DTC861: Prime Day Recap, UGC, CGC, and EGC, and Messaging Problems

Good morning, 

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

💰 Amazon Prime 2025 Recap
Key learnings from this year’s 4-day event.

🤔 UGC vs. CGC vs. EGC: What Actually Drives Growth?
How each content type helps build your brand.

🚨 Daily Tariff Update
How tariffs impact the EU.

💬 Do You Have A Messaging Problem?Fix your ad copy using the 3Ps.  

You’re reading this newsletter along with new subscribers from: Daydream Adventures, BeMe Wellness, and Bravissimo. 👋

🤔 What’s Your Plan if the Next Hire Doesn’t Click?

You know how this goes. Hiring takes time, and time is the one thing you don’t have heading into Q4.

If you're still thinking about in-house onboarding or hoping your strategy comes together, you're already behind. 

At Pilothouse, we're deep in it already - testing, optimizing, and scaling for 125+ brands across paid social, email, Amazon, and search. 📈

Full omnichannel execution. $750M+ in direct client revenue driven. 

We’ve got a few spots open. Not for everyone, just for brands ready to move fast and grow.

If that’s you, let’s talk.

👉 Book a call with our partnerships team

💰 Prime Day 2025 Recap: A Slower Burn, Still A Big Opportunity 

Amazon shook things up this year by expanding Prime Day 2025 to a four-day event, up from the usual two.

That change shaped how consumers shopped and how brands needed to show up.

Across Pilothouse-managed brands, Prime Day 2025 delivered solid results, with a 70% increase in revenue compared to 2024.

However, the performance story wasn’t as straightforward as it had been in past years.

This year’s Prime event felt more like a slow, controlled burn than two days of back-to-back chaos. 

Here’s what the Pilothouse Amazon team saw in terms of pacing and shopping behavior: 

• Day 1:
  
  • CPCs were up year-over-year, but conversion rates didn’t match.
    
  • Aggressive spend early in the day didn’t pay off. Brands needed to adjust midday to maintain efficiency.
  • Evening volume stayed flat, with less urgency than usual.
• Days 2 and 3:
  
  • Revenue pacing declined each day.
  • Shoppers showed less urgency to check out, likely due to having more time to consider purchases.
• Day 4:
  
  • Started similar to Day 3, closed out stronger but without the typical end-of-day spike we’ve come to expect.
    
  • Overall, Day 4 finished above Day 2 but still felt subdued compared to past Prime Day finales.

Key Lessons for Amazon Sellers

• Prime Day success was uneven: Brands that ran strong Prime promos in both 2024 and 2025 saw flat YoY growth (-2%) but still worth noting that they still saw a significant boost to revenue on Prime Day over a typical July day. Growth primarily came from emerging or fast-scaling brands.
• Consistency beats aggression: Steady spend correlated to daily attributed return worked better than over-investing for delayed conversions.
• Less impulse shopping: With an extended sale window, shoppers took longer to decide, meaning retargeting and clear messaging were key, and brands couldn’t rely solely on their Prime Day discounts.
• Day 1 mattered most! Despite the longer event, Day 1 drove the bulk of revenue volume for Pilothouse-managed brands.
  

Prime Day 2025 proved that bigger events don’t always mean faster wins.

For Amazon sellers, success came down to steady execution, clear offers, and smart pacing across all four days. 

As the landscape shifts, adapting strategy to match evolving shopper behavior is key.

🚨 600+ DTC Operators Weigh In on Q4 Planning

The survey results are in…

And they paint a clear picture of how brands are handling 2025’s uncertainty.

• Only 15.41% have a locked-in Q4 plan. 
• Less than 7% are highly confident in their forecasts. 
• Most are still making margin-saving decisions on the fly.

The full, ungated results are live (and free). 👇

Explore the data, benchmark your strategy, and plan with more confidence.

Thanks to Keen for their additional report insights on what operators are seeing, saying, and doing to prep for Q4!

*In collaboration with Keen

📦 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 18, 2025 update:

• German Leaders Sound Alarm Over U.S. 30% Tariffs on the EU
  
  • German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil, speaking at the G20 finance meeting in Durban, called for a swift end to the escalating tariff tensions.
    
  • He emphasized that the proposed 30% U.S. tariff on EU imports, set to start August 1, would severely impact Europe’s export-driven economies—especially Germany.

🎧 The Big Three: UGC, CGC, and EGC—How to Use Each for Growth 

‍In this episode of Adventurous, Aves from Pilothouse breaks down the three key types of creator content that every DTC brand needs to understand: User Generated Content (UGC), Creator Generated Content (CGC), and Employee Generated Content (EGC).

She shares how each format works, when to use them, and why knowing the difference is critical for building both trust and scale.

In this episode, we dive into:

• The real difference between UGC, CGC, and EGC: Learn why using them interchangeably is a common (and costly) mistake.

  "UGC is about joy. CGC is about strategy. EGC is about scale."

• Foster real community to unlock UGC: Why brands that invest in authentic customer experiences get better UGC (and why it’s not just about throwing discount codes at people).
  
  "If your product is good enough, people will show up with content you’d never expect."
  
  
• Rise of Employee Generated Content (EGC): We look at how Coach used sales associates’ TikToks to create real impact.
  
  "If someone’s willing to put their name on your brand, and they don’t own the company, that’s powerful."
  

👉 Listen to the full episode with Avery here.

🤖 Is ChatGPT suggesting your products to users? CommerceGPT provides sharp, tactical tips to help your brand stay relevant in the new era of AI-driven shopping. Subscribe for free here. *

Most businesses don’t have a product problem, they have a messaging problem. 

If the problem solved isn’t clear, the promise isn’t compelling, or the proof isn’t there, customers simply won’t buy. 

So, cut vague product copy and lead with clear, outcome-driven language.

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📥 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 42: Optimizing for Profit, Not Just Conversion Rate
• 🌱 Three Ships System for Trust-Driven Brand Growth 
• 🧠 AKNF 524: The Retention Blueprint for 4 Customer Cohort Types 
• 🫐 Ad-venturous 10: A Little Lad That Loves Berries and Cream?
• ❌ TWBERP 41: List Growth, Spam Flags, and What Actually Works
• 🚴 Re-acquisition Story: Revel Bikes Founder Buys Back Brand 

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.