What are the best colours to use in email marketing?

The first impression of your email can decide if a subscriber engages with it or skips it.

Even though subject line and pre-header are key to getting your email opened, but the design, especially the use of colour, often drives conversion. Choosing the right colours for your email marketing is not just about looks; it's a strategic choice that can greatly affect how well your message works.

Importance of colour in email marketing

Colour is a strong, non-verbal tool that can shape perceptions and trigger emotions, ultimately influencing decisions. In the fast-paced world of an inbox, where attention is limited, smart use of colour can guide the eye, highlight key information, and encourage action.

One main role of colour in email marketing is to boost brand recognition. Using your brand's colour palette consistently across all marketing materials, including emails, can increase brand recognition by up to 87%. This consistency builds trust and familiarity with your audience. When subscribers quickly recognise your brand through your colour scheme, they are more likely to engage with your content.

Colour also set the mood and can create an unconscious bias toward or against a message. The right mix of colours can evoke specific feelings and emotions that match your campaign's goals, whether you're looking to create urgency for a sale or build trust with informative content.

Psychology behind colours

Understanding how different colours affect emotions is important in email marketing. Each colour has its own meaning and triggers different feelings. Here are some common colours used in marketing and the emotions they usually evoke:

• Red: Represents energy, excitement, passion, and urgency. It's often used to highlight calls-to-action (CTAs) and limited-time offers.
• Blue: Signals trust, calmness, stability, and professionalism. Dark blues are used to show expertise and reliability.
• Green: Tied to nature, growth, and balance, green brings feelings of peace and creativity. It's ideal for brands promoting organic or eco-friendly products.
• Yellow: Stands for optimism, enthusiasm, and warmth. It's great for highlighting key messages and creating a friendly mood.
• Orange: Combines red's energy and yellow's cheerfulness, conveying creativity, dynamism, and confidence. It's popular for CTAs, especially on dark backgrounds.
• Purple: Linked to luxury, creativity, and royalty, purple adds sophistication to emails.
• Black: Symbolises elegance, power, and seriousness. It's often used by luxury brands for a refined, professional look.
• White: Represents purity, safety, and fresh starts. Commonly used in medical campaigns and for a clean, minimalist style.
• Grey: Neutral grey suggests reliability and clarity, making it great for transactional emails.

Remember, a colour’s impact also depends on its brightness and saturation. Bright, saturated colours have different effects than muted or darker shades of the same colour.

Things to keep in mind

Beyond understanding colour psychology and choosing a scheme, several practical considerations will ensure your colour choices are effective and accessible:

1. Don’t overdo it

Firstly, don’t overdo it – the more colours you use, the less impactful they’ll be and your emails will simply look confusing. Consider the contrast between the background, images and text colours, so your email is easy to read and grabs attention for the right reasons.

2. Keep colours balanced

You also want to ensure the colours you use are balanced, which is easier if you choose just one or two key colours, so they really pop in the design. A popular way to do this, for example, is to use your chosen colours for the background of call-to-action buttons to make them stand out.

3. Consider the emotional response

Lastly, consider the emotional response you want to evoke. For example, using red to promote a sale can create a sense of urgency or excitement, but using red for a newsletter about a serious topic may not be appropriate.

4. Brand consistency

Your email campaigns should feel like a natural extension of your brand. Always start with your brand's primary colours and select secondary colours that complement them. This consistency strengthens brand recognition and builds trust.

5. Accessibility & contrast

It is crucial to ensure your emails are readable for everyone, including those with visual impairments or colour blindness. This means paying close attention to colour contrast.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) recommend a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for text and images against their background. Avoid problematic colour combinations like red/green and blue/yellow. High-contrast combinations, such as dark text on a light background, are generally the most readable.

6. Call-to-Action (CTA)

Your CTA button should be clearly visible in your email to catch reader’s attention effectively. To achieve this, use a colour that not only stands out from the background but also contrasts well with the entire layout of the email.

Selecting bright and bold colours for your CTA buttons can significantly enhance their visibility and appeal, making them more effective in encouraging clicks. This approach helps ensure that your call-to-action is noticeable at a glance, increasing the likelihood of engagement from your audience.

How to pick a colour scheme

Choosing a colour scheme for your emails shouldn't be a random process. It requires careful consideration of your brand, your audience, and your campaign goals.

Here are five common types of colour schemes that designers often use:

1. Monochromatic: This scheme uses variations of a single colour. It's an excellent choice for creating a clean, elegant, and unified look, particularly for campaigns centred around a single theme.
2. Analogous: This approach uses colours that are next to each other on the colour wheel. This creates a harmonious and pleasing visual experience for the reader.
3. Complementary: Complementary colours are opposite each other on the colour wheel, such as blue and orange. This high-contrast combination is effective for making key elements, like CTAs, stand out.
4. Triadic: A triadic scheme uses three colours that are evenly spaced on the colour wheel. This creates a vibrant and balanced look.
5. Tetradic: This scheme involves four colours that are two sets of complementary pairs. It offers a rich and diverse palette but requires careful balancing to avoid a chaotic appearance.

When selecting your palette, it's generally recommended to use no more than three colours to avoid overwhelming your audience and diluting your message.

Key takeaways

The best colours for marketing emails vary depending on the message you’re trying to convey and your brand image. You want to consider the type of emotional response you’re trying to elicit from your audience, as well as how the colour palette will work with your text and images.