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Good morning,
Hereâs what youâll find in todayâs DTC:

âđ $2.9B In Sales In One Weekend. Hereâs What Actually Drove It.
đď¸ 26 million orders. $607M in ad spend. At 5 AM on Black Friday, conversion value spiked to $40.5M, and that was just the start. đ¤Ż
đ Triple Whale brands accounted for 19.7% of all Shopify sales, tracking $2.9B in revenue across nearly 50,000+ brands this BFCMâŚand the data reveals exactly how top performers won.
The BFCM Breakdown Report gives you an inside peek:
The answers are in this ground-breaking report, including:
This is the industry-defining data you can't get anywhere else.
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âđ° Black Friday Learnings You Can Use for Q4 and Beyond
This was a record-breaking Black Friday! đ
Pilothouse shares that several clients hit their first $1M revenue month, and many saw 100%+ YoY growth by executing omnichannel strategies that were planned early and built to scale.
Below are the patterns shared by the brands that won big and how you can use the same playbook for December, Q5, and beyond.
1ď¸âŁ Retention Wins Came From Smarter Segmentation
The strongest BFCM retention results werenât from blasting the same message to your entire list.
They came from:
It kept churn low, boosted deliverability, and stabilized YoY revenue during offer week.
2ď¸âŁ Creative Diversity Mattered More Than Ever
Post-Andromeda, Meta rewarded accounts with broad creative variety, not micro-tweaks.
Top performers ran:
This made it easier to drive cheaper and higher traffic across all channels.
3ď¸âŁ Optimize to the YoY Trend Line
Most brands that grew 100%+ YoY followed their historical purchase behavior closely by:
Forecasting and reacting early created stability in accounts and prevented wasted spend.
4ď¸âŁ CRO Was the Difference Between Good and Great
Pre-click only gets you so far. The brands that scaled hardest had airtight post-click systems:
Higher conversion rates across the funnel and more revenue from every paid click.
5ď¸âŁ Aggressive New Customer Acquisition Paid Off
November was a great time to acquire new buyers since it was a high-intent shopping period.
Top performers leaned in with:
Many brands saw 200%+ increases in new customer counts, fueling LTV growth for 2025.
The takeaway?
Retention, creative diversity, CRO, and aggressive new-customer acquisition arenât seasonal tactics. Theyâre year-round growth levers.

âđ§ Post-BFCM Steps That Matter
Aves from Pilothouse breaks down the part of Black Friday everyone tends to forget: the postmortem.
She shares why brands shouldnât just fixate on âwhat went wellâ but on learnings that will make next yearâs BFCM strategy even better.
She lays out how to expertly review hundreds of ads without burning out, how to strip emotion out of performance analysis, and why your future Black Friday depends on what you document right now, not what you think youâll remember in 12 months.
In this episode, we get into:
âśď¸ Watch the full episode on YouTube here.
đ§ Or click here to listen on Spotify.

Brands like Krave Beauty are taking full advantage of this content trend to get viewers more invested in their content by using a little reverse psychology.
The text on the image (which only gets smaller and smaller) takes users on an Easter egg hunt and gets curious users to take a closer look.
This is a great way to stop the scroll and gain engagement during the most competitive time of the year!
âđ Googleâs Top Trending Searches in 2025
Google's Year in Search report reveals the most popular search trends in 2025.
Some of the most highly searched terms included Google's own AI assistant Gemini (which was the world's top search globally) along with the viral Labubu toys, the hit Netflix show KPop Demon Hunters, and Trump's on-going tariffs.

âđ§ Bonus Podcast: How Nearly 50,000 Brands Spent $607M This BFCM â Insights from Triple Whale
Anthony DelPizzo, Director of Product Marketing at Triple Whale, returns to the podcast to unpack what actually happened across $2.9B in tracked revenue and $607M in ad spend.
He shares the trends Triple Whale identified (e.g., spend by platform, customer type, etc.) from analyzing a dataset of nearly 50K brands.
Give this episode a listen to learn why BFCM was bigger and earlier than ever this year and what moved the needle!
What youâll learn:
âśď¸ Watch the full episode on YouTube here.
đ§ Or click here to listen on Spotify.
âđ¤ Your next customer isnât searching Google, theyâre asking AI. Shopify & Yotpo leaders break down how brands can stay seen and trusted in the new era of ecommerce. Watch the webinar here. *
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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.
