subject: Colour Envelopes and Memory Retention in Direct Mail [print this page] Colour has powerful associations and affects the way people see and process data. It stands to reason that reinforcing your direct mail campaign with appropriate colour envelope applications will improve the memory retention of correctly emphasised words and images.
Here are some common colour associations:
Red has a variety of connotations: passion, love, desire, danger, courage, strength, power and more. Red brings elements such as text and images to the fore and often demand quick.
Yellow is bright and cheerful and is associated with happiness, contentment, clarity of thought and energy. Yellow disappears on light backgrounds so often needs to be coupled with dark greys, dark blue or black backgrounds. The negative connotations of bright yellow are childishness and instability.
Orange combines the joy of yellow with the vigour of red. This warm colour is associated with enthusiasm, recreation, creativity, youth and an energy which is not as forceful as red. Orange is also associated with a healthy appetite, harvest and autumn in its purest shades. Golden shades are associated with 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 the most stable of colours with its connotations of tranquillity, heaven, royalty confidence, faith, truth and sincerity. Blue often brings about a feeling of purity and precision. Blue also suppressed the appetite and is more appealing to corporate entities in general.
Purple is a blend of blue's stability and red's energy. This creates an overall feeling of purpose, power, nobility and ambition. Deep purple is not often found in nature and is associated with 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 that multiple sources of information are more useful when they provide corroborating information than when they offer disparate conclusions. In this sense, particular colors and shapes combinations which are consistent are expected to enhance consumers product quality perception, while other combinations that are inconsistent will decrease it."
Basically this boils down to brand consistency and reinforcing very few (preferably one) strong theme per direct mail send.
Sometimes you are limited by your colour use because your direct mail envelopes need to retain branding continuity with your corporate stationary and other promotional materials. Whether you opt for a full colour envelope, a foil envelope with a colour logo or a white envelope with coloured branding on it, it is a good idea to use passive colours to balance bold colours.
Colours should compliment goals not overshadow them. Too many colour selections or colour emphasis on the background colour will usually result in the end user not reading your text. Quite often confusing or falsely coloured images have lower memory rentention than 'logically coloured ones'. For example a red apple tree in inverted colours has a lower memory value than the same scene in black and white with red tinting on all the apples.
Utilising appropriate colours with a corresponding tactile element such as high gloss or a distinguished matt can create the killer combination that direct mail marketers aspire to. Something as simple as selective transparency not only entices but has better visual memory retention than an ordinary envelope. Whatever your final colour and envelope selection go with your instincts and avoid the temptation to apply too many techniques at once.
Colour Envelopes and Memory Retention in Direct Mail
