167: How Kettle and Fire Built a World-Class Affiliate Program

In today’s episode, we explore how Kettle & Fire went from a couple of guys boiling bones in a pot to closing $8 million dollars in Series A.

I first met Jack Meredith in January when I hosted a Private Intensive here in Austin for him and his team. He was the first employee at Kettle & Fire, and they’ve been on a rocket ship of growth - mostly fueled by affiliate marketing. For most companies, affiliate marketing starts out as exciting opportunity but ends in disappointment. Not so with Kettle & Fire. If you are familiar with the paleo world, you’ll quickly notice they’ve got all the top health influencers and affiliates as supporters. Today, Jack shares the process that led to actually getting those people to support and promote Kettle & Fire. He also shares challenges they've faced as they have scaled, how to think about growing a team, and a framework for thinking about new projects. I had a great time recording this episode and I hope you enjoy it!

Episode Highlights

• 10:31 The first step Jack took to setting up measured growth for Kettle & Fire.
• 12:50 How Kettle & Fire tested the waters of affiliate marketing.
• 15:00 Why Kettle & Fire has seen such success with their affiliate program.
• 22:00 How changing up their email flows and layering in segmentation significantly increased the ROI of Kettle & Fire.
• 24:00 The approach Jack takes to testing new channels and how to tell its time to hire a person to manage it.
• 28:30 The best teams don't have to be in the same room: How the entire staff of Kettle & Fire works remotely.
• 33:10 Why raising a funding series can open up opportunities to test and try new avenues of marketing
• 36:30 A few of the key tools in the Kettle & Fire toolbox that you can use too.

Links and Resources

• Kettle And Fire Careers
• Jack Meredith
• Asana
• Things App
• Media Rails
• Brand Growth Experts
• Foxwell Digital

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Sponsor

This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo. If you’re running an ecommerce business and sending emails to your customers, you should be using Klaviyo. It will help you find out who your best customers are and target them one-to-one to make more money. I’ve been using Klaviyo since they were just two employees. Now they have a team of 150 and are rolling out new features almost weekly. If you aren’t already a customer, head over to www.ecommerceinfluence.com/klaviyo and you’ll get a free trial + priority on-boarding.