DTC852 - Amazon Automation, Prime Day Tips, and Clinique x Cynthia Erivo Collab

Good morning,

Here’s what you’ll find in today’s DTC:

🤖 Don’t Leave Money on the Table!
Be wary about Amazon automations. 

💸 4 Days of Prime Strategies
Sustain sales and outlast your comp. 

📦 Daily Tariff Update
Additional 10% tariffs?  

💄 Clinique Caters To #BeautyTok
The new product expansion stars Cynthia Erivo.  

You’re reading this newsletter along with new subscribers from: Barkuma, Sklar Furnishings, and Moore Fine Foods. 👋

🚀 Pilothouse Took This Brand from $10M to $22M on Amazon. Here’s How.

A sporting goods brand came to Pilothouse with solid traction, but they knew there was more on the table…

In one calendar year, they’d more than doubled revenue ($10.8M → $22.6M) and increased gross profit by 53%. On Amazon alone.

The strategy behind the surge: 👇

✅ Merchandising: Launched new products, bundled SKUs, simplified variations
✅ Promos: Tripled deal volume, with monthly promos across new SKUs
✅ PPC: Refocused budget, launched new campaigns, owned top 5 generic keywords
✅ DSP: Ran Streaming TV ads to convert competitor traffic
✅ Listings and Ops: Upgraded creative, streamlined FBA prep, prevented stockouts

Prime Day is happening right now, but Q4 is still to come…

If you weren’t as ready as you hoped this week or think you could be doing more, don’t make that mistake again.

Now’s the time to get your Amazon strategy dialed. 

🤖 How Hands-Off Amazon Ad Automation Leaves Money on the Table  

Amazon Sponsored Ads are one of the most effective ways to capture high-intent shoppers, but many brands rely entirely on automated platforms, trusting AI-powered bidding to do the heavy lifting. 

But this overreliance can quietly bleed your budget and stunt growth.

The Pilothouse Amazon team shares that the rise of SaaS platforms for Amazon PPC has turned into a billion-dollar industry. 

These tools promise efficiency by optimizing for metrics like ACOS, CPA, and tACOS. 

But without human oversight, they fall short in key areas:

1️⃣ Over-Spending on Branded Keywords

Automated platforms often pump more spend into branded terms simply because they show strong returns on paper. 

But branded clicks are typically less incremental—they cannibalize organic sales you’d likely earn anyway. 

Even with filters, automation misses variations, typos, and ASIN targeting. 

Human managers can more effectively segment branded vs. non-branded traffic and push for true growth.

2️⃣ Too Slow to React

When a keyword is performing, a human can raise bids by 30–50% immediately to scale quickly and gain ranking momentum.

Automation makes incremental adjustments, which takes time and costs you sales.

The same applies when performance tanks due to pricing, stock issues, or competition. Automation lags behind, often taking weeks to course-correct.

3️⃣ Missing Out on New Ad Features

Amazon’s ad platform evolves fast, but automation doesn’t always keep up. 

Sponsored Brand and Sponsored Brand Video ads are often ignored or poorly executed. 

Humans, on the other hand, can tailor creative to keyword segments and optimize for placement performance, an area automation platforms frequently overlook.

So, is automation useless? 

Not at all. 

If you’re selling a commodity in a stable market and want to maintain efficiency, automation can do the job. 

But if you're after growth and market share, it’s not enough.

The best strategy is a hybrid one:

Let automation handle low-level bid adjustments, while real humans focus on scaling winners, optimizing for incrementality, and adapting to market shifts.

Bottom line: If you're relying entirely on automation, your reports may look good but chances are you're leaving sales and market share on the table. Start by reviewing your search term reports and especially placement modifiers (now called bid adjustments in ad console), you might be surprised by what you find.

📦 Your Daily Tariff Check-In

Whether it’s a minor tweak or a major shift, we’ll keep you posted on the latest tariff changes—so you’re always in the know. 

July 7, 2025 update:

• Trump Threatens New Tariffs on Nations Supporting BRICS
  
  • President Trump warns that any country aligning itself with BRICS will be subject to an additional 10% tariff.
    
  • He claims the BRICS organization, whose members include China, Russia and India, is anti-American and there will be no exceptions to this policy.
    
  • The Trump administration clarifies that while there is a July 9 deadline for countries to agree to a trade deal, the tariffs will begin on August 1.

🎧 Amazon Prime Day 2025: How Brands Should Budget, Pivot & Scale Over 4 Days

On this week’s episode of All Killer No Filler, we have Rob & Clifford from Amazon’s Pilothouse team to give us all the last-minute tips to have a successful Prime Day and why using PPC alone isn’t enough.

This year is a bit of an anomaly. Instead of a two-day sale, we have a four-day sale extravaganza, and brands will need to switch up their tactics to boost performance and sustain sales.

Here’s what you need to do:

• Four‑day Prime Day dynamics: Why the extended sales period makes Day 2 so critical.

“With a four-day sales window, this changes things. Slow‑moving brands are actually gonna have time to realize they got it wrong on Day 1 and make changes on Day 2.”

• Be Agile! Brands that can pivot and iterate will emerge as the leaders.
  
• Pace Yourself: Watch your budget closely and learn how to nab big CPC bargains.
  
• Improve Your SEO: Amazon’s two‑part product titles (basics + USPs) are rolling out—optimize now to get SEO priority.‍
• AMC Access Expanding: Sellers can now identify net-new vs. existing buyers and test ROI on upper-funnel ads.‍
• The ROI behind influencer-driven content: How a viral TikTok mention drove ~$100 k in Amazon sales—romancing casual discovery wins.

“We’ve seen influencers drive major growth for Amazon brands. A brand generated $100K in sales from a viral TikTok video. Organic hits go a long way to drive a huge amount of ranking and relevance on Amazon.”

👉 Listen to the full episode with Rob and Clifford here.

Clinique teams up with Wicked star Cynthia Erivo on their latest Nude Honey lip campaign. 

The brand experienced a revival on TikTok this year when its 90s cult classic Black Honey lip tint went viral. 

To capitalize on this interest with younger consumers, they are expanding the product range to include a new shade: Nude Honey.

📊 Is your brand up to par with your competitor’s online stores? Aftersell analyzed 40,000+ ecommerce stores to reveal 2025’s revenue benchmarks—from cart to checkout to post-purchase. See where you stand—download the report now. *

📥 Got a B2B Biz? 

Join dozens of B2B companies finding demand-gen success through our niche community of 150k brand leaders and founders this year. Talk to our team to learn more.

Have you heard our latest podcasts?

• 💡 TWBERP 40: Scale The Ecosystem, Scale The Brand 
• 💰 How RYSE Used Meta Ads To Raise $10M+ In Equity
• 🚀 AKNF 520: How Pilothouse Tests 30+ Creatives Weekly on Meta 
• ❓Ad-venturous 7: Answering Gen Z Questions I Have As A Gen Z 
• 😀 TWBERP 39: How To Keep Your Customers Long Term
• 🚴 Bootstrapping Revel Bikes from Innovation to Acquisition

Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)

DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight and Frances Du. Edited by Eric Dyck.

Please note that items in this newsletter marked with * contain sponsored content.