It goes without saying that we all want the best possible return from our direct mail postcards. Crucial design elements like the right layout and graphics play an enormous role in the success of a direct mail marketing campaign. But did you know that the colors you choose for your postcard design often speak volumes where your customers are concerned?

Making Your Business Personal

A great direct mail postcard design begins with a custom approach. You want your mail-out to stand out – and that means going the extra distance to keep your design from looking like everyone else’s. Choosing the right tones for your custom design will be based in part on your company’s existing logo and brand. But for those layout and design elements where the sky is the limit in terms of color, here’s what you should keep in mind.

Color psychology is a big, complex topic and the way we react to individual colors is the result of a variety of factors that often include gender, culture, and our own personal experiences. Just the same, there are some universal associations when it comes to the feelings that certain colors evoke in us as a group, and they look something like this:

Red = Excitement

Blue = Trust

Yellow = Optimism

Green = Peace

Violet = Creativity

You won’t elicit a specific, predetermined response to every color, from every individual, all of the time. But when it comes to picking the best colors for your next direct mail postcard, there are some broad characteristics of color messaging that can help contribute to your success.

What Color Says About Your Company

Depending on the client, a brand new watch and a trip to the spa may be equally exciting purchases, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that red (the stereotypical color for excitement) should be your go-to hue when marketing these items. Sometimes you need to go a little deeper to find the feeling or mood you want your direct mail postcard to trigger.

Studies have shown that, in many cases, consumers tend to make what can only be described as snap judgments about products and services based on color alone. And part of that judgment revolves around a subconscious sense of how well they feel a color fits with the personality of what’s being sold.

Let’s consider the five colors in our palette again, only this time, in relation to the overall image they tend to convey:

Red = Trendy and Unique

Blue = Honest and Wholesome

Yellow = Rugged and Outdoorsy

Green = Hard-Working and Secure

Violet = Charming and Sophisticated

It’s important to recognize that context really is everything when it comes to the use of color in your advertising. Green, for example can be just as relevant and effective in the healthcare sector as it is for finance or lawn care.

While certain colors do have a tendency to align themselves with certain traits in the mind of the consumer, simplifications like these are a great jumping-off point for experimenting with the wide range of print shades that are available to you.

Regardless of personal color preferences, remember that what you’re expressing to your would-be customers with every postcard you mail really comes down to a unique combination of words, imagery, and mood.