Direct mail is a more traditional form of marketing, but it has changed a lot in the past decade. Today’s consumers want to be treated like individuals instead of their demographics and ongoing technological advancements make it possible for direct mail to change with the ever-evolving digital world.
Features such as full-colour printing, relevant messaging, and personalisation are now more affordable. Although direct mail campaigns hold an essential place in the overall media mix, many marketers still doubt the value of direct investment or may not understand how to modernise their direct mail pieces for maximum success.
Let’s consider the power of colour in capturing a consumer’s eye and triggering an emotional response.
The Impact of Color
Colour has been known for a long time to influence consumer behaviour. Today, a colour image is often more enticing than a usual black-and-white template. For direct mail marketing company marketers, the use of colour can create powerful reactions among their target audience.
A study by Digital Information World states, 93% of buyers generally notice a product’s physical appearance when buying that product. Colour is a component of physical appearance. Businesses of all sizes have been using colour to leave an impact, create demand and improve recognition and loyalty.
Here we’ve mentioned specific colours that show certain evoke responses:
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Red: Physically stimulating to the human body, red shows urgency and creates a sense of excitement. It is associated with movement and passion so it is mostly used to point to a CTA (call-to-action).
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Orange: It is often used to induce feelings of originality, ambition, and beginnings. It can also communicate caution and a sense of anxiety if overused.
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Yellow: Yellow captures human’s attention more than any other colour. It is used to establish feelings of optimism and happiness. Like orange, overuse of this colour also creates anxiety.
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Green: The colour is associated with health, tranquillity, and nature but also wealth and financial security. It encourages harmony and balance in the brain and is considered to lead to decisiveness.
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Blue: Blue colour is associated with peace, security, reliability, intelligence, and productivity. This steadfast colour is a popular choice for offices and conservative corporate brands.
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Purple: Associated with respect, imagination, wisdom, prestige, creativity, and extravagance. It is mostly used by women – so a popular choice for beauty and anti-aging products.
There’s no doubt that major fast-food brands such as Burger King, McDonald’s, and Pizza Hut rely on various shades of red and yellow in their logos – yellow creates a feeling of comfort while red is considered as what makes people feel hungry, and impulsive. However, brands such as Waste Management, Seventh Generation, and John Deere rely on green colour to communicate an affiliation with eco-friendliness and nature.
Some other colours and their associations:
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Pink represents joy, kindness, and love.
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Brown makes people feel calm, welcomed, and at peace with their surroundings.
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Grey conveys the feeling of timelessness, practicality, and solidarity. Meanwhile, it leads to the feeling of nothingness and depression, if overused.
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Metallic tones such as gold and silver give an elegant touch. They are associated with prestige so refine the perception of a brand’s status, wealth, and power.
Go with what time demands
A few years ago, many marketers were struggling to identify the cost of coloured direct mail. Even with the digital press onset, four-colour click charges made many projects cost-restrictive. On top of that, it was almost impossible to add special features such as neon colours, gold, silver, or textures at a price that brand owners were willing to pay. These digital ongoing technological innovations are changing the usual era.
Each year, direct mail printing companies forecast data comparing colours and black-and-white print volumes. Today’s larger production printers offer financial returns and have special inkjet capabilities that are more affordable than before. As the production market and even more specifically inkjet technology grow, a natural shift from neutralised to digital will cause colour print volumes to grow.
Especially printing capabilities such as unique finishing, colour embellishments, and digital enablers and personalisation are expected to be used even more as the digital and physical worlds continue to combine. Today’s brands can deliver mail combined with technology to bring their audience online at a sufficient cost. This will also help the mailing companies in the USA to drive larger colour print volumes.
Advertising and marketing niches are often sold by the size of the pop-up, message, or banner, direct is similar, in that the larger the mail piece you plan to send, the higher the investment. Even then, the landscape changed when the United States Postal Service (USPS) increased the size allowance for first-class postcards. The end result was that marketers gained nearly 72% more space to tell their stories and mention a call to action. That’s big especially when you consider the opportunities to create better and more engaging marketing messages.
When you work with clients, any conversation about these new technological advancements must expand beyond cost per piece or technical specifications. To attract their attention, you must be able to articulate why it is essential to move from the business’s usual direct mail. As mentioned earlier, colour can translate to value and power. If used properly, colour can increase engagement and increase the mailed piece merit.
Final Thoughts
The USPS promotions are beyond your scope, but hopefully, you now have time to relate yourself to them. If so, you may see the intended interplay between print and technology. Direct mail incentives that include mixed reality (MR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Virtual Reality (VR) that makes it possible for marketers to take their brand messaging to the next level.
With a strategic planning and marketing approach, they can deliver much more on a direct mail piece than just ink on paper. Modern trends enable marketers to engage an audience with sight, touch, and sound.
There is a common hesitation to try new things and take risks, and do something that remains a challenge for many marketers as well as the PSPs who support them. Get a direct mail campaign company in place to know the strategic approach in detail. Understanding how audiences engage with direct mail can give you the confidence to do things differently and in style!