DTC923: Calculate Creative Volume, Audit Email Program, and Blue Apron AI Slop

Hey! 👋 It’s Eric, President of DTC and host of the DTC Podcast.

I’ll be heading to League of Originals in LA on November 7th, joining 750+ operators from brands like Dr. Squatch, Caraway, Brightland, and more.

Want in? We scored an exclusive discount code. You’ll find the code and the link to the event in the ⚡ Quick Hits section of today’s newsletter. See you there! 🎟️

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

🤔 How Much Q4 Ad Content Do You Need?
Pilothouse shares this proven approach to help with planning.

🚀 Audit Your Email Program
Tips on how to optimize your list before BFCM.

💀 Fastest Way To Kill A Brand
How AI slop can impact customer trust.

You’re reading this newsletter along with new subscribers from: Fresh Air, Beauty Pie, and Nutrafol. 👋

📉 Your 8x ROAS Campaign Might Actually Be Draining Your Profit. Here’s How To Stop Wasting Spend

Your dashboards might be glowing. ROAS up, CPAs down, conversions climbing. But profit’s flat and you’re wondering what’s broken. 😬

🤨 Most platforms take credit for sales that would’ve happened anyway. Attribution says, “Someone saw an ad and then bought.”
Incrementality asks, “What if they never saw that ad?”

👏 The test is simple:
Turn ads off in a few regions and watch what happens to Shopify revenue there.

• If sales drop, those ads were driving new demand.
• If nothing changes, you just found your wasted spend.

💸 Most incrementality tools charge $12K/month for that insight. Stella is just $12K/year (or $2K/month if you don't want to commit)

Brands like PopSockets, Tushy, and Plunge use it to find which 30–40% of “winning” campaigns are dead weight.

👉 See what’s actually driving growth.

💰 How Much Creative Do You Need For Q4?

Q4 can be overwhelming. Especially when planning content for Meta ads. 😵‍💫 You want to be prepared, but how much content do you actually need?

Here’s a valuable tip from Pilothouse on how to estimate the content you’ll need for your ad account this Q4, based on your ad spend and target CPA.

Keep in mind this is a rough estimate. Naturally, some ads will receive more spend than others, and the % of spend allocated to testing can vary based on the success of each test.

Here’s how it works: 👇

Pilothouse uses an approach based on ad spend and target CPA to determine the potential for testing, aiming to spend 4x the target CPA on each asset.

From there, it’s simple to break out the number of assets into pillars, for example:

• Product Drops
• Sale
• Evergreen

This helps to make it super clear how many resources to dedicate to each initiative.

(Of course, there’s flexibility with this and different variables for each business, but this is a good starting point if you’re feeling a little lost!)

Access the free sheet here to duplicate and customize: 👇

✨ Pilothouse x DTC | Creative Volume Calculation ✨

If you’re feeling swamped with creative needs, the Pilothouse team has limited slots left for Q4.

Contact them today to find out how they can help scale your brand through Q4 and into 2026.

🚨 Your Final Window to Recalibrate Before Black Friday. Secure Your Seat at the Live Roundtable Now.

Margins are shrinking. Playbooks are failing. 2025 has been far from usual...

AI, taxes, and tariffs are rewriting everything you thought you knew.

On Wednesday, October 22 (10am PST / 1pm EST), DTC, Swap Commerce, and 3.1 Phillip Lim are coming together for a live roundtable on how top brands are surviving (AND thriving) through BFCM and Beyond.

You’ve got one last shot to hear it before the biggest weekend of the year.

Can’t make it live? Register anyway and get the full replay before Black Friday.

🎧 Talk Turkey: The Q4 Email Gut Check

Before you hit “send” on that next email campaign, here’s a hard truth:

Most email programs look like they’re working, but they’re not even landing in real inboxes.

Jordan Gordon from Pilothouse shares that Apple Privacy Opens, bot clicks, and lazy list management have made traditional metrics almost meaningless.

If you’re not auditing your program before Q4, you’re jeopardizing the most important revenue season.

Here are 5 tactical ways to audit your email performance and make sure your program is ready to deliver.

1. Audit performance by inbox provider

Check open and click rates for Gmail, iCloud, Outlook, and others to see where deliverability drops off.

2. Run an engagement ladder test

Don’t look at your audience as a whole. Split it by engagement recency:

• 0–30 days active
• 31–60 days
• 61–90 days
• 90+ days

Send a simple campaign to each group and compare open and click rates.

📉 If your engagement falls off a cliff after 30 days, you’ve got a deliverability problem.

3. Check your inbox placement by ISP

Not all inboxes are created equal. Gmail, iCloud, and Outlook each have their own spam filters.

🔧 Use tools like Inbox Monster or GlockApps to see if your emails are landing in inbox vs. promotions vs. spam.

4. Audit your sending frequency

Too many brands double their send frequency going into Q4 and destroy deliverability.

Rule of thumb:

If you’re adding more sends, shrink your send audience.
If you’re expanding your audience, reduce frequency.

🧪 Change one variable at a time otherwise you’ll never know what broke.

5. Prune your list aggressively

Your list size is a vanity metric.

Inactive contacts don’t buy. They just hurt your sender reputation.

Remove or suppress anyone who hasn’t clicked in 90 days (unless they’ve purchased recently).

👉 Listen to the full episode with Jordan here.

Seeing a wave of AI slop?

AI can speed up creative production, but without human oversight, the result is low-quality creatives.

Take the example below, recently shared on socials: sloppy design, typo-filled copy, and a clear lack of review.

Brands that lean too heavily on automation without quality control risk damaging credibility and losing audience trust.

And with Black Friday approaching, that risk multiplies.

Your creative will compete against thousands of others and if your ads look careless or AI-generated, you’ll lose attention before your offer even lands.

Have you spotted any AI slop on your feeds? Share your ad finds with us by replying back to the newsletter.

🎟️ This is where the most influential brands will be. Join DTC and 750+ attendees for 20+ panels and workshops and 50+ guest speakers at League of Originals in LA on November 7th. Get your ticket and use code DTC25GA at checkout for 25% off!

📥 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?

• 🌿 WYNX Engineered Explosive Growth In a Regulated Environment
• 🔍 AKNF 550: Crown Affair’s Ritual-Driven Growth Strategy
• ⭐ Ad-venturous 23: Brand Differentiation v.s. Alienation
• 🏆 TWBERP 54: Win Black Friday (and Keep Your Rep Intact)
• 🧠 The Future of Unified Commerce with Shopify’s Head of Retail
• 🏌️ AKNF 548: Strategic Levers to Build Meta Momentum in Q4

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.