5 optical triggers that set purchase impulses – psychology meets email marketing, pt. 2
5 optical triggers that set purchase impulses
Email marketing is the shop window of your business. Look and feel of the newsletter are decisive for a purchase decision. Optical triggers – following compositional rules and offering visual stimuli – play an important role in this.
Use the emotional power of colors and pictures. Address subliminal buying motives. Make use of stimuli like the baby scheme and other amplifying social patterns. Work with learned behavior regarding the reading direction to subliminally set off purchase decisions. Boost your email marketing with our 5 optical triggers!
Trigger 1: top left to bottom right – reading direction
Whatever we are looking at – may it be a letter, an advertisement or an email – our look always wanders from top left to bottom right. This reading direction is culturally shaped and deeply rooted in our viewing habit. Therefore, you should place important information at the top left corner and center (claim, keyvisual, logo).
Trigger 2: Through the eyes right to the heart – images
Images tell stories. At one glance, the right picture can communicate the whole purpose of your mail. Also, as part of a product presentation it can say more than a 1.000 words, because it immediately draws in your readers emotionally and decides in 95% of all cases, whether a purchase is made or not.
A woman that wants to find the perfect dress for a date wants to feel attractive and feminine in it. A man who is interested in a fitness tracker, likes to feel in control. If you can identify and serve these wishes, you can set purchase triggers. Meaning: fashion sells best when models wear your dresses, and a fitness tracker should be presented by a fit person.
Example (via About You): Same dress, different impressions. Do you find the left or the right picture more alluring?
Use emotional key visuals as an opener! Show people of your target group making positive product experiences. As social amplifiers and identification figures, these set buying impulses. Influencers are even more successful here. For example, beauty and fashion bloggers could be the stars of your cosmetics or jeans campaign. Doctors are the perfect reference for medical products. Always sell values like trust and security in addition to your offer.
Babies and kittens trigger particularly strong reactions through the baby scheme. Marketers speak of “cute marketing” here. Large eyes, a snub nose and high forehead form a key stimulus that instinctively generates strong attention and is perceived as irresistibly cute. For your email marketing this means: Use animals and children as product ambassadors if your portfolio allows it.
However, keep in mind that your models should always interact with the products! Otherwise they distract the viewer from the product.
Trigger 3: All eyes on your product!
Pictures are great sellers when they are emotionally appealing. You can amplify the effect by putting your products in action. The scientists Ryan Elder and Aradhna Krishna made a test about this by showing their subjects two different images of the same burger. The image of the burger being held in two hands triggered more positive emotions and has been estimated to be more expensive than one burger by itself in the other picture. Use this “Visual Depiction Effect” for your own products, whenever possible.
Models also achieve higher click rates. Eye tracking analyses prove that faces automatically attract glances of the viewers. If the model looks at the product or the Call to Action (CTA)-button, the viewer follows this guidance. The effect: higher attention for your product or CTA means higher profits for you!
Trigger 4: Appeal to emotions with colors
Colors determine in 60% whether an offer is accepted or not. They trigger emotional reactions. Marketers consciously use the emotional impact of colors for brands and products. For banks and insurers, the corresponding colors often radiate trust, reliability and seriousness. For fashion labels and interior design, colors can convey pure elegance and for sports cars, you choose dynamic hues. Find out which emotions match your offer, the occasion of your campaign mail and the values of your brand, and choose accordingly:
Red, the color of love, radiates a lot of energy. Very warm and stimulating, it gives products dynamism and vitality. Brands such as Alfa Romeo, McDonald’s and Coca Cola use this energy. As a color of love, red is also the ideal choice for Christmas and Valentine’s newsletters.
Red also has a strong alerting effect. A red CTA button, for example, is clicked 52% more frequently than buttons of other colors. Make sure that the button is complementary to the basic color of your mail.
Blue, the color of water, is very soothing. It radiates safety, trust and reliability. Blue is also the favorite color of 40% of men and 36% of women. It is the most commonly used corporate color. Especially financial service providers, insurers and social networks use its popularity and effect. If the offer of your mail demands a serious appearance, use blue.
Green, the color of nature, spreads harmony. Green stands for freshness and naturalness. If your company attaches importance to nature or relaxation, choose green for your newsletter. Mountain regions as well as food and plants can be excellently marketed with green.
Yellow, the color of the sun, conveys energy, vitality and joie de vivre. Light tones mixed with orange and white also radiate elegance; An effect that cosmetic brands like to use for summer products. Also, energy producers and many airlines use rich, cheerful tones for their purposes.
Black, the color of the night, stands for elegance and luxury. It dominates car-, fashion- and designer brands. With black, companies embody a great sense of style as well as professionalism. If you want your products to appear valuable and pricy, then you want to use black.
If used correctly, colors create the desired emotion that sells your brand and product. The wrong colors, on the other hand, can be irritating. An irritation can go so far that recipients reject your offer altogether. If you choose colors that you feel are matching your brand, then your recipients will feel the same.
In addition to the emotional added value of colors, another optical trigger can also increase the value of your products:
Trigger 5: Less is more value – Layout
Did you ever receive a present that seemed even nicer because of a cute packaging? Product presentation is everything!
If you want to achieve a good price for your offers, pay attention to layout and design. Make your product the hero of your mailings! In order to do that, you need to give your products enough space in the layout, and only add other elements (e.g. models) when they support the product presentation even more. Lots of white space with only few disrupting elements or frames makes your product look valuable and sophisticated.
You can create a whole visual world around your item. A bikini, combined with the matching pareo, tunic, bath towel, beach bag and parasols creates the perfect hot summer campaign. These visual worlds make your customers want to take away the products, to make their own life just as pretty. Onlineshops like Refinery29 or IKEA have become very successful with this concept.
Whether it’s your layout, the choice of colors, pictures, or reading guidance – have these tools in mind when creating your campaign mail or newsletter. It’s worth it!
