Visualfusion.Biz

Colour has powerful associations and affects the way in which people see and process data. It seems sensible that reinforcing your direct mail campaign with appropriate colour envelope applications will boost the memory retention of correctly emphasised words and images.
Here are a few common colour associations:
Red features a variety of connotations: passion, love, desire, danger, courage, strength, power plus much more. Red brings elements for example text and photographs towards the fore and frequently demand quick.
Yellow is bright and cheerful which is related to happiness, contentment, clarity of thought and. Yellow disappears on light backgrounds frequently needs to 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 using the vigour of red. This warm colour is assigned to enthusiasm, recreation, creativity, youth and an energy which isn’t as forceful as red. Orange is also of a healthy appetite, harvest and autumn within the purest shades. Golden shades are related to prestige, wealth and wisdom.
Green often associates with growth, freshness, and fruitfulness. Bright greens are often the ‘colour of nature’ whilst dark greens are associated with money. Green is stable and recessive because it is easy on the eye.
Blue is regarded as the stable of colours using its connotations of tranquillity, heaven, royalty confidence, faith, truth and sincerity. Blue often leads to a sense of purity and precision. Blue also suppressed the appetite and it is more desirable to corporate entities generally.
Purple is really a mixture of blue’s stability and red’s energy. This results in a general sense of purpose, power, nobility and ambition. Deep purple isn’t often contained in nature and is related to mysticism and magic.
The next excerpt from Consumer Behavior: Product Characteristics and Quality Perception by Ricardo Pires Gon sums up effective colour usage very well:
“According to the cue consistency theory, the prediction is always that multiple sources of information tend to be more useful once they provide corroborating information than once they offer disparate conclusions. In this sense, particular colors and shapes combinations that are consistent are required to enhance consumers´ product quality perception, while other combinations that are inconsistent will decrease it.”
Basically this boils down to brand consistency and reinforcing not many (preferably one) strong theme per direct mail send.
Sometimes you are limited to your colour use as your direct mail envelopes have to retain branding continuity with your corporate stationary as well as other promotions. Whether you go searching for an entire 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 usually increase the risk for consumer not reading your text. Frequently confusing or falsely coloured images have lower memory rentention than ‘logically coloured ones’. For example a red apple tree in inverted colours includes a lower memory value compared to same scene in monochrome with red tinting on all of the apples.
Utilising appropriate colours having a corresponding tactile element for instance glossy or even a distinguished matt can make the killer combination that direct mail marketers need to. Something as simple as selective transparency not just entices but has better visual memory retention than a regular envelope. Whatever your final colour and envelope selection opt for your instincts and steer clear of the temptation to apply too many techniques simultaneously.