How Marie-France van Heel grew Be.EV to 60,000 members in two years

Marie-France van Heel’s marketing career at Be.EV is easy to flatten into a tidy startup story: a regional EV charging network starts with almost no brand recognition, grows to more than 60,000 driver members in two years, and starts appearing in the same customer-satisfaction conversation as BP Pulse and Shell Recharge. The more useful version is less miraculous. Most of the detailed performance figures available for this case — including the 60,000+ member figure, 3x growth since January 2023, campaign uplift, review uplift, social growth, utilization performance, and team expansion — come from BusinessDesk’s Monday Profile and should be treated as reported outcomes rather than independently audited performance data.[1]

That caveat matters because the numbers are strong enough without pretending marketing alone created them. Be.EV was also expanding a physical charging network, backed by a £110 million investment from Octopus Energy Generation.[2] More chargers, better sites, and capital confidence are not footnotes in an infrastructure business. They are part of the growth engine.

The customer-satisfaction ranking needs the same discipline. BusinessDesk reports that Be.EV moved from outside the top 10 to 4th in ZapMap’s rapid and ultra-rapid category.[1] Be.EV has also described itself as the UK’s 2nd top-rated rapid and ultra-rapid charging network, which may refer to a different year, network-size category, or ZapMap classification.[3] Those claims should not be blended into one loose superlative. For this case study, the defensible point is narrower: Be.EV appears to have moved from low awareness into a much stronger customer-satisfaction position while growing membership quickly.

The brand work started with the thing drivers were actually buying

For a small marketing team, EV charging is an unforgiving category. A campaign can get a driver to a charger once. It cannot make a broken charger work, shorten a queue that already exists, or turn a confusing app into a good experience after the driver is standing in the rain.

That is why the most interesting part of the Be.EV case is not the media mix. It is the way customer experience became the media. The reported 99% charger uptime gave the marketing team something unusually sturdy to say in a category where reliability is a known pain point.[1] The queue-free guarantee, reduced and off-peak tariffs, app and wallet improvements, and charger reservation pilot were not decorative product features. They changed what customers could reasonably expect to happen when they chose the network.

That matters because customer acquisition in charging is partly a habit problem. A driver does not only need to know a network exists. They need to trust that the charger will be available, payment will work, pricing will feel fair, and the stop will not add anxiety to the journey. Be.EV’s reported growth suggests the marketing function was built around reducing those frictions rather than dressing them up.

Reliability became the credibility base

The 99% uptime claim is doing more work than a brand line ever could.[1] In practical terms, it gives paid media, partnerships, CRM, and social content a believable center. Without that operational claim, the same campaigns would have had to ask drivers to take a bigger leap of faith.

This is where a lot of startup case studies become too neat. They show the visible campaign and skip the quieter coordination underneath: operations teams keeping sites working, product teams removing app friction, commercial teams shaping tariffs, and marketing translating all of it into promises that customers can test immediately. In a service business, every promise becomes a support ticket if the business cannot keep it.

Van Heel’s role at Be.EV is useful to study because she was not inheriting a mature marketing department. BusinessDesk reports that she built the function from scratch, beginning alone with outsourced support before scaling it into a six-person team over 18 months.[1] That sequence matters. A team that small cannot compensate for a weak charging experience by outspending national incumbents. It has to decide which parts of the experience are strong enough to carry the brand.

The app and wallet work turned experience into visible proof

The new app and promotional wallet are easy to misread as generic digital hygiene. In this case, they appear to have had a measurable reputational effect: BusinessDesk reports that the app and wallet work drove a 25% uplift in positive app and Google reviews.[1]

That is a marketing result, but it is not a conventional campaign result. Reviews sit closer to the transaction. They are left by people who have tried to use the service, not by audiences who merely saw an ad. A review uplift therefore suggests that Be.EV was improving the parts of the journey that turn a user into a public recommender: finding a charger, starting a session, understanding payment or credit, and leaving with the sense that the experience was handled.

For growth teams, that distinction is important. A positive review is not the same thing as retention, and the reported review uplift does not prove long-term loyalty by itself. But it does show how product and marketing can share a measurement surface. If the app experience improves and the public review profile improves, the marketing team has a stronger asset for conversion than another awareness message.

Pricing was used to shape demand, not just discount it

Reduced tariffs and off-peak pricing can look like simple promotions from the outside. In a charging network, they can also change behavior. If a network has unused capacity at certain times, pricing can encourage drivers to shift demand. If customers are nervous about cost, clearer or more attractive tariffs reduce the perceived risk of trying a new provider.

The reservation pilot and queue-free guarantee sit in the same family of decisions.[1] They are not just features to list on a landing page. They answer a specific anxiety: “Will I arrive and be stuck waiting?” That kind of promise only works if operations can support it. If it holds, it gives marketing a sharp acquisition message because it removes a real journey risk.

This is the part smaller teams can adapt without pretending they have an infrastructure budget. The lesson is not “discount more.” It is to identify the customer hesitation that blocks usage and then decide whether pricing, availability, booking, onboarding, or reassurance is the cleanest lever. The marketing value comes from making the service easier to choose.

HubSpot and HubStack gave the team a personalization layer

Be.EV’s HubStack and HubSpot integration is a smaller detail than the membership headline, but it is one of the more useful details for working marketers. BusinessDesk identifies the integration as part of Be.EV’s targeted, personalized marketing communications.[1]

That does not need to be inflated into an AI story. The practical value is segmentation and timing. A charging network can speak differently to a first-time user, a frequent local driver, a dormant member, a fleet-adjacent prospect, or someone who mainly uses one hub. Better communications do not replace the network experience, but they can reduce waste: fewer generic blasts, more messages tied to actual behavior or location relevance.

For a six-person team, that matters because attention is the scarcest resource. Personalization is not only about making the customer feel known. It is also about stopping the team from treating every member as if they were at the same stage of adoption.

The M60 campaign worked because it had something specific to amplify

The M60 campaign is the most visible piece of the Be.EV growth story: a multi-channel orbital motorway campaign using social, display, radio, digital out-of-home, and experiential activity on a modest budget. BusinessDesk reports that it delivered an 18% usage uplift.[1]

The temptation is to treat that as the heroic campaign moment. It is more persuasive as a timing decision. By the time Be.EV put the campaign in market, the team had a clearer proposition to put behind the spend: rapid and ultra-rapid charging, reliability, stronger app experience, pricing levers, and a network presence drivers could actually use around the region.

A motorway campaign also has a natural behavioral logic for EV charging. It reaches people when travel, range, stops, and routes are already on their mind. That does not guarantee conversion, and the 18% figure should still be read as a reported uplift rather than a controlled experiment. But the fit between message, context, and service is much cleaner than broad awareness bought for its own sake.

Partnerships helped Be.EV borrow context, not just reach

The Decathlon and Leasing.com partnerships belong in the same system. Be.EV’s Decathlon activity used a multi-media mix across out-of-home, digital, social, and joint promotions around an ultra-rapid charging hub.[1] Leasing.com supported customer acquisition.[1]

The useful point is not that partnerships are automatically efficient. Many are just logo swaps with a press release attached. These partnerships make sense because they place Be.EV near moments where charging relevance is easier to explain: retail dwell time, local trips, vehicle consideration, and ownership decisions.

That is a good filter for smaller brands. A partner is not valuable only because it has a larger audience. It is valuable when it gives the customer a reason to understand the service faster. In Be.EV’s case, the partner context could make the network feel less abstract: a charger at a place the driver already visits, or a charging option connected to the process of choosing a vehicle.

The momentum metrics point in the same direction, with attribution limits

The reported performance indicators cluster around one pattern. Be.EV grew to more than 60,000 members, tripling since January 2023; the M60 campaign delivered an 18% usage uplift; the app and wallet work drove a 25% uplift in positive app and Google reviews; LinkedIn followers increased by 110%; and utilization ran at a double-digit percentage above target.[1]

Those are not interchangeable metrics. Membership growth is adoption. Usage uplift is behavior during or after a campaign period. Review uplift is reputation among people motivated to leave public feedback. LinkedIn follower growth is audience development, likely influenced by employer brand, category interest, partnerships, and visibility. Utilization is closer to commercial performance, but still affected by network footprint, location quality, pricing, and broader EV adoption.

Put together, they are still meaningful. They suggest Be.EV was not only buying impressions. It was increasing use, increasing public proof, and building a communications base while the physical network expanded. That is stronger than a case built on awareness metrics alone.

What growth teams can actually take from van Heel’s Be.EV work

This is not a plug-and-play playbook for every challenger brand. Most startups do not have EV infrastructure, retail charging hubs, or £110 million in institutional backing from an energy investor.[2] They also do not have a category where the customer need is as concrete as “I need this charger to work now.”

The adaptable part is the order of operations. Be.EV’s marketing appears to have started from the parts of the business customers could feel: uptime, availability, price, app experience, and relevant communications. Only then did broader campaigns and partnerships have enough substance to scale the message.

• Find the operational promise customers already care about, then decide whether the business can make it safely.
• Treat service improvements as marketing assets when they reduce real friction, not when they merely sound innovative.
• Use CRM and martech to match communication to behavior, location, and lifecycle stage instead of sending the same message to every user.
• Choose partnerships that create customer context, not just borrowed reach.
• Separate adoption, satisfaction, usage, audience growth, and utilization when reporting results.

For a broader view of van Heel’s career trajectory across media, agency, and infrastructure sectors, see our companion piece on Marie-France van Heel’s marketing career lessons. This case is narrower by design. It looks at what happened when she had to build a marketing function around a service where the customer experience could validate or embarrass the brand every day.

The useful lesson is the attribution caveat

Be.EV’s rise should not be credited to campaigns alone. The network expanded, the category had momentum, the company had serious investment behind it, and most of the detailed results currently come from one profile rather than a stack of independent performance audits. That does not weaken the case. It makes it more useful.

Van Heel’s Be.EV work shows what marketing can do when it is allowed to organize around the parts of the business customers actually experience. If the product experience is reliable enough to market honestly, a small team can use data, personalization, partnerships, and carefully chosen campaigns to make customer satisfaction do more of the brand-building work than budget ever could.

References

1. Monday Profile: Marie-France van Heel, TheBusinessDesk.com
2. Be.EV news page on £110M investment from Octopus Energy Generation, Be.EV
3. Be.EV rapid and ultra-rapid charging network rating claim, Be.EV