DTC960: BFCM Learnings, Trends, and More

Good morning,

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

• 🏆 Top Black Friday Learnings To Use in December
• 💀 How To Hold A Proper Black Friday Post-Mortem
• 🛍️ Triple Whale Breaks Down Major BFCM Trends
• 👀 ‘Don’t Look!’ Social Posts Are Gaining Traction

‍👏 $2.9B In Sales In One Weekend. Here’s What Actually Drove It.

🛍️ 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. 🤯

📈 Triple Whale brands accounted for 19.7% of all Shopify sales, tracking $2.9B in revenue across nearly 50,000+ brands this BFCM…and the data reveals exactly how top performers won.

The BFCM Breakdown Report gives you an inside peek:

• ⚡ Which platforms actually delivered the best ROI?
• ⚡ How did spend and performance shift hour by hour?
• ⚡ Did top brands invest in acquisition, or double down on retention?

The answers are in this ground-breaking report, including:

• Platform performance across Meta, Google, TikTok, Amazon, and AppLovin
• Benchmarks from 12 major verticals
• The exact campaign strategies that moved billions

This is the industry-defining data you can't get anywhere else.

‍💰 Black Friday Learnings You Can Use for Q4 and Beyond

This was a record-breaking Black Friday! 🎉

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.

1️⃣ Retention Wins Came From Smarter Segmentation

The strongest BFCM retention results weren’t from blasting the same message to your entire list.

They came from:

• Distinct flows for VIPs, repeat buyers, and first-timers
• Tailored messaging by segment (urgency for one group, education for another)
• Sequenced timing that avoided subscriber fatigue

It kept churn low, boosted deliverability, and stabilized YoY revenue during offer week.

2️⃣ Creative Diversity Mattered More Than Ever

Post-Andromeda, Meta rewarded accounts with broad creative variety, not micro-tweaks.

Top performers ran:

• 10–20 unique concepts per campaign (new angles, not just new edits)
• Strong evergreen built months in advance
• Rapid iteration loops to keep the algo fed

This made it easier to drive cheaper and higher traffic across all channels.

3️⃣ Optimize to the YoY Trend Line

Most brands that grew 100%+ YoY followed their historical purchase behavior closely by:

• Identifying expected low purchasing periods and peaks
• Adjusting budgets before the shift happened
• Moving quickly when performance deviated from trend

Forecasting and reacting early created stability in accounts and prevented wasted spend.

4️⃣ 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:

• Smart PDP upsells
• High-converting checkout experiences
• Cart cross-sells and bundle logic
• Post-purchase downsells to increase AOV

Higher conversion rates across the funnel and more revenue from every paid click.

5️⃣ 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:

• 75%+ budget to new-to-brand audiences on Meta
• More non-branded push on Google
• Consistent offer presentation across channels

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 aren’t seasonal tactics. They’re year-round growth levers.

‍🎧 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 shouldn’t just fixate on ‘what went well’ but on learnings that will make next year’s 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 you’ll remember in 12 months.

In this episode, we get into:

• Simplest way to organize all your Black Friday creative without chaos
• Why persona-tagging changes how you understand every winner and loser
• How to find your “spicy ads” (aka the sleeper hits with huge potential)
• The five-part postmortem doc that removes guesswork
• Why July is the month that decides next year’s Black Friday

▶️ Watch the full episode on YouTube here.

🎧 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!

‍📈 Google’s 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.

Learn more here.

‍🎧 Bonus Podcast: How Nearly 50,000 Brands Spent $607M This BFCM – 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 you’ll learn:

• Why new customers made up 48% of BFCM revenue and what that means for retention
• What Triple Whale’s real-time BFCM Live dashboard revealed in seconds
• Two major category winners that brought in 60% of revenue across Triple Whale’s brands
• The reason brands diversified their channels and turned to TikTok, Pinterest, and AppLovin
• How brands used Triple Whale’s AI tool Mobi to create different iterations of top-performing ads
• How you can take these BFCM learnings and apply them to your 2026 strategy

▶️ Watch the full episode on YouTube here.

🎧 Or click here to listen on Spotify.

‍🤖 Your next customer isn’t searching Google, they’re asking AI. Shopify & Yotpo leaders break down how brands can stay seen and trusted in the new era of ecommerce. Watch the webinar here. *

‍📥 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.

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.