| Understanding how people react to stimuli can be crucial in influencing what form a marketing campaign can take. By finding out the cues and factors that a target audience responds to, businesses of all sizes can know what buttons to push as they try to elicit a reaction. A new study by Avery UK into how shipping and product labels affect decision making and customer loyalty therefore makes fascinating reading, as it turns out even the tiniest details can have a big effect.
Bright colours and large labels catch the eye
While this could sound obvious, a business could easily be tempted to go for plain labels in order to save money. But eye-tracking experiments suggest that bold lines, stripes and borders could actually be a much better investment in the long run, as labels with these features are viewed 42% more than plainer alternatives.
Stimulate the brain
Once you have used a bright and distinctive design to get noticed, the next objective is to get a message across to the customer. Avery UK discovered that an emotive image makes people look at a product for 13% longer, while test subjects looked at a label for 10% longer if it featured an emotive word such as ‘enjoy’. This suggests that people’s decision making processes are more influenced by emotions than pure logic, so triggering an emotional response could be a great way to get people to spend money. The survey also found that people’s brain activity spiked if a label had a somewhat enigmatic message, such as ‘What’s inside?’ and ‘Just for you’. Figures showed that evoking a sense of curiosity boosted people’s purchase intentions by almost half, while the potential for word-of-mouth recommendation more than doubled.
Use more than one label
Avery UK’s research found that the number of labels on a package can significantly impact on how people perceive a brand. Brand engagement can increase by up to 129% if a company uses multiple labels on a shipping package, while perception of quality increases by 116%. Similarly, using more than one label can boost purchase intent by 113%, while word-of-mouth recommendation can grow by a staggering 135%. This suggests that small businesses might be missing out on chances to build their brand reputation by limiting themselves to a single label on a shipment.
Personalise your messages
The research indicated that if a mailing envelope featured the test subject’s name, they looked at it for 11% longer than average, while they were 10% likelier to be drawn to it first. Personalising special message labels could therefore do more than attract attention and influence future purchase behaviour, as they might also be capable of making people feel even more special.
In the words of Fiona Mills, Marketing Director at Avery UK, the findings suggest there is ‘more to the science of label design than might first meet the eye. We can now speak with the utmost authority to say that labels really do make a difference to the performance of small businesses,’ she said.
‘While we don’t recommend businesses stick labels on their packages for the sake of it, there is a clear business case for going above and beyond a simple plain address label,’ Ms Mills adds.
So if you are keen to build brand engagement and make people feel special, think about how you label your products and shipments and think about whether you’re taking advantage of the chance to build a stronger and longer-lasting relationship with valued customers.
Sources / Further Reading
New research reveals the power of persuasive labels SmallBusiness.co.uk |
