DTC Podcast

DTC Newsletter and Podcast
  • 4.5 (36)
  • Marketing
  • Updated Daily

Weekly discussions between disruptive direct to consumer ecommerce brands and our amazing team about marketing, funnels, and everything scaling related. Subscribe to our newsletter for highlights and step by step tactical insights 👉🏻 📦 directtoconsumer.co

  1. 1d ago

    Ep 630: "The Best Ads Say Nothing" | Ari Murray, Chief Digital Officer at Salt & Stone

    Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Ari Murray runs DTC, Amazon and customer experience at Salt & Stone. She came from Sharma Brands, and before that worked on influencer and celebrity brands including a Kardashian line and Halsey's beauty brand. She started as a customer service agent. In this episode she breaks down why the old brand-versus-performance argument is collapsing. Customers now shop with a chatbot in the loop. Those bots read your reviews, your Reddit threads, and your actual customer experience. You cannot hack that, which means product quality and brand protection have become growth levers. She also gets specific on creative: what "socially native" really means, why she is chasing ads that don't look like ads, and the protein powder ad where the product is the seventh ingredient in someone's recipe. For: DTC founders, growth leads, creative strategists, retention and CRO teams, brand marketers. In this episode: Why she left the agency side for Salt & StoneWhy Salt & Stone has never acted like a deodorant brandAI visibility, Reddit indexing, and why you can't hide from real customer feedbackThe collapse of the middle of the funnel in agentic shoppingWhy she doesn't feel a desperate need to move spend out of MetaHow they actually measure incrementality (holdouts, Status, Northbeam, Triple Whale, hunting for an MMM)Socially native creative, and why splitting a hook five ways is played outWhy a brand with boundaries makes better adsWhat makes a brand feel cheapWhat makes a brand deserve to be iconic Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter

    Ep 630: "The Best Ads Say Nothing" | Ari Murray, Chief Digital Officer at Salt & Stone

  2. 4d ago

    Ep 629: 85% of Your Email Revenue Comes From One Segment (And You're Ignoring It)

    Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Jordan Gordon runs CRO and retention at Pilothouse and hosts TWBERP, The World's Best Email and Retention Podcast. He has audited somewhere in the range of 400 to 500 brands and been inside more Klaviyo accounts than almost anyone in DTC. In this All Killer No Filler episode he breaks down why most email programs are structurally backwards. 85% of campaign revenue comes from people who have visited your site recently, and yet most campaigns are sent to anyone who opened an email in the last 180 days. You are risking your entire sending reputation to chase the 15%. Then he gets to the good part: a flow he says he has basically never seen a brand run, and why it is the most valuable one you can build. For: ecommerce founders, retention leads, email marketers, CRO teams, agency operators. In this episode: Why free traffic is the "forever job" and paid is the spikeWhy small counts hide truths (nobody hits fold 10, but the people who do are your buyers)The 85/15 rule of campaign revenueHow brands blow up a Klaviyo account: too many campaigns, too-broad segments, and the sunset flow that sends to ten years of dead addresses in one goWhy recent repeat buyers are whales you should not over-messageCampaigns are zero-intent messages, so they can only ever be about newness or offersThe essentials core flow: triggered by site visit, not lifecycle, selling your hero SKU to people who came for something elseSending less in a margin-compressed Q4 Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF629 Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter

    Ep 629: 85% of Your Email Revenue Comes From One Segment (And You're Ignoring It)

  3. 6d ago

    Bonus: The CTV Blueprint for DTC Brands: Build in Summer, Convert in Q4 (Paramount Ads Manager)

    Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Most DTC brands put the bulk of their paid budget where attention is thinnest. Viewers spend about 99 minutes per session on Connected TV and 8 minutes per session on social, yet only 9% of standard marketing budgets go to CTV. This episode is about closing that gap on CTV with the same measurement & targeting you get on social (starting at $7 CPMs!) Emily Huo built ad businesses at X (Twitter), Reddit, and Spotify, and now runs SMB advertising at Paramount. She walks through how a DTC brand actually gets onto Survivor, Landman, or RuPaul's Drag Race, what to spend, and how to know if it worked. Sign up for Paramount Ads Manager today. Get your brand on TV tomorrow. This episode, we get into: The seasonal play: build awareness over the summer, retarget in the fall, convert in Q4Why you start broad on targeting and let the data tell you who is really watching, not the persona you imported from MetaThe pixel setup that ties a TV impression to a site visit, a lead, or a purchaseThe geo holdout test for measuring halo effect with no third-party toolsWhy a 30-second unskippable spot changes how you tell a brand story when you are not a household name yetBudgeting: carve out 10% as experimental, expect a three-month ramp, scale from there Who this is for: DTC founders and growth marketers who have maxed out social, anyone planning Q4 now, and operators curious whether CTV is real or just a hot label. What to steal: the install-pixel-now, build-in-summer, convert-in-Q4 sequence, and the broad-then-narrow targeting approach. Timestamps: 0:00 Emily Huo's Journey to Paramount 3:10 Why CTV Is Growing So Fast 8:07 CTV Targeting vs Meta Ads 12:14 CTV Budget & Testing Strategy 23:18 Measuring the Halo Effect Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video

    Bonus: The CTV Blueprint for DTC Brands: Build in Summer, Convert in Q4 (Paramount Ads Manager)

  4. Jul 13

    Ep 628: How Unbound Merino Bootstrapped to Nine Figures Selling $90 T-Shirts

    Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Dan bootstrapped Unbound Merino from a Reddit-fueled obsession with merino wool into a brand approaching nine figures in lifetime revenue, with a warehouse sale, a growing women's line, and zero outside funding. In his second appearance on the DTC Podcast, the Unbound co-founder gets specific about what actually moved the business over the last three years, why he almost lost 80% of his sales in a single day, and why he now cares more about the product and the friendships than any growth hack. What you'll learn: Why the ads Dan loves flop and the cringe ones scale, and how he made peace with itThe creative volume system that unlocked Meta scaling in 2023, and why Meta stopped working the same wayHow word of mouth (15% of new customers) and a 50/50 women's line changed the growth modelThe de minimis and tariff shock that nearly ended the company, and the scramble to open a Dallas warehouse before Liberation DayHow Unbound uses a custom AI wired into Shopify, its ERP, Asana, Slack, and Drive to triangulate why products get returnedWhy 5% of sales now come from ChatGPT and Claude, and what that means for discovery Who this is for: bootstrapped founders, DTC operators, and anyone selling a premium product who is tired of renting customers from Meta. What to steal: the reorder-first mindset, the creative iteration loop, and the tariff survival playbook. Timestamps: 00:00 Building a $90M travel apparel brand 02:12 Scaling Meta with creative volume 08:00 Why product quality beats acquisition tactics 16:00 How tariffs nearly killed the business 32:05 AI as a business advisor and data analyst Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video

    Ep 628: How Unbound Merino Bootstrapped to Nine Figures Selling $90 T-Shirts

  5. Jul 10

    Ep 627: Why Nick Shackelford's Personal Brand Saved His Cash Flow | Agency Confidential Preview

    Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup This week on All Killer No Filler, we're giving you a preview of Agency Confidential, the new podcast from our co-founder Jeff, and this episode's is a truly killer. Jeff sits down with Nick Shackelford, who's everywhere in DTC. Three agencies (Structured, Konstant, Lucid), an events business, and a decade of showing up on every feed, stage, and group chat. Jeff calls him the Coca-Cola of ecommerce. Eric calls him the Drake of DTC. But halfway through, Nick stops and shares something he says he's never told publicly. Last July, cash got tight and he had to bridge the gap on one of his companies. Not with a loan or a raise, but by getting paid as a public agency owner to talk about SaaS products. Ten years of being a face turned into a cash-flow lever almost no other owner has. Then it gets stranger. That same decade of posts and videos is now training data for every LLM on earth. Ask ChatGPT or Claude about DTC agencies and Nick, Structured, Konstant, and Geek Out all come up. A personal brand he built to win deal flow quietly became free distribution in a channel that didn't exist when he started. They get into the real cost of being the face, why building a faceless brand (like DTC and Pilothouse) trades built-in pull for durability, AI in the agency space, and why Nick thinks the market's about to splinter back into specialists. What they cover: The never-shared story of how Nick bridged a cash-flow gap in a rough monthWhy a personal brand is a lever most agency owners don't haveHow ten years of content became free distribution in AI searchThe real cost and risk of being the face of your agencyFace vs. faceless: durability, transferability, and selling the businessWhere Nick thinks the agency market is heading in 2026 Who this is for: Agency owners, DTC operators, and founders weighing whether to build in public or build something that doesn't hinge on one person's face. Catch the preview here, and if you like it, go subscribe to Agency Confidential for the full episode. Timestamps: 00:00 Nick Shackelford on building agencies and personal brands 02:19 How Nick built three agencies and scaled operations 11:59 Why AI is changing agency work and client communication 27:56 How a personal brand became a business advantage 39:18 Why AI will bring back specialized agencies Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF627 Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video

    Ep 627: Why Nick Shackelford's Personal Brand Saved His Cash Flow | Agency Confidential Preview

  6. Jul 6

    Ep 626: How Wolfe Sells Gifting to Everyone: Top of Funnel Testing, CTV, and AI

    Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Gifting is one of the biggest reasons people buy online, and most brands never build for it on purpose. Matt Heckathorn runs digital marketing at Wolfe, the company behind Gift Card Granny, PerfectGift.com, and GiftYa. His ICP is close to everyone, which kills the usual narrow-audience playbook and forces a different approach to growth. What you will learn: How a bottom-of-funnel team moved into CTV, programmatic, and out-of-home without losing measurementWhy CTV retargeting outperformed what Matt expected, and how scale made brand channels measurableHow Wolfe uses second-tier DMAs to test incrementality before spending upHow gift card fraud actually works at the physical retail level, and why it shapes the productWhere Wolfe is drawing its AI line: creative and fulfillment yes, fully agentic media buying not yetThe cost problem almost nobody is planning for as AI usage scales Who this is for: DTC operators and growth leads working top of funnel, anyone selling into gifting, and marketers thinking through where AI fits in a real team. What to steal: The second-tier DMA incrementality test, the recipient-first product framing, and the human checkpoint on agentic media buying. Timestamps: 00:00 The Future of AI in Marketing 02:12 Reinventing the Gift Card Industry 09:00 How Card-Linked Gifting Works 15:12 Top of Funnel Messaging That Converts 23:12 Building an AI-First Marketing Team Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video

    Ep 626: How Wolfe Sells Gifting to Everyone: Top of Funnel Testing, CTV, and AI

  7. Jul 3

    Ep 625: Brand Salience for DTC: Turning Creative Into Your Targeting Layer

    Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Meta used to let you pick your customer in the backend. Those days are over. Post-Andromeda, the creative itself carries the targeting signal, which means the old spray-and-pray playbook now works against you. Rafael Gi spent a decade in traditional creative agencies, then led marketing at a nine-figure apparel brand, and now runs strategic growth and partnerships at Pilothouse. In this one he breaks down why the algorithm is forcing marketers to be good marketers again, and what that looks like in an ad account. What he gets into: Why "creative is targeting" is now literal, not a slogan, and how Meta reads your creative for who to serve it toSalience and memory structures: how brands like Volvo, Red Bull, and AG1 got remembered, and how to build the sameThe spend discrepancy that caps scaling brands: 80 percent of budget chasing 20 percent of revenueWhy structuring an ad account by product instead of by persona burns money and buries your messageThe shift from "all revenue is good revenue" to winning the customer instead of selling the productHow to evolve one message into new occasions without breaking the memory you have already built Who this is for: DTC founders and operators between eight and nine figures who are seeing diminishing returns on creative volume and cannot figure out why more ads are not buying more growth. What to steal: the "one tank of gas, twelve cars" test for whether your budget is spread too thin, and the account-structure fix that lines your media budget up with where your revenue comes from. Timestamps: 00:00 Why Meta's Andromeda Changed Marketing 02:34 Creative Is the New Targeting 05:55 Building Brand Salience That Lasts 14:32 How to Fix Creative Strategy at Scale 24:42 Applying Salience to Better Meta Ads Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF625 Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video

    Ep 625: Brand Salience for DTC: Turning Creative Into Your Targeting Layer

  8. Jun 29

    Ep 624: How Cove Soda Builds an Email and SMS List With No DTC, Trading Full Cans for Signups at Events

    Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Most list-growth advice assumes you have a website people visit. Cove Soda doesn't. They sell zero sugar soda in roughly 7,000 retail doors with no real DTC store, which means no site traffic, no purchase pop-ups, and no easy email capture. Zoe Kahn runs marketing for Cove as interim VP. In this episode she breaks down how a retail-first brand still builds a direct, owned channel, why she treats in-person events as the acquisition surface, and how she competes in a soda aisle that already has Olipop and Poppi running Super Bowl ads. What you'll get: The event tactic that grows an email and SMS list without DTC: trade a full can for an opt-inHow to segment by geography so US news goes to US fans and Canadian news goes to Canadian fansHow she picks which events to sample at, and why marketing assets in a state change the mathUsing Amazon attribution links to test creative and copy when you have no DTCA clear take on why an oversaturated category is not a reason to quitThe early-career mistake that shipped roughly 700 wrong orders, and what it taught her Who this is for: retail-first and omnichannel operators, beverage and CPG founders, retention and lifecycle marketers, and anyone who has been told they can't build a list without DTC. What to steal: the can-for-email swap at events, geographic list segmentation, and an event-selection checklist built on demographic fit and asset location. 0:00 Intro 3:16 Building a Canadian Brand in the US 7:55 How Cove Soda Stands Out in a Crowded Market 10:09 Using QR Codes to Grow Email and SMS Lists 17:50 Practical AI Workflows for Marketing Teams Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video

    Ep 624: How Cove Soda Builds an Email and SMS List With No DTC, Trading Full Cans for Signups at Events
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4.5
out of 5
36 Ratings

About

Weekly discussions between disruptive direct to consumer ecommerce brands and our amazing team about marketing, funnels, and everything scaling related. Subscribe to our newsletter for highlights and step by step tactical insights 👉🏻 📦 directtoconsumer.co

Information

  • Creator
    DTC Newsletter and Podcast
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    759
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 352487
  • Show Website
    DTC Podcast

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