The Pre Commerce Playbook

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🕵️‍♀️ The Pre-Commerce Playbook: How Elite DTC Brands Build Invisible Pipelines Before Launch

Before the first ad runs. Before the product drops. Before the pixel ever fires. The best DTC founders don’t start with marketing.

They start with pipeline infrastructure, quietly building a waitlist of strategic humans before the website even goes live. This is the hidden system behind every great launch: pre-commerce > e-commerce.

What Actually Happens Behind a “Successful” Launch

Most public DTC launches look like a beautiful web of influencer UGC, smart paid ads, and a sexy landing page. But what you don’t see are the 90 days before launch spent doing things that feel nothing like marketing:

• DMing 20 stylists, editors, retail buyers, boutique owners
• Creating short, custom prospecting lists based on vibe and influence, not just reach
• Booking 1:1 walkthroughs with press people and potential collab partners
• Soft-pitching HR folks and brand leads for B2B gifting or event sampling
• Manually seeding the product to people with distribution power

This is a non-scalable effort that makes everything else scalable later.

What It Takes to Do This Well

You can’t do this with a pixel and an ESP. You need:

• A real prospecting list, not pulled from a CRM, but built by hand or scraped with intent
• Smart filters to find titles like “Head of Visual Merchandising” or “Experience Lead”
• A way to track who you’ve messaged, what you sent, and what moved the needle
• The mindset of a sales team, not just a brand marketer

This is why most DTC teams don’t do this. It’s not flashy. But it builds leverage.

This is where Apollo enters, not loudly, but like a surgical tool:

• Search filters let you build lists by title, company type, or even funding round (great for gifting to startups)
• CRM enrichment lets you layer missing emails or phone numbers to your hand-built list
• The platform lets your small team DM 100 high-value contacts, not spam 10,000
• Bonus: Job change alerts help you catch prospects just as they join a new brand or retailer

You’re not using Apollo like a SaaS team. You’re using it like a DTC sniper.

The Launch Timeline Nobody Talks About

Week 0–2: Build your initial prospecting segments, press, collab partners, and micro retailWeek 3–5: Seed product, schedule calls, start 1:1 outreachWeek 6–8: Activate early momentum, referrals, intros, shoutoutsWeek 9–12: Only now do you launch ads, PR, and your “public” funnel

This isn't a theory. It’s what brands like Clementine, JIGGY, and Haus did behind the scenes.

This works because you stop treating your launch like an ad campaign and start treating it like a relationship funnel. The ROI on 30 DMs is often greater than 30,000 impressions. But you only see that if you plan for it. Want to try this? Use Apollo to build your first targeted pre-commerce list free forever.

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📊 PMax Reporting Unlocks Transparency, and a New AI Rebrand

Google’s long-promised transparency update is finally landing: Performance Max campaigns are starting to show channel-level reporting. Alongside it, Google has begun rebranding Search Max to AI Max, reflecting a bigger shift toward AI-first advertising.

The Breakdown:

• PMax campaigns now show performance by channel - Advertisers can now view how their campaigns perform across individual Google properties like Search, YouTube, and Display, letting teams identify weak channels, cut wasted spend, and double down where creative performs best.
• You can finally optimize assets with intent - Knowing where your creative appears allows you to refine visuals, copy, and CTAs by channel. If a YouTube creative underperforms while Display excels, you can adapt instead of guessing.
• Search Max is now AI Max, with a toggle. - Inside the Google Ads interface, Search Max is being renamed to AI Max, complete with a new toggle that reads “Optimize your campaign with AI Max,” aligning with Google’s larger AI branding push from Google Marketing Live 2025

This update finally gives performance marketers a chance to see inside PMax, one of the most powerful yet opaque campaign types in Google Ads. As AI-driven automation replaces granular controls, insights like these are critical for effective optimization.

🚀Quick Hits

📉 AI mentions what it can verify, and if your brand’s not linked, you’re invisible. dofollow.com builds editorial links that drive real visibility, SEO wins, and AI citations. Heymarket jumped 65+ keyword positions with 6× more traffic. It's your turn. Check out what’s possible today!

📌Pinterest has launched generative AI-powered visual search tools, starting with women’s fashion pins in the US, UK, and Canada, letting users refine outfits by aesthetic, fit, or occasion.

🤖Meta plans to launch fully automated AI ads by 2026, letting businesses input just a URL and budget while AI handles creative, targeting, and optimization across Facebook and Instagram.

🎤Microsoft launched OpenAI’s Sora via Bing Video Creator on mobile, enabling users to generate 5-second videos from text prompts. Available globally, with 10 fast renders and sharing options included.

📺58% of young adults are more likely to churn streaming platforms compared to average users. Despite subscribing to 4.2 services on average, they prefer social media's convenience. 

That’s a wrap for today! Tell us your thoughts about today's content as we line up more Shorts! And don’t hesitate to share this with someone who’d adore it. 🥰