Add Some Color, Please?!

When we think about adding color to marketing pieces, we often think about photos, charts, and graphs. But color can be added in many other ways, as well. These include highlight text, brightly colored banners, borders, and backgrounds, and symbols such as starbursts and arrows.

Why think about more places to add color? According to Shoshana Burger, director of corporate strategy and customer insights for X-Rite Pantone, there are some powerful reasons:

• People are 78% more likely to remember words and phrases in color.
• Time spent reading a document is 80% higher in color.
• Basic understanding of content is 80% higher in color.
• Color increases brand recognition by 87%.
• 65% of purchasing decisions involve color.
• Color printing is 55% more likely to be read than black-and-white.
• Response time is 30% faster in color.
• When used in promotions, color increases the likelihood of purchase by 80%.

“Eighty percent of our human experience is filtered through visual cues,” noted Burger, speaking in a presentation titled “The Power of Color in Communications,” hosted by Printing Impressions magazine.  “Color also creates an emotional connection. Choosing the right color, and how that color conveys to the right user, is important.”

So look for ways to increase the use of color in your next mailing. Add a colored background to a text box. Use highlight color in your text to draw attention to offers or critical product details. Add an extra image, chart, or graph, or enlarge a colorful image that you already have.

Whatever you do, get more color in there!