Alison:
Hey, hey, y’all. Alison here. I wanted to quickly thank you for listening to our podcast. I know you’re about to get a lot of valuable information from it.

But I also wanted to hop in and share with you guys a free SOP, which stands for standard operating procedure. We use this SOP every single day in our agency to authentically grow and engage our audiences on social. It is 1000% free and I’d love for you to have it and use it in your biz as well. So, just go to umaimarketing.com/engage to go download. All right, cheers.

Alison:
Hello everyone. Welcome to Umai Social Circle. Today, Karin and I are talking about Kettle & Fire Bone Broth. We both ordered the Tom Yum Chicken Bone Broth. I’ve been a huge fan of Kettle & Fire for so long but I’ve never actually tried their products. I’ve just been a fan of what they’ve been doing digitally. Have you ever tried them before?

Karin:
Really?

Alison:
Yeah.

Karin:
Yeah. It’s the bone broth I use when I cook.

Alison:
Oh really? Oh wow.

Karin:
I know. They’re local Austin folks. We have some connections. I feel like I would do yoga with the guy at Austin Bouldering Project and he is friends with the Kettle & Fire folks. And Hannah, of Purely Pecans, her cousin is one of the founders, I believe.

Alison:
Yeah.

Karin:
So, few connections, great product, great marketing obviously, if that’s how you know them.

Alison:
Yeah. I just look to them as the thought leaders in a lot of ways.

Karin:
What a compliment.

Alison:
I’m pretty excited to try it. So we both heated up our little Tom Yum bowls. Oh, you have a Pho spoon.

Karin:
I don’t have the Pho spoon. [crosstalk 00:02:21] What are you doing? Oh God.

Alison:
All right.

Karin:
It smells so good. It smells really coconutty.

Alison:
And Tom Yum, I guess is a new flavor, right? A newish flavor?

Karin:
I think it’s one of their newish flavors, but I love it. It’s just like straight bone broth to simmer and sip. So easy.

Alison:
Okay. So you’re saying you use the bone broth when you make other soups or you drink it?

Karin:
So I’ve never done the sipping. I’ve never just sipped it. I’ve always done it when I’m slow roasting meat and it requires some bone broth.

Alison:
Okay. Well, I’m going to try mine because I’m ready.

Karin:
That is so hot.

Alison:
It is coconutty. I love the slurping sounds.

Karin:
It’s a lot more mild than I thought it would be. I thought it was going to be… I thought it was going to have like more of a punch of flavor to be honest, based on the smell. But it’s good.

Alison:
Yeah. I’m getting like a little bit of heat. Are you getting that or am I just making that up in my head?

Karin:
Yeah. Tom Yum is usually a little bit spicy.

Alison:
So, oh, it’s the red curry spice maybe. They’ve got some chilies, but you’re right. You could sip this or you could just use it, the flavor to make something else, I guess.

Karin:
Yeah. Enhance it. Yeah. They say like perfect for sipping as an afternoon pick me up or like as a meal replacement.

So Tom Yum, I always thought of it as just like sour, spicy lemon grass, really forward, and then Tom Kha is the more coconutty. But in this recipe they do organic coconut milk, Thai chilies, ginger, garlic, and coriander as well as obviously the chicken broth. I think it’s good.

Alison:
Yeah. Tom Yum is the soup I always order.

Karin:
Yeah, right?

Alison:
But yeah, it is good.

Karin:
It’s more coconutty than I… I mean, I’m not a Thai Food connoisseur, but it’s more coconutty than I’ve ever tasted before for Tommy Yum. It’s not what I expected.

Alison:
Right. I wish I was a Thai Food connoisseur. But how do you feel… So I feel like a relationship with soup. I have very strong beliefs that soup actually cures you. If you’re having a hangover or I mean, obviously if you’re feeling sick, you drink soup. But if you’re having a sad day, soup makes me feel happy. I mean, what do you think about that?

Karin:
I resonate with that so deeply. Ask anybody who knows me and they’re like, “Give the woman a bowl of Pho.” So, backstory, my mother is full Vietnamese, born and raised, came here after the Vietnam war and I grew up eating… I mean, I used chopsticks before I used a fork and Pho is my happy, happy place. That is like-

Alison:
I mean, I knew you would agree. So I just wanted to get you on this tangent.

Karin:
Well honestly, do you remember that the last meal that we had together before you moved to Vietnam was Pho.

Alison:
Yeah. And Karin makes one of the best Phos I’ve ever had too.

Karin:
So nice. Thank you.

Alison:
You too. But yeah. So Karin’s mom is Vietnamese, so she knows What’s Up. And I lived in Vietnam for a bit and-

Karin:
So she knows What’s Up.

Alison:
I sort of know What’s Up, but I just loved in Vietnam in the morning. It’s 8:00 AM and you just go and sit on the sidewalk and eat Pho for breakfast and it’s 100 degrees already and you’re sweating into your fumble, but it’s something like… It just energizes you. I don’t know. I just love soup.

Karin:
And it’s every corner you walk on. I know that this is Thai, this is a Thai soup, but we’ll run a tangent.

Alison:
You were on a tangent.

Karin:
But any corner you walk on in Vietnam it was like, “Do you want a bowl of Pho?” And it was some lady’s house. I was like, “Yes I want your Pho.”

Alison:
“I want your Pho, yeah.” But similar in Thailand, I know there are street foods. They have a lot of different outside of soups mostly, but yeah. Cold-weather soup is for 100-degree weather, soup is for any of your thoughts and feelings. Let’s just talk about soup for this whole time.

Karin:
Well, taste overall, delicious, a little bit more coconutty than I expected, a little bit more mild in flavor development than I expected but in all reality, it is a bone broth first and foremost, it’s like a chicken bone broth. I think that the Tom Yum is just extra pizzazz that they have. That’s good.

Alison:
So good and good for you. So anyways, that was delicious. I’m going to keep drinking mine, but today we are specifically talking about Kettle & Fire and how they are the leaders I would say, one of the leaders at least at increasing cart value or increasing their AOV, average order value. I mean, just going through the checkout process, I was blown away with all the things that they’re doing. So, we’re going to walk you all through that today. It’s going to be fun.

Karin:
And I, yeah. So this is Alison’s bread and butter. This is how to increase your average order value is so essential for all businesses and when I was going… It’s not something that you’re used to all the time because brands aren’t all utilizing this. So when I was going through the checkout process, I was like, “Oh my gosh. How many upsells am I going to get?” It was actually incredible. So I’m very excited to dive in to this with Alison.

Alison:
Right. And if you don’t ask a user, “Oh, by the way, do you want this?” What might as well ask. So they gave a lot of ask to increase your value. So we’re going to start with their website. So as soon as you go to kettleandfire.com, they have a banner at the very top, which is so easy to do. Any brand should be doing this and it’s just talking about free shipping when you buy six or more cartons. So buying one of these guys, one of these cartons is about $8 and then about $7 for shipping. But if you buy six or more, that’s $50. So already they’re trying to up your cart value from, let’s say like $15 to $50 with that free shipping offer.

Karin:
And when it’s $8 for it, this is a premium product. Not everybody can afford this. Having that $7 shipping is like, “Oh gosh, how do I get rid of it?

Alison:
It’s a turn off.

Karin:
What can I do to get rid of it? And it’s like, okay, well, if I get $50 with this, I’m going to have a lot of dope soup. So I love this one.

Alison:
Right. Yeah. And if-

Karin:
What is a good dollar amount to offer free shipping?

Alison:
It’s going to depend on every brand, but I think there is like a $50 threshold. That is a great price point to start offering. It’s really going to depend on all of your costs for goods sold and everything like that. So I would say it’s brand to brand, but once you find that average order value, try to up it a little bit with your free shipping. All right. So next, when you go to the product page of Kettle & Fire, so when you’re actually going to look at a product like this Tom Yum soup, they give you a bunch of options and they’re laid out really nicely.

Alison:
So, you can say, okay, I want 1-pack for $8 or they give you discounts per carton once you get to the 6-pack, 12-pack, 18-pack. So they’re using psychology to be like, “Oh, well this is a better deal to buy more,” which I really love. And also what I like is when you go there, it’s automatically chosen, the 6-pack is automatically chosen. They’re not trying to push you into the 1-pack. They automatically select the 6-pack for you and that’s a $50 cart value. So another way they’re just increasing their average order value.

Karin:
Yeah. And I love how they lay out all the buying options. It’s the one time purchase, it’s the subscribe and save right next to it and it’s the quantities. It’s the 1-pack, 6-pack, 12-pack, 18-pack. I love that. It’s giving me all of the different price breaks so I can see exactly how much I’m going to be saving, making it real easy.

Alison:
Exactly. Yeah. You feel like you’re getting a deal. And then also, which I think every consumer package goods brand should do this a subscription. Consumer goods obviously, they expire, they get eaten, they get used. Find out what that expiration date is and start a subscription model for your brand, because that’s going to increase your lifetime value of your customer and that, it’s doing the work for you instead of continuing to remarket and asking people to buy again. They’re on a subscription plan and that cash flow is coming in.

Karin:
So for a subscribe and save, what’s like a good discount to provide for a subscription?

Alison:
Like 20% is real nice.

Karin:
Yeah. Okay.

Alison:
Again, it’s going to depend on what you can offer. What does Kettle & Fire do?

Karin:
Fast math is not my forte. I got to do some cross multiplication real quick, but for a one-time purchase without subscription, it’s $47.94 and for a subscribe and save, it’s almost $10 cheaper. So I think that’s 20%, right?

Alison:
Yeah. I’m going to say yes as well, because I’m not going to pull out my calculator right now. I mean, 20%, that’s a great deal. And again, I mean, if you’re really into Keto or making soups like we talked about, that is something that you’re going to want delivered. So, think about that. They do their delivery every 30 to 60 days. And then once you finally go and you select, do you want a 1-pack, a 6-pack? Do you want to subscribe? Then you go through the checkout flow on their site. So, you’ve added the product to cart and now you see a checkout screen and they’re not done yet, not even close. So the checkout process before you purchase, it has a little, like a gift bar and it’s kind of gamifying buying, which is really awesome. And it’s saying, “Add five more cartons to unlock the next prize,” which excites you. You’re like, “What is the prize?”

Karin:
“Give me the prize.”

Alison:
Yeah, “Give me the prize.” So it has that on the checkout before buying. It also has a subscribe to save 20%. Oh, 20% Karin, good math.

Karin:
That’s nice.

Alison:
Subscribed to take 20% off on your future delivery. So you can click there or there and then even under the product that you have selected, it also says, “Your order goes great with Butter Chicken Keto Broth.” So it has three different ways to increase your order value before you even buy.

Karin:
And that’s in the checkout. So just to repeat that, it is a reminder to subscribe and save. It’s a reminder to add more cartons, to unlock a prize. They don’t even tell you what the prize is, but I want to know. And then the third is a recommendation to your order, to order directly in there. That is so crazy. And I am on the checkout page right now too, just testing, and it’s telling me to add a 2-pack of beef and chicken that’s on sale. Don’t mind if I do

Alison:
That’s right. So and it’s not overly done. I think it’s pretty simplified. It does kind of… When everyone says, get them to check out and then upsell them, but I like how they do it in a way that’s gamified number one, giving you really good offers, 20% off, or like you said, that product was on sale. So, there is a right way to do this I think and Kettle & Fire did it right.

Karin:
Yeah. It’s not obnoxious.

Alison:
Right. Okay. So then you buy and you immediately get upsold. So they have your credit card information. You have purchased whatever you ended up purchasing, but they say, hold up. There’s another offer and it’s about to expire. So they play on the scarcity thing here. And looking at this upsell page, it says, “Say yes to the best. Your body will thank you. Last offer. Upgrade to six more cartons of our fastest selling classic bone broths at a price better than any store sales.” So they’re giving you 20% off, six cartons of, excuse me, of their fastest selling classic bone broths.

Karin:
That’s after you press purchase, right?

Alison:
That’s after you press purchase. That’s their upsell and you don’t have to enter any information again. All you have to say is, “Yes, send me more,” or “No, thank you.” It’s not heavily advertised. You’re adding $41 to your cart. It’s just like, “Do you want this or not?” It does have the price on there. It does say 20% off, but you don’t have to reenter any information. It’s just like, “Yeah, I’ll take that too.”

Karin:
Yeah. So what would be your checklist for an upsell page like this after purchase? What needs to be on that page?

Alison:
So a checklist for a really great upsell, you obviously need to lay out visually what that person is going to receive. They did a really nice job of stacking these cartons. So it looks like, wow, I’m getting like all this stuff. They have the 20% off or the percentage off front and center. There is a price on there but it’s not all about you’re adding $40 to your cart. It’s more kind of a psychology like, “Last offer. Upgrade your order. It’s only available on this screen. Hurry. It expires soon.” They’re playing very hard on scarcity and the buttons are super simple, “Yes. Send me more. No, thank you.” You could even go a little deeper and say, “No, I don’t want to treat my body well,” do something like that.

Alison:
But great job on this. I did only get one upsell offer, which some people go very intense with their upsells and downsells. So a lot of people go, they do an upsell after you buy, if you say no, then they say, okay, here’s another offer and it’s even less expensive or even a sweeter deal to try to get that cart value up. I think Kettle & Fire has maybe enough going on that they don’t need to annoy you that much. They checkout [inaudible 00:19:25]

Karin:
So, twist, I got more than one.

Alison:
Oh, did you?

Karin:
I got more than one upsell page, yeah. I got, I want to say three. I want to say that I kept clicking, “No, thank you,” maybe about three times.

Alison:
Okay. So that’s usually what happens with people. If you say no to their first offer, it gets sweeter and sweeter and sweeter.

Karin:
Do you recommend that?

Alison:
I mean, what I think is happening here is I think that they’re A/B testing what one upsell looks like versus entire flow upsells downsells. And that’s a very difficult thing to test because that’s a lifetime value of a customer. A really long upsell downsell could turn off a potential long-term customer. So, that’s what I think is happening. We don’t know for sure. I think it’s worth the test.

Karin:
That makes sense, I like that.

Alison:
All right. So we’re moving on. So, if you get a Kettle & Fire ad as of right now, they are pushing 30% off their ads. But when you click on the ad, you’re not taken to their kettleandfire.com website. You’re taken to offers. kettleandfire.com, which is their sales page. They are only running this one sales page as of right now, as of today. And it is not a beautiful page, but it is a copy heavy, long form sales page, which reads more news like I guess, I would say. It’s heavy and copy. It’s very long. By the time you get to the bottom, you should be sold. It’s full of testimonials. It’s full of PR. It’s full of a lot. If you’re not a reader, I’m not a reader. I’m pretty visual. They do have buttons to go ahead and add to cart throughout that sales page. So you don’t have to get to the bottom.

Karin:
This sales page is nuts, and we’ll leave this in the podcast notes for you guys to click through and take a look, but I have personally never seen a landing page this long in my life, but again, this is not my expertise. This is Alison’s. Is this normal?

Alison:
Yes, this is normal.

Karin:
Oh my gosh.

Alison:
If you’re strong in copy or have a copywriter, long form sales pages like these work amazingly. I’m not as great at this psychology of what it all takes to write this long of a sales page, and so, I use short form sales pages generally, and they’re a little more visually appealing, but long form sales pages work tremendously and I would love to know who they’re targeting with these too.

Karin:
This sales page is absolutely nuts. And so, what do you think at the top of the fold when you first click into it, the only photo that I see is a scale, someone stepping on a scale and the headline is, “Drink this every morning and lose weight without struggles.” So they’re obviously targeting those weight management folks. So there’s no mention of the product. There’s no visual of the product. So what’s that all about?

Alison:
Right. Like I was saying, this reads to me like a news article.

Karin:
Okay.

Alison:
So, which works so well and like you said, I think that they’re targeting people who are interested in losing weight or managing their weight and for some reason, I’m thinking that this might be an older demographic as well, because a lot of the imagery that they’re using, it trends a little older and this type of long point sales page does work for older demographics who are more maybe likely to read something like this. It’s like a news piece.

Karin:
Yeah. And the caption of this ad is, “Keto sucks,” in caps Yeah, I said it. Eating Keto every single day is a huge pain in the “bedonkadonk.” So yeah, it’s targeting that dieter. Is that the wrong term? But it is the dieter.

Alison:
Which is maybe everyone.

Karin:
Right. And can you explain a little bit on how tough it is to advertise and the nuances that are needed when you advertise like a weight loss, weight management product?

Alison:
There’s a lot of things that you cannot say or show with social ads. One of them being like a fit body that’s a little too much. You can’t really talk about dieter weight loss. That could get you flagged by Facebook. So when we talk about these types of things, we say weight management, like Karin said. But, once you get to your sales page, there’s a little more leeway. If you have a pixel on your sales page, Facebook will crawl and look at this most likely, but you can do a little bit more here and once you guys look at this page, you’ll see there’s a lot on here talking about weight loss.

Karin:
Can you explain a little bit about the importance of what a pixel is, first of all, like a 40-foot view and then how important it is to have it on your sales page?

Alison:
Yeah. So the Facebook pixel is basically a snippet of code that you install on your website or any pages on your website and what it does is it tracks people that visit your page and that allows you to remarket to them. It also grabs a lot of information about their demographic. Are they male, female? What’s their age? And it also knows what they’re interested in based on what they’re interacting with on the web. So it’s very important to have this installed. They have theirs installed on their sales page so that they can remarket to people that didn’t maybe purchase.

Alison:
A lot of people if they do have a sales page that maybe wouldn’t get approved by Facebook, leave it off. I’m not sure I really agree with that. I would try to stick to the Facebook standards and have a sales page that Facebook likes. And then if you have it, if you have a pixel on that sales page, you’ll be able to correctly view your conversion, your cost per purchase, because it is tracking who bought and how much they bought on that page.

Alison:
So moving down on the page, once you click, okay, give me this offer, I am sold, it takes you to a product pricing tier, which I love. I wish I could tell you guys more about the psychology behind this, but what it does is it has their first offer at the very top and then three less ideal offers below. So that again, you’re looking at the first offer and that’s the sweetest deal and that’s when comparing to the other lesser offers, you’re going to choose that most likely. So the main offer is 30% off, 14 cartons was originally $132, now $93. And they make that very clear, the dollar amount that you’re saving, which is nice.

Alison:
And I will say another thing that they do is they list that they use secure checkout, money back guarantee and they’ll also give you a free guide once you buy. So they’re just making you feel good about your purchase and giving you an extra little bonus on top of it. Right. So, I mean, when you think about it, it’s pretty freaking cool. You’re running an ad for new folks who have never heard about you. You’re sending them to a page where the main offer is $93.

Alison:
Not a lot of first-time buyers are going to spend that much if they go directly to your main website. They’re probably going to spend around $25, $30, what have you. But when you send them to a dedicated sales page that they can’t really click out of, they can’t look at the menu or anything like that they’re hyper-focused on the copy that you have specifically written talking to them about their weight management or whatnot that they’re sold by the end and they’re going to spend $93 instead of what, $40 or whatever. So, another great way to increase that cart value.

Karin:
So this ad that you pulled from that leads to this sales page, this is retargeting or prospecting, or can we tell?

Alison:
I think that this is prospecting. So I didn’t get targeted for this ad. I found it in the Facebook ads library. So I wasn’t able to see any of the UTMs that would generally usually tell me who they’re targeting. I’m thinking that this is a prospecting campaign though.

Karin:
And prospecting means completely cold audience. They have never heard of the brand. Well, you don’t think they have, because there is no signs on the internet. Like they haven’t liked the Facebook page, they haven’t been to the website. So that is a cold prospecting audience.

Alison:
Yes. But correct me if I’m wrong, Kettle & Fire. It could be remarketing. You never know. I think it’s a great cold sales page though, for prospecting. All right. We’re not done yet.

Karin:
Take a break.

Alison:
Yeah. Okay. And also just thinking about what Karin and I did, we literally ordered at about the same time. So if you’re interested in emulating a brand that you love, go in and maybe have a friend do it with you and buy it, just buy it. This was $8. Okay. Just buy it and we now can see the back end of what they’re doing and what they’re testing, which is so cool. The same day that we ordered our bone broth, maybe like within an hour or something, I immediately got a 10% off coupon if I order again in 24 hours. Did you get that?

Karin:
Well, I don’t want to say now. So I got to take a look. Oh yeah, yap. I got an email where he’s in a romper. If you didn’t know what a man romper was until reading this email, you’re welcome. Bringing in that humorous element, the human element. And then at the bottom copy and paste this code. I’m not telling you because I want to use it and get 10% off.

Alison:
Well, they played scarcity again. It says in the next 24 hours. So maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. But, I mean, so once someone buys, they’re more apt to buy again. I think we all know that, but to get them to buy again in 24 hours, that’s pretty cool.

Karin:
I wonder what the percentage of success is on that?

Alison:
Yeah. I mean 10% off. So that same day email. Two days after ordering, we got another friendly indoctrination email letting us know more about the brand and whatnot, but it ended with, to join our referral program. We got that two days and six days after pushing a referral program. So basically getting the customer to work for you. That is what a referral program is. And they have created a really great community. Most people know who they are. Like Karin said, they’ve got a great human element, a great brand. So I’m thinking a lot of people probably joined this referral program and they can earn rewards and they can share their referral link with others to get more… They get a $10 coupon. So yeah. Make the customer work for you basically.

Alison:
And that is all. I’m sure there’s so much more, but that is our experience going through the Kettle & Fire checkout flow, going to their website, getting their emails. So, job well done.

Karin:
Right. And if you look at all of these things that they’re doing and doing well, it’s like, you do not see a lot of consumer goods brands pulling these levers and seemingly pretty simple, right? It’s just a lot of content that you have to create on the back end.

Alison:
Yeah. And that’s a great point. So, thinking about what you could walk away with from this that’s super, that takes five minutes maybe, put a banner immediately on your website that offers free shipping if you can, after they get to a certain amount spent. What else can… Set up an email automation sequence that after they purchase, offer them something else as you indoctrinate them.

Karin:
Yeah. We didn’t talk about this, but I’m sure I’m opening incognito right now, but there is probably a pop-up that-

Alison:
Yeah. Add a pop-up to your website that gives them-

Karin:
Collects emails.

Alison:
Yeah. That gives them 10% off, collects their email address. The things in the cart like the add more cartons to unlock a gift, that most likely you’ll need an app or a developer to do something like that, but look into it. Why not? I mean, if an app costs $8 but your average order of value increases by 20%, that is extremely worth it.

Karin:
Off the top of your head. Do you have any recommendations on your favorite software for building those sales pages or upsell pages?

Alison:
Yeah. For sales pages, I generally use ClickFunnels, but there’s also like Shogun integrates really well with Shopify. There’s Instapages, Leadpages. For the upsell downsell funnels, you can also use ClickFunnels for that. It’s just a little more difficult to integrate, but I highly recommend CartHook for upsells and downsells and I don’t know the pricing off the top of my head, but that is something to look into easily integrates with Shopify and what happens is after someone buys a product from your store, after you collect their information, their credit card, then you can say, “Hey, do you want this extra thing?” “No.” “Okay. Do you want this other extra thing?” “Yes,” and increase that order value pretty easily.

Karin:
Awesome. And we can include all of the links to those recommended software in the notes as well.

Alison:
Definitely. Whew! That was a lot. Kettle & Fire wore me out.

Karin:
That was a lot, but we started with the Tom Yum chicken and I want to try more of their flavored broth instead of just getting the plain old beef broth like I’ve been getting. I’m interested.

Alison:
Oh yeah. I mean, this is like a great little snack though, right? I might start subscribing and saving.

Karin:
Oho! She’s going to subscribe and save. You got in.

Alison:
You got me. You got me. Well, I had a really great time drinking this.

Karin:
Yeah, me too.

Alison:
And talking through it.

Karin:
Yeah. And thank you, Alison, for dropping the knowledge on increasing average order value and how Kettle & Fire is doing an amazing job and we hope to come back soon with more tidbits, marketing tidbits.

Alison:
That’s right.

Karin:
Thank you guys for joining us for the Umai Social Circle. We had such a great time talking about Kettle & Fire and increasing average order value and we can’t wait to talk to you again in a couple of weeks to discuss more consumer packaged goods marketing tips.

Alison:
Umai Social Circle is a CPG agency driven podcast based out of Austin, Texas. We’re excited to share more behind the scene insights chats with industry leaders and whatever else we learn along the way. Follow us on Instagram @umaimarketing or check out our website umaimarketing.com. Catch you back here soon.