Android inexperienced. McDonald’s golden arches on purple. Fb blue. Colours are a core part of name recognition. What are yours?
You most likely keep on with a model colour palette to maintain your messages constant. And, if it’s a particular electronic mail – like a vacation ship – perhaps you’ll swap it up from the norm. Though it could be routine for a lot of of your emails, colour is a necessary a part of your electronic 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 proper colours for efficient electronic mail campaigns, and methods to use contrasting colours to enhance accessibility.
What’s colour psychology?
You most likely 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 electronic mail advertising marketing campaign?
Coloration psychology is the ace up your sleeve so as to add nuance to your messaging and enchantment to your audience’s feelings. Briefly, colour psychology is the research of how our notion adjustments due to completely different colours. Colours have a major influence on our emotions. For those who can have an effect on your subscriber’s feelings by way of colour, you can even have an effect on their habits.
As an illustration, colour can appeal to particular sorts of consumers, as proven beneath. Preserve your audience in thoughts whereas deciding on colours to your electronic mail campaigns.
As well as, colour psychology could be gender-specific. Particular colours are favored extra by males than girls, as proven beneath. Whereas these insights could be useful, watch out to not leap to conclusions. The colours utilized in electronic 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 mentioned, how do you select the proper colours? Let’s begin by studying what completely different colours imply after which have a look at some examples for utilizing colour in particular sorts of emails.
What do colours imply?
Colours are extremely subjective, however they’re additionally highly effective instruments in enhancing your electronic mail campaigns. Now that we all know why colours matter, right here’s an inventory of colours with their HTML colour codes and a brief rationalization of what they imply:
- White (#ffffff): Let’s begin with the fundamentals. White often has a optimistic that 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 can be boring or look unimaginative or unengaging. For those who use a white background, make the remainder of your electronic mail pop with tasteful colour combos.
- Black (#000000): Black is a strong colour that doesn’t must be damaging. 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 deliver down the tone of your electronic mail.
- Pink (#ff0000): Opinions are break up about purple. It may be cheesy and too daring. Or, utilized in small doses, purple is a good way so as to add somewhat distinction and spotlight your CTA button. Bear in mind to not use an excessive amount of purple as a result of this could make your electronic mail look spammy to your subscribers and thus influence your electronic mail’s deliverability. In fact, an exception to this rule is that if purple is a vital a part of your model’s visible identification, 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 could be attention-grabbing however appear 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 pale. 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.
Typically, vibrant, energetic colours seize your reader’s consideration, whereas impartial and darkish colours assist them chill out. Beneath, let’s have a look at methods to choose the proper colour for sure sorts of messages.
What are the proper colours for efficient electronic mail campaigns?
Crucial a part of figuring out the colour palette to your electronic 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 methods to use colours to sway the moods and preferences of our audience.
Let’s have a look at three examples of particular sorts of emails and the proper colours to suit our messaging.
1. How do I exploit purple to boost urgency and click-throughs?
Take a look at this electronic mail marketing campaign from MAC. With a delicate white background and easy black textual content, they’ve used vibrant 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 by way of 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 electronic mail pairs vibrant colours with a impartial palette to tone down the e-mail. An excessive amount of vibrant yellow by itself may create a way of tension as an alternative of a sense of a light-weight and cheery vibe.
Takeaways: Use vibrant yellows to make your messages pop with vitality. Bear 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 electronic mail advertising. Use contrasting colours to spotlight your messaging.
How can I exploit colour to enhance accessibility?
In addition to utilizing colour to boost your electronic mail marketing campaign and keep on-brand, you possibly can enhance electronic mail accessibility by choosing the proper contrasting colours.
Worldwide, the World Well being Group estimates that 1.3 billion folks dwell with some type of imaginative and prescient impairment. Roughly 217 million of these have average to extreme imaginative and prescient impairment. What number of of these individuals are interacting together with your emails?
Beneath, we’ll learn to enhance your electronic mail advertising accessibility by utilizing the right 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 electronic mail, the foreground colour is commonly the colour of the textual content you’re working with, however it might probably additionally apply to graphics, diagrams, or logos.
The Net Content material Accessibility Tips (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 may 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 could be tough for sure subscribers to learn; folks with imaginative and prescient impairments could have hassle discerning textual content that’s too near the background colour.
Take a look at the diagram beneath for examples of excellent and unhealthy distinction examples. Strive squinting your eyes a bit and see how tough it’s to learn the unhealthy distinction examples:
What are the WCAG colour distinction pointers?
WCAG’s Stage AA requirements specify that your electronic mail colours ought to have a distinction of a minimum of 4.5:1 for standard-sized textual content. For textual content bigger than 23px or daring textual content bigger than 18px, the distinction ratio could be 3:1.
In case your group wants to fulfill stage AAA pointers, you could use a distinction ratio of a minimum of 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 means?
If a subscriber can not see blue, will they be capable of determine the place the hyperlinks are in your electronic 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 electronic mail. This precept applies to all textual content in your electronic 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 electronic 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.
Coloration selections and darkish mode emails
Think about that you simply’ve coded a good looking electronic mail with model colours solely to search out the e-mail consumer utterly reversed your colour selections to indicate the other hue.
That’s what can occur when emails are opened in darkish mode with sure mailbox suppliers. They’ll invert colours. This doesn’t occur with graphics a lot as with the hex colours coded into the background and fonts of your electronic mail.
Nonetheless, in case you designed an electronic 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 vital inquiries to ask. Discover out extra about darkish mode emails and methods to deal with frequent darkish mode improvement challenges.
What are some greatest practices for utilizing colour in emails?
We’ll go away you with a couple of easy ideas for utilizing colour in your emails:
- Don’t use too many colours: Often, three to 4 colours are sufficient. Too many colours make your electronic mail too busy, which could make your subscriber lose sight of your message.
- Use contrasting colours: Bear in mind to make use of contrasting colours to enhance electronic mail accessibility for low-vision readers. However, don’t use too many distinction colours. Choose one major colour to your CTA and hyperlinks to face out.
- Develop a model colour palette: Not solely does this enhance model recognition, but it surely 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 vibrant, energetic colours to seize your reader’s consideration and set off a response. Use impartial and darkish colours to chill out.
- Take a look at, take a look at, take a look at: Right here at E-mail On Acid, we all the time advocate you take a look at every little thing. For colours, it’s important to check for deliverability, accessibility, and for whether or not your colours are the proper colours. Along with testing electronic mail previews for colour issues, we additionally advocate A/B testing your colour scheme to ensure it packs the proper punch.
Bear in mind, every little thing depends upon your audience. Construct your visible model identification 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 electronic mail design measures as much as accessibility requirements and subscriber preferences, run it by way of Marketing campaign Precheck. This software features a step for electronic mail accessibility that checks the distinction ratio and flags something beneath the extent AA customary. If something doesn’t meet the usual, Marketing campaign Precheck will modify the e-mail code, so the colours meet the minimal necessities.
Strive us free for seven days and get limitless entry to electronic 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 revealed in December of 2018.
Creator: The E-mail on Acid Crew
The E-mail on Acid content material group is made up of digital entrepreneurs, content material creators, and straight-up electronic 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 electronic mail advertising.
Creator: The E-mail on Acid Crew
The E-mail on Acid content material group is made up of digital entrepreneurs, content material creators, and straight-up electronic 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 electronic mail advertising.
