibrant colors to make it exciting. Are you sharing informative content? Unwinding blues or greens make it easier to read as well.
Example:
If you’re sending a Christmas email, red and green will remind them of happiness and warmth, so it’s ideal for the season.
2. Highlight Major Objects With Contrasting Colors.
Contrast is a powerful visual design technique that will direct the reader’s attention to important aspects of your newsletter. You can, for example, draw CTAs out with a brighter color (for example, red) on a white or grey background.
Example:
In a travel newsletter, use an oceanic blue background and orange calls-to-actions to book a vacation. The orange will jump out from the blue, capture attention, and drive clicks.
3. Highlight Important Information
Use color to cut off important elements of your email. When you use color to call attention to headlines, offers, or testimonials, you can direct users up the content ladder.
Example:
— If you’re including quotes or data in a newsletter that has customer success stories, contrast them with colour.
4. Maintain Readability
Colour will spruce up your layout but you’ll want to ensure that your text is legible. To read it, you must have a good contrast between the color of the text and the background. Don’t use blatantly bold colours that make reading hard.
Example:
A navy font against a soft yellow backdrop can be visually striking and more readable than white.
A/B Testing Colors for Optimization
A/B testing will make sure your colors work as intended. If you send copies of your email in multiple color schemes, you can test the impact that color has on opens, clicks, and conversions.
How to Conduct A/B Testing:
Choose Variable: Choose one color to be tested, such as the CTA button or background color.
Split Your List: Split your mailing list into random segments to make sure it makes a statistically meaningful difference.
Test the Market: Track open rates, CTR, and conversions to find out what color people are most interested in.
Success Stories: Color Psychology Case Studies Case Studies
Some brands have discovered that email marketing campaigns infused with color psychology can produce great opens and conversions.
Example 1: Airbnb
Airbnb frequently uses pastels in the newsletters to soften the space. By focusing on a consistent colour palette, they are able to satisfy their audience’s travel- and comfort-oriented desires.
Example 2: Spotify
Spotify uses lots of green and black in their emails to help promote their business. Beyond their color blocking to highlight pertinent messages like upcoming songs or playlists, their design is sleek and modern.
Accessibility Considerations
When it comes to color, accessibility is extremely important. It is estimated that 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women are colourblind — that is, not seeing colors the way others see them. To ensure that your email is inclusive:
Use colour harmonies that are recognisable to colorblind viewers like blue/orange or blue/yellow.
Put text labels on top of color to communicate (e.g., text rather than coloured buttons).
You should always make your designs accessible to see if they make sense to everyone.
Conclusion:
When you try to use colour psychology and use it in your email newsletters, it will impact how your readers think about your brand and the way they respond to your content. The secret to creating attention-grabbing newsletters is taking the time to choose the right colors based on your brand and sentiments, juxtaposing content with important elements, and playing around with all these options indefinitely. In a world where time is at a premium, do not let colour be a barrier – it might be what will shift your email marketing strategy and take your brand to the top of the inbox.
