Pin It to Win It
Practical Social Selling & Marketing Strategies for Pinterest-Focused Internet Retailers
To influence your search position, drive new visits and promote product sales, there’s no better way on the social Web today than to develop a practical Pinterest plan to make it happen. Fortunately, software platforms are emerging to satisfy both interest and demand.
Social Media Acquisition
In early November 2012, Curalate, a marketing
platform for the visual Web, announced the
availability of its Pinterest module — Promote.
The solution aims to reduce the challenges of
running sweepstakes on Pinterest through a
system that removes (or at least reduces) much
of the friction created by typical Pinterest contests.
It does so by integrating registration,
management and tracking into its platform (as
opposed to using disparate systems to accomplish
the same result).
By making contests easier, Curalate believes
participation can increase substantially. They
have proof. Carnival Cruise Lines, for example,
leveraged the Promote module to quadruple
their number of Pinterest followers during
a recent promotion.
The cruise line invited participants to tell a
visual story using Pinterest boards about one
of four dream destinations: the Caribbean, Europe,
Alaska or Hawaii. Curalate’s visual measurement
tools automated contest entry
management, enabling Carnival to engage participants
with a follow-up email — and engage
they did. More than 18,000 consumers who
entered the contest ultimately opted-in to receive
Carnival’s future promotional messages
(that's 45 percent of the total). During the 11-
day entry period, Curalate tracked more than 3
million unique impressions for Carnival’s promotional
images.
“Curalate enabled us to develop a promotion
that was on brand, while making it easy
for consumers to participate,” said Carnival’s
VP of Digital Jordan Corredera.
Practical Social Selling & Pinterest Marketing
If you don’t plan on using solutions like Curalate’s
Promote to manage Pinterest contests,
or are just hesitant to become more aggressive
about Pinterest-focused marketing, consider the
following ideas for pinning to win with social
selling:
Start Small with Pin Requests: While the following
suggestions will be of a more advanced
nature, you can start small by simply including
the repin it button on your website. This will
be sufficient for most merchants, and they may
not have to look further than their existing
shopping cart for support, as many of the most
popular include Pinterest sharing functionality.
Engage with Pinterest Giveaways: Consider
running a Pinterest-focused giveaway, where
users that pin a pre-defined product image to
Pinterest are automatically entered to win that
item. Discounts can also be provided to everyone
that participates.
Focus Promos on Pinterest Use: Another option
would be to reduce the price of an individual
item, should the number of pins exceed a predefined
number. For example, on a featured
product, consider including messaging that encourages
users to share.
Think Thematically: As social becomes increasingly
intertwined with the search experience, it
would be prudent to focus on mirroring content
silos (website content categories) available
on your website with the Pinterest contests
being run.
Let’s Get to Pinning
Pinterest remains the sweetheart of the Internet retail and digital marketing communities. But with big brands experiencing positive results from their Pinterest contests, it’s finally time to start exploring the myriad solutions and strategies emerging for pinning to win the attention and loyalty of users.


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