DTC611: Amazon Prime Day Recap and Learnings

Good morning,

CrowdStrike is doing some damage control after the global IT outage, which affected over 8.5 million Microsoft devices and brought the supply chain to a standstill.

The solution? A $10 gift card to Uber Eats as an apology to their partners for the ‘additional work that the July 19 incident has caused.’

However some people quickly took to X and pointed out their vouchers weren’t working. 🙃

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

⚡ Recapping successful strategies used during Amazon Prime Day to 10x revenue.
🔧 Learn how Levi’s website improvements resulted in a 19% boost in Q2 sales.
👀 And…Meta Ads Manager now shows you when someone makes a Meta Shops assisted purchase vs. a website purchase.

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⚡ How Pilothouse 10x Revenue on Prime Day

The Pilothouse Amazon team smashed Prime Day, with 70% of their clients shattering their all-time revenue records on the platform – with some achieving as much as 10x their typical day’s revenue! 💰

What fueled this epic success?

And what would they tweak if they had a do-over?

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Here’s what you need to know 👇

1️⃣ Pre-Planning

In the lead-up to Prime Day, the Pilothouse team made sure clients had ample inventory and optimized product detail pages (PDPs) to make the most of the massive traffic surge. 📈

These optimizations were not only logistics though, but also included sweeps of ad creative, especially improving hero images to maximize clickthrough rates.

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2️⃣ Deal Structure/Promo Submissions

Amazon’s official “lightning deal” and “best deal” submissions need to be made months ahead of the event – Seller Central’s “Deals” page flashes warnings as these deadlines approach. ⚡

However, only the top-performing products qualify for deals running throughout the two days, with most landing lightning deals.

Lightning deals go live for 12-hour windows, set by Amazon.

⚠️ Be careful, though, as sometimes Amazon can push that window outside of Prime Day altogether!

To get ahead of this, the team scheduled these lightning deals and a Prime exclusive discount for the entire 2-day window, ensuring the coveted “Prime Day Deal” big red badge stayed on the listings for as long as possible.

They typically kept any lightning deals that were within Prime Day(s) and canceled any outside of it.

Pilothouse recommends using this deal combo as it maximizes visibility across deal pages, and nets that big red deal badge. Sale prices, coupons or other promos don’t have the same effect.

The importance of the “deal” itself is still up for debate within the team, as Prime Exclusive discounts seem to have all the same advantages, but without the attached deal fee. But making sure your listings have that big red badge is critically important.

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3️⃣ PPC campaigns

First tip: Ignore Amazon’s bid increase suggestions for Prime Day. Instead, use them to give you an idea of where competitors’ bids might end up.

Top-performing accounts used their past event/deal performance to predict the expected conversion rates (CVR) and cost-per-click numbers (CPC) for their high-spending keywords/targets.

Rather than just a blanket flat percentage increase, they meticulously adjusted bids and placement percentages across campaigns to line up with these numbers.

This strategy paid off big time, ensuring their early Prime Day spend was just right (not too heavy or too light 🐻).

The team also kept an eagle eye on competitors running out of budget by mid/late afternoon. Amazon’s PPC operates on daily budgets, so those not raising their caps enough would max out, leaving prime low-CPC top-of-search placements up for grabs.

Some accounts even utilized Amazon’s new timed budget increase feature to ramp up bids from mid-afternoon into the evening, really cashing in on those cheaper clicks.

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Lastly, as always, the team expected massive data delays and system outages on Prime Day, and the ad console went down for hours on the evening of the first day this year.

Pilothouse ensured budgets and bids were in a comfortable place in case things went down, and adjusted carefully, used tROAS (not ad attributed ROAS), as their guide to ensure efficiency was maintained.

👖Two Website Improvements Levi’s Made To Boost Q2 Sales

Levi’s has been making changes to their site and mobile app, and it’s paying off. 👀

With these improvements, the denim brand boosted sales in Q2 by 19%. In Q2, 47% of sales were from DTC, and the company sees an opportunity for half of its global revenue to come from DTC.

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Here’s how they did it:

1️⃣ Redesign main nav: They redid their main navigation to match how customers shop.

They grouped products by gender first and then by category, which resulted in a cleaner-looking main navigation on the homepage.

Since they are best known for their quality denim, adding key product features like fabric stretch, rise, and leg opening helped with conversions.

They also added more images and ‘walk-on and walk-off’ videos to show the product’s look and fit in a 360-degree view.

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2️⃣ Enhance site speed: To improve their site and mobile app load speed by 40%, Levi only loads the necessary elements first so their website provides a great experience for users.

They’ve also made changes to their website schedule. Instead of doing content updates every three weeks, they’ve moved to twice a week, so there’s more fresh info on the site.

💡 This also helps with their SEO ranking since they are updating more regularly.

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The takeaway?

Continuous improvements to your site and mobile app can help improve user experience and conversions.

By changing its main navigation and improving its site speed, Levi boosted Q2 sales, marking nine consecutive quarters of sales growth.

Levi’s total ecommerce sales are forecasted to be $576.75 million this year, up from $556.11 million last year.

💸 MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

• Jake Paul’s W brand raises $11 million to compete with Axe.
• Alibaba-backed AI startup Baichaun is now valued at $2.8 billion after raising $693 million.
• Wiz walks away from Google’s $23 billion acquisition offer.
• Landing page software company Unbounce merges with Insightly.

🌐 IN THE SOCIAL SPHERE

Meta has made it easier for advertisers to understand how effective their Shop is when it comes to driving conversions.

You can now see a breakdown of ‘Shops-assisted purchases’ and ‘direct website purchases.’ Peek your ad account to see these new columns!

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⚡ QUICK HITS    

📲 Are your current SMS flows not delivering the results you need? Dive into Yotpo’s 2024 report that reveals how segmentation, flow optimization, and regional targeting can boost your SMS-attributed ROI. Get the report here. *

📥 Got a B2B Biz?

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Have you heard our latest podcasts?

• 🍺 Duncan Frew on the Whisky Business and Return of The Rascal
• ⚡ AKNF 423: Optimize Post-Click Experience With Landing Pages
• 🕶️ Parker Godfrey on How Kiaura Went Viral on TikTok Shops
• 😆 AKNF 421: Grow Top Of Funnel With Humor and Controversy
• 🌽 FFUPS founder Sam Tichnor on How He Scaled Snacking
• 💰 AKNF 419: Bidding on Branded Keywords on Google Ads

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

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

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