How Huel Uses Email Marketing To Win New Customers.

Huel is a UK online health food brand that offers meal replacements in the form of powders and ready-made shakes. The business was founded back in 2014 but has seen explosive online growth over the last two years. As their online revenue is expected to pass $100M in 2022, there are clearly some lessons to be learned studying Huels approach to online marketing.In this first in a series of case studies, I take a closer look at how Huel uses its newsletter and subsequent emails to drive new customers growth.Each of these case studies will look at the 3 key elements of any successful email marketing campaign. Signup, Email copy and design, and Landing page optimisation.##SIGNUP – The Newsletter Sign UpThe huel website is a case study all of its own, so let’s just limit our focus here to the way they utilise a combination of strong colours, a good incentive and low friction form to drive sign-ups.###Floating barHuel combines a bold colour that catches the eye with a bit of tech known as a “floating bar” that allows them to keep the sign-up form in the eye line of the visitor without annoying them with pop-ups. This is very smart as the use of pop-ups although effective when used correctly run the risk of annoying visitors or simply being closed. Pop-ups should always be combined with some form of visitor engagement. Such as the number of pages viewed or the specific time on site the visitor has remained.###IncentiveUsing a very clear incentive to join the huel newsletter has two advantages. Firstly it helps overcome consumer reluctance to give their email address away for nothing. Consumers know you want their email address for a reason, and they increasingly recognise this value.###Low FrictionHuel has taken the decision to forgo additional information on sign up in favour of making the process as frictionless as possible. They don’t even take the first name of the subscriber, which is quite unusual. This makes future personalisation of messages harder, which is worth taking into account when designing sign up forms for your own business. Huel has clearly opted for speed over personalisation at this stage. Something they can remedy on first purchase.## EMAIL – The Welcome EmailAs the email design is quite long, I’ve broken it into 3 sections for easier viewing. I have included a screenshot of the entire newsletter at the bottom of this post for those interested in seeing the complete design.The email itself was sent from “team @ huel.com” which given the size and type of business we’re looking at makes sense. I’ve written a lot in the past about my preference for using peoples names in emails, especially those soliciting a response. Here the absence of a name is completely fine.