Android inexperienced. McDonald’s golden arches on crimson. Fb blue. Colours are a core element of brand name recognition. What are yours?
You in all probability stick with a model colour palette to maintain your messages constant. And, if it’s a particular electronic mail – like a vacation ship – possibly you’ll swap it up from the norm. Though it might be routine for a lot of of your emails, colour is a vital a part of your electronic mail template design and improvement course of. For example, 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 appropriate colours for efficient electronic mail campaigns, and 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 crimson 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 examine of how our notion adjustments due to completely different colours. Colours have a big influence on our emotions. Should you can have an effect on your subscriber’s feelings via colour, it’s also possible to have an effect on their habits.
For example, colour can entice particular forms of customers, as proven beneath. Preserve your audience in thoughts whereas deciding on colours in your electronic mail campaigns.
As well as, colour psychology may be gender-specific. Particular colours are favored extra by males than ladies, as proven beneath. Whereas these insights may be useful, watch out to not leap to conclusions. The colours utilized in electronic mail campaigns are the proper factor to A/B check in an effort to discover out what actually works along with your subscribers. Each listing is completely different.
With that mentioned, how do you select the appropriate colours? Let’s begin by studying what completely different colours imply after which take a look at some examples for utilizing colour in particular forms 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 a listing of colours with their HTML colour codes and a brief rationalization of what they imply:
- White (#ffffff): Let’s begin with the fundamentals. White normally 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 will also be boring or look unimaginative or unengaging. Should you use a white background, make the remainder of your electronic mail pop with tasteful colour combos.
- Black (#000000): Black is a robust colour that doesn’t should be damaging. As a substitute, it may be mysterious, stylish, and futuristic. Use black to convey a way of magnificence and luxurious. However, don’t use an excessive amount of black. Overwhelming black can deliver down the tone of your electronic mail.
- Purple (#ff0000): Opinions are cut up about crimson. It may be cheesy and too daring. Or, utilized in small doses, crimson is a good way so as to add a bit distinction and spotlight your CTA button. Keep in mind to not use an excessive amount of crimson as a result of this may 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 crimson is a crucial 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 may be attention-grabbing however seem to be warnings as a substitute 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.
Basically, vibrant, energetic colours seize your reader’s consideration, whereas impartial and darkish colours assist them chill out. Beneath, let’s take a look at choose the appropriate colour for sure forms of messages.
What are the appropriate colours for efficient electronic mail campaigns?
Crucial a part of figuring out the colour palette in your electronic mail templates is ensuring the colours are constant along with your model. Sustaining model integrity is your first precedence. After that, we are able to begin to consider use colours to sway the moods and preferences of our audience.
Let’s take a look at three examples of particular forms of emails and the appropriate colours to suit our messaging.
1. How do I take advantage of crimson to boost urgency and click-throughs?
Try this electronic mail marketing campaign from MAC. With a refined white background and easy black textual content, they’ve used vibrant crimson to make their message pop. They use the identical crimson 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 crimson sparingly to boldly enchantment to your subscriber’s impulsivity.
2. How do I take advantage of yellow to energise my message?
Vibrant yellows add a way of power and sunniness applicable 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 a substitute of a sense of a light-weight and cheery vibe.
Takeaways: Use vibrant yellows to make your messages pop with power. 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 take advantage of black to convey status in my emails?
This highly effective instance from Chanel screams magnificence and status with its darkish palette. Discover how the e-mail designer used white to make the Chanel identify 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 take advantage of colour to enhance accessibility?
Apart from utilizing colour to boost your electronic mail marketing campaign and keep on-brand, you may enhance electronic mail accessibility by choosing the proper contrasting colours.
Worldwide, the World Well being Group estimates that 1.3 billion individuals reside 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 individuals are interacting along with your emails?
Beneath, we’ll learn to enhance your electronic mail advertising accessibility by utilizing the right distinction ratios and a few finest 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 could additionally apply to graphics, diagrams, or logos.
The Net 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 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 may 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 unhealthy distinction examples. Attempt 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 Degree AA requirements specify that your electronic 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 may be 3:1.
In case your crew wants to fulfill stage AAA pointers, you should 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 finest 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 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 unique typeface or an underline. And in case your subscribers can’t see a hyperlink, they will’t click on and have interaction along with your electronic mail. This precept applies to all textual content in your electronic mail. Should you’re utilizing colour to distinguish some textual content from others, do not forget that not each subscriber could possibly see these colours.
When designing and creating your electronic mail, do not forget 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 just’ve coded a wonderful electronic mail with model colours solely to seek out the e-mail consumer utterly reversed your colour selections to point out the alternative 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 the event 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 essential inquiries to ask. Discover out extra about darkish mode emails and handle widespread darkish mode improvement challenges.
What are some finest practices for utilizing colour in emails?
We’ll depart 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 electronic 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 electronic mail accessibility for low-vision readers. However, don’t use too many distinction colours. Choose one essential colour in 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 vibrant, energetic colours to seize your reader’s consideration and set off a response. Use impartial and darkish colours to chill out.
- Check, check, check: Right here at E mail On Acid, we at all times advocate you check every little thing. For colours, it’s important to check for deliverability, accessibility, and for whether or not your colours are the appropriate colours. Along with testing electronic mail previews for colour issues, we additionally advocate A/B testing your colour scheme to verify it packs the appropriate punch.
Keep in mind, every little thing depends upon your audience. Construct your visible model identification along with your audience in thoughts, and develop your colour scheme to replicate your subscriber base and supposed messaging.
Wrapping up
Should you’re inquisitive about how your electronic mail design measures as much as accessibility requirements and subscriber preferences, run it via Marketing campaign Precheck. This device features a step for electronic 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 alter the e-mail code, so the colours meet the minimal necessities.
Attempt 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.
Writer: The E mail on Acid Group
The E mail on Acid content material crew is made up of digital entrepreneurs, content material creators, and straight-up electronic mail geeks.
Join with us on LinkedIn, comply with us on Fb, and tweet at @EmailonAcid on Twitter for extra candy stuff and nice convos on electronic mail advertising.
Writer: The E mail on Acid Group
The E mail on Acid content material crew is made up of digital entrepreneurs, content material creators, and straight-up electronic mail geeks.
Join with us on LinkedIn, comply with us on Fb, and tweet at @EmailonAcid on Twitter for extra candy stuff and nice convos on electronic mail advertising.
