BFCM Recap: The Tactics That Actually Worked (With Real Numbers)
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are often wrapped in hype, vibes, and post-event victory laps that lack real detail. This BFCM recap is different. It’s a full breakdown of what actually worked shown with numbers, structure, and lessons you can reuse. All this pulled directly from a deep debrief featuring Zach Stuck, Brad Ploch, and Andrew Foxwell
The standout tactic from this BFCM? Time boxed flash offers paired with aggressive pacing discipline.
Instead of running a gift with purchase offer all weekend and torching margin, the team tested one hour flash drops. A free beanie (a ~$50 retail value) was unlocked only for purchases over $100 and only for a single hour. The result was immediate and dramatic. Hourly revenue jumped from a baseline of ~$50K per hour to $142K in the first test, then hit $172K in a later drop, all while holding roughly a 9x MER.
The key wasn’t just the offer, it was the constraint. Limiting availability to a single hour created urgency without forcing elevated ad spend across the entire day. Instead, the offer pulled demand forward, allowing the team to concentrate spend during moments where performance was clearly outperforming baseline expectations.
To support this, the team relied on hourly pacing models built from Shopify and ad platform data. Revenue, spend, and MER were tracked hour by hour, not just daily. By midday, they knew whether they were ahead or behind pace and could confidently push harder or pull back in real time.
On the channel side, BFCM wasn’t treated as “business as usual.” Nearly 40%+ of Meta spend went to BFCM specific creative, a massive increase year over year. Founder videos, warehouse content, ugly ads, simple product shots in front of a Christmas tree, and blunt offer-forward statics all played a role. Creative diversity mattered more than polish, and many of the top-spending ads looked more organic than engineered.
Retention was also handled deliberately. A separate Meta retention campaign using 1 day click attribution and higher min-ROAS targets delivered 10x+ reported ROAS without inflating expectations around incrementality. The structure allowed returning customers to re-engage without distorting prospecting performance.
Finally, the team leaned heavily into owned channels. Yes, a lot of emails and SMS messages were sent and far more than on a normal day but the list didn’t revolt. Buyer intent was at its highest, and clear, time-boxed communication matched that moment.
The takeaway is simple: BFCM doesn’t need to be chaos. With disciplined pacing, intentional creative, and offers designed to create urgency without killing margin, it can become a repeatable system and not a once-a-year gamble.
