Android inexperienced. McDonald’s golden arches on purple. Fb blue. Colours are a core element of brand name recognition. What are yours?
You in all probability follow a model colour palette to maintain your messages constant. And, if it’s a particular e mail – like a vacation ship – possibly you’ll swap it up from the norm. Though it could be routine for a lot of of your emails, colour is a vital a part of your e mail template design and improvement course of. As an illustration, what number of colours must you use? What colour must you make your name to motion (CTA) button? What about hyperlinks? What does purple imply?
Let’s dive into the necessities of colour psychology, some examples of the precise colours for efficient e mail campaigns, and find out how to use contrasting colours to enhance accessibility.
What’s colour psychology?
You in all probability already know the fundamentals of colour psychology, like blue, which is calming, and purple means hazard. However how does this have an effect on your e mail advertising and marketing marketing campaign?
Colour psychology is the ace up your sleeve so as to add nuance to your messaging and enchantment to your audience’s feelings. In brief, colour psychology is the research of how our notion adjustments due to completely different colours. Colours have a big impression on our emotions. For those who can have an effect on your subscriber’s feelings via colour, it’s also possible to have an effect on their habits.
As an illustration, colour can appeal to particular varieties of customers, as proven beneath. Hold your audience in thoughts whereas choosing colours on your e mail campaigns.
As well as, colour psychology will be gender-specific. Particular colours are favored extra by males than girls, as proven beneath. Whereas these insights will be useful, watch out to not leap to conclusions. The colours utilized in e mail campaigns are the proper factor to A/B take a look at with a purpose to discover out what actually works together with your subscribers. Each checklist is completely different.
With that stated, how do you select the precise colours? Let’s begin by studying what completely different colours imply after which have a look at some examples for utilizing colour in particular varieties of emails.
What do colours imply?
Colours are extremely subjective, however they’re additionally highly effective instruments in enhancing your e mail campaigns. Now that we all know why colours matter, right here’s a listing of colours with their HTML colour codes and a brief clarification of what they imply:
- White (#ffffff): Let’s begin with the fundamentals. White normally has a optimistic which means, like purity and innocence. It’s additionally a pleasant clean slate for the remainder of your colourful content material. However overusing white as the first colour will also be boring or look unimaginative or unengaging. For those who use a white background, make the remainder of your e mail pop with tasteful colour combos.
- Black (#000000): Black is a strong colour that doesn’t must be destructive. As an alternative, it may be mysterious, stylish, and futuristic. Use black to convey a way of class and luxurious. However, don’t use an excessive amount of black. Overwhelming black can carry down the tone of your e mail.
- Crimson (#ff0000): Opinions are cut up about purple. It may be cheesy and too daring. Or, utilized in small doses, purple is a good way so as to add a bit of distinction and spotlight your CTA button. Keep in mind to not use an excessive amount of purple as a result of this will make your e mail look spammy to your subscribers and thus impression your e mail’s deliverability. In fact, an exception to this rule is that if purple is a crucial a part of your model’s visible id, like Goal or Coca-Cola.
- Yellow (#ffb800): Yellow (and orange) evoke happiness and hopefulness. Use calming shades of yellow in small doses to convey sunny, cheerful messages to your subscribers. Watch out to not use sure louder shades of yellow, as these will be attention-grabbing however seem to be warnings as an alternative of invites for engagement.
- Purple (#77629d): Purple is luxurious. It was the colour of emperors and kings within the Center Ages, and even now, that connotation hasn’t light. Brighter purples additionally convey creativity, knowledge, and enjoyable. Keep away from darkish purple since that may be seen as depressive and lowers the temper of your message.
Usually, brilliant, energetic colours seize your reader’s consideration, whereas impartial and darkish colours assist them loosen up. Beneath, let’s have a look at find out how to choose the precise colour for sure varieties of messages.
What are the precise colours for efficient e mail campaigns?
Crucial a part of figuring out the colour palette on your e mail templates is ensuring the colours are constant together with your model. Sustaining model integrity is your first precedence. After that, we will begin to consider find out how to use colours to sway the moods and preferences of our audience.
Let’s have a look at three examples of particular varieties of emails and the precise colours to suit our messaging.
1. How do I exploit purple to lift urgency and click-throughs?
Try this e mail marketing campaign from MAC. With a delicate white background and easy black textual content, they’ve used brilliant purple to make their message pop. They use the identical purple beneath of their CTA button to encourage a way of urgency and enchantment to their subscribers to click on via to their net web page.
Takeaways: Use purple sparingly to boldly enchantment to your subscriber’s impulsivity.
2. How do I exploit yellow to energise my message?
Vivid yellows add a way of vitality and sunniness acceptable for Calzedonia’s summery message.
This e mail pairs brilliant colours with a impartial palette to tone down the e-mail. An excessive amount of brilliant yellow by itself would possibly create a way of hysteria as an alternative of a sense of a lightweight and cheery vibe.
Takeaways: Use brilliant yellows to make your messages pop with vitality. Keep in mind to pair the yellows with one thing extra impartial to maintain your messages from edging into anxious territory.
3. How do I exploit black to convey status in my emails?
This highly effective instance from Chanel screams class and status with its darkish palette. Discover how the e-mail designer used white to make the Chanel title and messaging stand out whereas utilizing darker tones to create a way of thriller.
Takeaways: Use black so as to add a way of luxurious and je ne sais quoi to your e mail advertising and marketing. Use contrasting colours to focus on your messaging.
How can I exploit colour to enhance accessibility?
Moreover utilizing colour to boost your e mail marketing campaign and keep on-brand, you possibly can enhance e mail accessibility by choosing the proper contrasting colours.
Worldwide, the World Well being Group estimates that 1.3 billion individuals stay with some type of imaginative and prescient impairment. Roughly 217 million of these have reasonable to extreme imaginative and prescient impairment. What number of of these persons are interacting together with your emails?
Beneath, we’ll discover ways to enhance your e mail advertising and marketing accessibility through the use of the correct distinction ratios and a few greatest practices for utilizing sure colours related to imaginative and prescient deficiency.
What’s distinction ratio?
Distinction ratio is the variation between the background colours and foreground colours. In an e mail, the foreground colour is usually the colour of the textual content you’re working with, however it might additionally apply to graphics, diagrams, or logos.
The Internet Content material Accessibility Pointers (WCAG) 2.0 set requirements for net accessibility, together with distinction ratio minimums. WCAG has a calculator that assigns a quantity between 1 and 21 that signifies how a lot distinction your background and foreground colours have. A 1:1 ratio could be very little distinction (white textual content on a white background), whereas a 21:1 ratio is excessive distinction (black textual content on white background).
Colours with a decrease distinction ratio will be tough for sure subscribers to learn; individuals with imaginative and prescient impairments might have bother discerning textual content that’s too near the background colour.
Try the diagram beneath for examples of fine and dangerous distinction examples. Attempt squinting your eyes a bit and see how tough it’s to learn the dangerous distinction examples:
What are the WCAG colour distinction pointers?
WCAG’s Stage AA requirements specify that your e mail colours ought to have a distinction of at the least 4.5:1 for standard-sized textual content. For textual content bigger than 23px or daring textual content bigger than 18px, the distinction ratio will be 3:1.
In case your group wants to satisfy stage AAA pointers, you will need to use a distinction ratio of at the least 7:1 for regular textual content and 4.5:1 for giant textual content.
What are some greatest practices for utilizing colours in an accessible manner?
If a subscriber can not see blue, will they be capable of work out the place the hyperlinks are in your e mail?
Individuals with sure colour imaginative and prescient deficiencies can discover it tough to inform what textual content is clickable if it doesn’t have a distinct typeface or an underline. And in case your subscribers can’t see a hyperlink, they’ll’t click on and have interaction together with your e mail. This precept applies to all textual content in your e mail. For those who’re utilizing colour to distinguish some textual content from others, keep in mind that not each subscriber might be able to see these colours.
When designing and growing your e mail, keep in mind that colour shouldn’t be the one defining attribute for a hyperlink. Use underlines, daring typeface, symbols (>), or buttons to point clickable textual content.
Colour decisions and darkish mode emails
Think about that you simply’ve coded a gorgeous e mail with model colours solely to search out the e-mail shopper utterly reversed your colour decisions to point out the other hue.
That’s what can occur when emails are opened in darkish mode with sure mailbox suppliers. They are going to invert colours. This doesn’t occur with graphics a lot as with the hex colours coded into the background and fonts of your e mail.
Nevertheless, should you designed an e mail for a white background, will your photos and graphics nonetheless look good on a darkish background? Will your textual content nonetheless be readable?
With darkish mode utilization on the rise, these are essential inquiries to ask. Discover out extra about darkish mode emails and find out how to handle widespread darkish mode improvement challenges.
What are some greatest practices for utilizing colour in emails?
We’ll go away you with a number of easy suggestions for utilizing colour in your emails:
- Don’t use too many colours: Often, three to 4 colours are sufficient. Too many colours make your e mail too busy, which could make your subscriber lose sight of your message.
- Use contrasting colours: Keep in mind to make use of contrasting colours to enhance e mail accessibility for low-vision readers. However, don’t use too many distinction colours. Choose one foremost colour on your CTA and hyperlinks to face out.
- Develop a model colour palette: Not solely does this enhance model recognition, nevertheless it additionally saves you the difficulty of getting to develop a brand new colour scheme for every new marketing campaign.
- Choose colours for particular functions: Use brilliant, energetic colours to seize your reader’s consideration and set off a response. Use impartial and darkish colours to loosen up.
- Take a look at, take a look at, take a look at: Right here at E mail On Acid, we at all times suggest you take a look at every thing. For colours, it’s important to check for deliverability, accessibility, and for whether or not your colours are the precise colours. Along with trying out e mail previews for colour issues, we additionally suggest A/B testing your colour scheme to ensure it packs the precise punch.
Keep in mind, every thing depends upon your audience. Construct your visible model id together with your audience in thoughts, and develop your colour scheme to replicate your subscriber base and supposed messaging.
Wrapping up
For those who’re interested by how your e mail design measures as much as accessibility requirements and subscriber preferences, run it via Marketing campaign Precheck. This device features a step for e mail accessibility that checks the distinction ratio and flags something beneath the extent AA normal. If something doesn’t meet the usual, Marketing campaign Precheck will regulate the e-mail code, so the colours meet the minimal necessities.
Attempt us free for seven days and get limitless entry to e mail, picture, and spam testing to make sure you get delivered and look good doing it!
This text was up to date on April 4, 2022. It was first printed in December of 2018.
Writer: The E mail on Acid Staff
The E mail on Acid content material group is made up of digital entrepreneurs, content material creators, and straight-up e mail geeks.
Join with us on LinkedIn, observe us on Fb, and tweet at @EmailonAcid on Twitter for extra candy stuff and nice convos on e mail advertising and marketing.
Writer: The E mail on Acid Staff
The E mail on Acid content material group is made up of digital entrepreneurs, content material creators, and straight-up e mail geeks.
Join with us on LinkedIn, observe us on Fb, and tweet at @EmailonAcid on Twitter for extra candy stuff and nice convos on e mail advertising and marketing.
