Selkirk
An operator spotlight from a Director of Ecommerce who owns paid spend decisions during the entire BFCM week. Insights from a lean team who stay close to the numbers the entire weekend.
Selkirk
David Waugh
Director of Ecommerce
“Pickleball isn’t a category you can run like a supplement. It’s a community and a considered purchase. A paddle is $150 to $250 and people research it like they’re buying golf clubs. That changes the playbook. Because it’s a considered purchase, the creative has to educate, not just interrupt.”
This brand is independent of the chapter’s sponsor and of every other brand in the playbook.
| Metric | 2024 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
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Selkirk BFCM 2025 vs. 2024. Blended metrics: spend and Shopify DTC revenue across the weekend.
They Didn’t Buy the Growth. They Converted It.
Media costs came down a little (Meta CPM $30.15 → $25.91, CPC $1.49 → $0.92), but that’s the small part. The engine was conversion and AOV. David’s rough attribution of the 85% revenue delta:
Buy the Audience Early. Ride the Momentum.
Spend was front-loaded onto Thanksgiving to buy the audience at a worse number, then pulled back as blended MER held and returns climbed.
Meta Grades Its Own Homework.
Selkirk doesn’t run on click-based platform attribution. Every decision is made on blended. For BFCM 2025 the platforms collectively claimed about 85% of total revenue.
“If you’re optimizing to what Meta tells you, you’re optimizing to a number that’s grading its own homework. Blended is the honest scoreboard.”
The October Play
The biggest lever on November isn’t November. It’s October.
Everyone hoards budget for BFCM and floods in during the last week of November, driving CPMs up and fighting over the same customers. Selkirk is doing the opposite: acquiring hard in October when the auction is quiet and CPMs are cheap, then reengaging those customers through owned channels (email, SMS, direct mail) to pull the second purchase during the holiday rush.
| Acquired in | Customers | Avg LTV | 2nd purchase ≤75d |
|---|---|---|---|
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October cohort: fewer customers, highest LTV and repeat rate.
| Second purchase | Customers | Avg LTV |
|---|---|---|
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A fast second purchase is worth roughly 3× a one-and-done buyer.
The job isn’t just to acquire cheap in October. It’s to acquire in October and then engineer the second purchase inside 75 days through email, SMS, and direct mail. Paid media lights the fire, owned channels keep it burning, and November becomes the payoff instead of the whole battle.
“The offer doesn’t live in the ad. The offer lives on the page.”
Most of Selkirk’s spend does not run on promo creative. The majority goes behind existing, proven, evergreen creative that never mentions an offer or a discount.
People don’t click a pickleball ad for a percentage off; they click because they want the paddle. Evergreen creative gets the right person to the site, and the Black Friday offer is above the fold and closes the sale. Promo-specific creative is reserved for retargeting and bottom-of-funnel, where people already know the product and just need the deal.