How Daily Harvest did absolutely everything right
I don’t know about you but my social media has been seeing Daily Harvests colorful and eye-catching advertising everywhere! For the past year, their ads have come after me on Facebook, Instagram, e-mail, TV, and even TikTok. Daily Harvest is able to push its aggressive marketing campaign by spending just under $100 million in advertising in the past year on their healthy Smoothie, soup, oatmeal, and other prepackaged frozen food subscription service.
The Subscription Box Craze
Subscription boxes first gained consumer attention over a decade ago with companies like BirchBox and Ipsy where customers took a short quiz about their beauty preferences and got a small package filled with samples every month. I have been getting Ipsy bags for years and it's like a present coming in the mail from me to me! Since 2010 we have seen many industries have taken on the subscription model, so many that there is an entire website dedicated to them. In recent years we have seen the direct-to-consumer Food and Beverage sector take on the market with lead players such as Hello Fresh being a current leader. These boxes are gaining massive amounts of customers because they are convenient, personalized, and add value to a consumer's life. This is why Daily Harvest was able to succeed so quickly.
How Daily Harvest Got it Right
Especially today, a companies' online presence can be the make or break factor of their success. A website is like a virtual storefront and if it's not perfect consumers will walk right past it. Adult attention spans have been exponentially decreasing in recent years and as marketers, we only have a few seconds to win them over.
Daily Harvest spends a lot of money on advertising so It's no surprise their online platform is meticulously crafted to perfection. Their landing page is simple and clean highlighting the bright and fresh ingredients in their product. There are also several points of conversion throughout the website paired with pictures of the ingredients and simple descriptions.
The landing page is made to adapt perfectly on desktop, tablet, and mobile so that consumers can enjoy their experience from anywhere. Once the landing page grabs your attention the design wins don't stop! You are then led to a page where you get to choose from 4 packages varying in quantity and frequency of deliveries. After that, you see the entire product range with the best sellers clearly shown on top to limit the option paralysis of a first-time buyer. What I absolutely loved about their e-commerce page was the way they displayed the product. The photos were transparent about the ingredients (literally and figuratively) and when you hover over them they show how they will look blended. A detail I found helpful was the small description where they tell us how the smoothie tastes like, perfect for those new to smoothies and wanted to choose them to their taste.
The personalization and consumer considerations don't stop there! At the top of the page, there is a filter to find products that include your favorite fruits or vegetable and also to exclude ingredients based on preferences or dietary restrictions which I can see being very helpful.
Daily Harvest is targeting the health-conscious consumer, and that group has grown tremendously in a short time period. More specifically they are looking to help those who want to be healthy but either don't know how or just don't have the time. A simple website with a healthy image promising health in a convenient box is the answer to all of their problems. Daily Harvest is a perfect example of how a strong marketing campaign paired with a carefully crafted user experience can differentiate a brand in a crowded space and become extremely successful.
