Used majorly as a social photo sharing website, Pinterest has quickly become one of the top social networks last year. It was recently announced that Japanese ecommerce giant Rakuten invested $100 million into the company to assist the next stage of growth which will see them tap into international markets.
The growth of Pinterest has been astounding and although the debate continues on whether or not Pinterest will have a strong commercial value, the recent investment strongly suggests it will continue to grow.
There has been an increase in sites incorporating the ‘pin it’ button which allows users to share image-based content on Pinterest. This works a treat for ecommerce businesses as this tool can really help share products with like-minded people and generate another communication channel to their websites.
But let’s not forget that websites are not the only marketing channel that can use Pinterest to their advantage; email marketers can also use the power of Pinterest . So how exactly can Pinterest work with email marketing?
Target
Think about the different profiles of your contact database and which boards would be relevant to them. This will help determine whether or not Pinterest is even relevant to your business to begin with.
You can set up different boards for your customer segments and use your Pinterest account to target them outside of your emails. This form of marketing should coincide with your email marketing though so it is probably a good idea to send emails to your segments to promote the boards related to them.
Sharing
Include the ‘pin it’ button in your email. Not only in the header and footer to link to your Pinterest boards, but in the content of your email for sharing. Remember the content blocks that can be pinned should be image based if they are going to be Pinterest friendly.
We always recommend that you include social sharing buttons throughout your content rather than allowing the recipient to simply share the whole email. This is because if you are promoting products, the reader is more likely to share content to people who will find specific content relevant rather than sharing a whole email newsletter unless the products featured throughout the newsletter follow a similar trend. Emarsys have recently widened the social networks available in our social sharing functionality to include Pinterest, meaning you can easily include the ‘pin it’ button and let it work hard for you!
Interact
Before deciding which images to include in your emails, why not set up a board of images on Pinterest and ask your followers to help you choose. This can help you decide which images will work best by using the opinions of followers who may fall into your target demographic and will also help you interact through Pinterest itself.
Once you have sent out your newsletter, you could pin them to a board specific for your newsletters.
Campaigns
Why not focus the content of an email campaign around Pinterest. You could promote a competition based around your Pinterest profile or introduce new products based on seasonal influences. Using big events, holidays and popular topics can be a great way to draw attention to products within an email whilst encouraging recipients to pin content in order to win something.
Those are just a few ideas on how you can use Pinterest alongside your email marketing. With Pinterest growing so rapidly it is a good idea to look into building a strategy for promoting your products. There are loads of stats out there on the global user profiles of Pinterest so before you decide to sign up, make sure you work out the main users on Pinterest and if they fit into what you are trying to sell.
