It’s been said for quite a while now that Pinterest is an emerging leader for ecommerce businesses. So, as an advocate of multichannel marketing I thought it was about time I delved into how businesses can integrate and utilise Pinterest with their email marketing.

Not on Pinterest yet?

I love a stat, so let’s start there. Pinterest’s active user base grew 26% to 335 million last year and now has a total of 335 million active monthly users. It has seen 200 billion pins to 4 billion boards. If you run an ecommerce business the stat I’d most like to bring to your attention is that the total number of Pinterest users who save shopping pins on boards daily is a staggering 2 million! Furthermore, 83% of weekly Pinners have made a purchase based on content they saw from brands on Pinterest.

Is Pinterest a good fit for your business? 

Although it has fewer users than other social media platforms it’s worth taking some time to consider if your target market matches the Pinterest user base. For example, 71% of Pinterest users are female. The median age of a Pinterest user is 40, however, the majority of active pinners are below 40. Half of Pinterest users earn $50K or greater per year, with 10 percent of Pinteresting households making greater than $125K. If this sounds like your business avatar (representation of your ideal client/customer) then Pinterest should definitely be a platform you are spending time on.

How to combine Pinterest with your email marketing

Use Pinterest for lead generation

Use your pins to get clicks, and then send those clicks to a landing page specially designed to capture email subscribers. Another impressive stat - over 5% of all referral traffic to websites comes from Pinterest.

Ask your existing subscribers to follow and pin 

Include a Pinterest icon in the header or footer of your email messages to let them know you are active on the platform, just like you’d have an icon for Facebook and Twitter. You can even include a social share block, where available, so subscribers can pin your email. 

Create emails from your popular Pinterest pins

Need content for your email messages? Let Pinterest be your guide. Look at your most popular Pinterest content and use this to create an email. This email from Barneys New York is a great example of how this can work;

Use Pinterest as an email message scrapbook

Pinterest serves as an excellent place to create an email archive. Re-purpose content and make your emails accessible to all your Pinterest visitors months or years after you created the message. Use all those past email messages as a way to attract more visitors to your Pinterest board, and, in turn, to your website.

If you can master Pinterest for eCommerce, Pinterest is, without doubt, a great place to grow your email audience, discover content and ultimately grow your business.

*All stats for this article come directly from Pinterest press releases and reports.