As Burberry partners with Pinterest and it adds promoted videos to its advertising offer, how can retailers use the platform to boost sales?
Touted as an online scrapbook, Pinterest has been a firm favourite of online shoppers seeking distraction and inspiration for the last few years.
But is the platform being overlooked by retailers as a tool to bolster their online offers?
Founded in 2009 and boasting $1.3bn (£1bn) in funding from a variety of investors, the platform is focused on growing its portfolio of UK partners.
We take a look at how retailers can use the platform to drive engagement and sales from a different kind of online customer.
Personalised pinning
This month Burberry became the first luxury retailer to use Pinterest’s platform to create personalised make-up boards.
Pinterest members can answer three questions to have a customised board, showcasing Burberry’s different products, catered to their preferences.
“Users can search for any product they can think of and be greeted with countless photos and items”
The content shown on the personalised boards inculdes pictures, step-by-step make-up tutorials and promoted pins, which users can click on to go directly to Burberry’s website to complete the purchase.
The offer, which was rolled out to all of Pinterest’s 100 million members, was initially launched to promote Burberry’s new Cat Lashes mascara.
However, the longterm marketing implications of this tie-up are much more significant for the platform as it allows partners to combine content marketing with personalised offers for its users while gaining a wealth of data on their product preferences.
Forward-looking shoppers
At first glance, Pinterest may appear to be a straightforward social media platform akin to Facebook or Instagram, but the platform positions itself as a visual search engine.
Users can search for any product they can think of and be greeted with countless photos and items matching their search.
“The number one way to drive revenue for retailers is to send traffic back to their own websites and have shoppers complete the transaction there”
Adele Cooper, Pinterest UK
The searchability and aspirational content on Pinterest lends itself to users with significant milestones on the horizon – brides and mothers-to-be as well as first-time home-buyers are cited as regular users of the platform.
Data from the social platform said that 74% of its users had used Pinterest to plan for the future and 93% said it had driven them to make a purchase.
With three quarters of the content on Pinterest coming from its business partners and 70% of its users actively clicking on or saving pins rather than simply scrolling past them, there is a clear opportunity for retailers to use Pinterest to drive customer engagement online.
Burgeoning retail ambitions
In recent years, Pinterest has made strides in making its platform as appealing to retail partners as possible.
In the US, the platform launched a buy button for retail partners including Macy’s and Nordstrom, allowing users to instantly purchase items they liked whilst browsing the site.
In the UK, the platform also introduced promoted pin advertising capabilities with launch partners including John Lewis and Made.com as a means of driving sales for its retail partners.
Pinterest UK and Ireland country manager Adele Cooper told Retail Week: “We’re very focused on promoted pins at the moment because the number one way to drive revenue for retailers is to send traffic back to their own websites and have shoppers complete the transaction there.”
To further bolster its advertising offer Pinterest has today launched native video advertising capabilities in the UK and US, allowing its partners to pay for video content to be embedded into its website with launch partners including Bare Minerals and Kate Spade.
Growing at pace
While Pinterest’s membership is smaller than some of its social rivals, its growth trajectory is not to be sniffed at.
The platform surpassed 100 million active users for the first time last September, with more than half of its users outside the US.
The UK has been targeted as a key growth market for the platform, which currently has 10 million active monthly visitors.
Of those users, 40% are aged between 13 and 24, so there is a significant opportunity for retailers using the platform to engage future longterm customers via the website.
“73% of members say that they use Pinterest to search for items that they want to buy”
However, Pinterest’s slow and steady growth strategy leaves questions about whether the platform is losing ground to newer social platforms such as Snapchat, although the user crossover is debatable.
While Pinterest boasts of a quality above quantity approach to customer data, it’s hard to deny that social giants such as Facebook are currently perceived as a more obvious candidate for retailers looking to bolster their online marketing strategies.
Nevertheless, the intention to purchase a product after seeing it on Pinterest is much higher than the average social media user, with 73% of members saying that they use Pinterest to search for items that they want to buy.
The platform has more than 1,000 UK brand partners on its books include Marks & Spencer, B&Q, Topshop and Asos.
As the platform continues to build its portfolio of advertising tools for partners, Pinterest is well placed to be a marketing channel for retailers and shopping and inspiration channel for users simultaneously.
From screen to store
Unlike other social platforms, which users scroll pages in exchange for strolling their local high street, Pinterest prides itself on inspiring shoppers on the go.
According to data from the platform, 73% of users have seen an item on Pinterest and gone on to buy it offline, while 57% have used its mobile platform to browse for food and drink inspiration whilst in store.
The image-driven content on Pinterest’s platform ensures that advertising content is less jarring to users scrolling through the website.
As a result, users are much more receptive to retailer’s marketing messages on the platform versus other social websites. Pinterest’s data shows that the hide rate for adverts on the platform is 90% lower than its rivals.
At a time when ad-blocking is on the rise, partnering with a platform that has engaged shoppers with money to spend could continue to prove attractive to tech savvy retailers.
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