Happy Sunday!
If you’re reading this, I know you’re right in the thick of BFCM madness, so today’s newsletter is going to be a fun one... examples of what brands did well, new, or unique. If you can spare 4 minutes to click around, I’ll show you something new.
This year, Black Friday sales were $6.2B on Shopify (up 25% YoY), according to Tobi. Most of my BFCM friends are running hourly based pacing checks, internally, to ensure spend/revenue are in-line with expectations. Everything stems from the MER number you’re able to afford — that decides how aggressive or relaxed your ad spend engines are during this period.
Today’s newsletter is going to be things I found most interesting that I am going to steal and test into early next year + next holiday season (I might even pull some stuff into December quickly)... but, before we get to that...
Vendor of the Week
Chargeflow — Your secret weapon to stop digital shoplifting during BFCM
If you run a brand, you know that BFCM is also the biggest fraud event too. While you’re tallying record volume, “friendly” fraudsters, refund abusers, and digital shoplifters are lurking… waiting to hit your store with chargebacks in January, when it’s too late.
This year, don’t let your Q4 windfall disappear.
Chargeflow is the world’s first fully automated chargeback and fraud prevention platform, built specifically for merchants who want to scale without the January hangover. Their AI-powered system protects 15k+ stores covering everything from real-time fraud prevention to automated chargeback recovery, tackling the 60% of Q4 disputes that most tools miss.
Most fraud happens after BFCM — when most merchants are least prepared. Chargeflow Prevent is the only tool covering post-transaction fraud and automating dispute wins
This BFCM: get complete peace of mind. For a limited-time, Chargeflow is giving new customers:
- $10,000 in FREE Chargeback Automation credits
- Chargeflow Prevent FREE until December 31, 2025
Sell big. Keep more. No January chargeback hangover.
Claim your $10,000 in free protection before Dec 2!
PS — I’m hosting a virtual event with Ari Murray (former Sharma Brands®, now Chief Digital Officer @ SALT & STONE) and Snap. Everyone who joins is entered to win a $500 Delta gift card. We’re going to talk all things 2026, Snap strategy, what creative works, etc. Sign up here! It’s on 12/11 @ 2pm EST.
Limited Supply
This past week on Limited Supply, I did a master checklist of everything to review and triple-check before your BFCM sales. Cyber Monday starts tomorrow, so I recommend listening to the episode and making sure you checked everything on my checklist for tomorrow’s sale.
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Just search “Limited Supply” wherever you listen.
My 2025 BFCM Swipe File
Every year I love to learn as much as I can from everyone else during BFCM. As someone who is good at moving people down the funnel, I always love finding unique ways others are doing it too. Today’s newsletter is a compilation of some of my favorite BFCM activations I’ve seen so far, with a quick explanation as to why.
If you have any questions or thoughts, reply back with them. Otherwise, enjoy these examples and see if you can get any inspiration from this. If you spotted anything you liked, please reply to this email and include a screenshot or screen recording.
Caraway’s Call Outs.
Last year, you may remember I called out Caraways’ on-site widget showing you your progress toward unlocking free gifts and offers.
This year, they did two things I really found interesting. The first was a landing page dedicated to deals/products under a certain price threshold. This isn’t something that is typically done by DTC brands, but during BFCM, it’s a perfect time to turn on a page like this. The second is how their cart demonstrates what you unlock/earn with your purchase.
Parachute’s Nav Bar.
Parachute did a great job unlocking deals on their site and making it easy to find sales with a landing page, but my favorite part was in their nav bar, how the sales were so clearly called out.
In the nav bar itself, depending on which category you were hovered over, you would see the sales called out within. Design like this reduces clicks, which, in-turn, increases conversion rate.
Everyday Dose’s Refund Offer.
This isn't something I've seen before but as you may remember last year Everyday Dose ran a very similar offer to their evergreen acquisition offer for Black Friday. This year it looks like they reduced the price to $25. There's also a raffle-style opportunity to get a refund or win cash.
I've never seen this before but they added a progress bar to drive some social proof and urgency. I'm curious to see how this shakes out for them
Eight Sleep’s Persona Matcher.
This isn't particular to Black Friday but something I thought was incredible and I will definitely apply to other sites before the end of the year. Eight Sleep makes it easy for you as a site visitor to identify how their product will be most beneficial to you.
It’s almost like a listicle, but one that’s applied toward multiple different audiences. Once someone finds their own, they’re happy. When they see the others near it, it adds to the legitimacy of the product.
Unlocking Deals.
More brands are using the unlock format for their deals this holiday season. Two brands I screenshotted above are Parachute and Branch Furniture. You'll notice a lot of influence from Amazon's UX and UI is making its way into Shopify-enabled experiences this year.
True Classic’s Urgent UX.
True Classic has put on a masterclass this year with their UX. It's incredibly clean and easily legible but also packs a ton of information for the consumer. In addition they did a great job merchandising the site taking inspiration from Amazon or just making it even easier for men to figure out where to go and what to buy.
A lot of brands added timers to their sites in the header but True Classic also added it in other parts of the site which I also thought was interesting.
HexClad Sale LP.
This sale landing page had a few beautiful touches I wanted to highlight. The iconography on the top right that dropped you into category anchors on the page itself was extremely user-friendly and fun. Custom iconography adds trust to the consumer’s site experience.
The second was how the sale’d bundles were laid out on the page (size wise, tags, imagery showing each item, etc).
Jolie’s Gifting PDP.
Jolie didn’t just sell their filtered shower head at a discount, they knew people gifted lots of Jolie’s last year, so this year it was all about making it easy to gift. The created a custom gifting box, redesigned the image carousel on the PDP to be gifter-friendly, and made multiple callouts on the page to make sure you knew it was an easy gift to give.
The OTP purchase option (easy for gift-giving) is also available to receive with Amazon’s Buy With Prime.
See more cool stuff? Email it over.
That's all for this week
Like I said, something simple, quick, and fun for today. We’re right in the thick of it, so it might be tough to hit 9 hours of sleep tonight... but get it if you can… you’ll appreciate it tomorrow!
Good luck this Cyber Week. I’ll see you this next Sunday!