Pinterest as a Marketing Channel

Whether making pinboards of your dream wedding or virtual closet, Pinterest allows users to catalogue items and ideas in to unique folders and share them with the world. They have capitalized on visual marketing. As Pinterest’s community has risen to over 350 million active users since its inception in 2009, the image sharing site has lead users to some amazing products and services that they wouldn’t have otherwise known about. This means Pinterest users essentially market merchants’ products for them, which helps small businesses and artisan boutiques thrive. 80% of the website’s active users have bought items they had pinned on the website.

Product Pins

Shopify is an e-commerce website that hosts over 500,000 active stores on its platform. Now, Shopify has teamed with Pinterest to create a unique channel that allows Shopify merchants to promote themselves on Pinterest by integrating their products on to the website as a “product pin.” Not only that, but the merchant’s Pinterest page will include a shop tab. This promotion is completely free to Shopify merchants. However, if a merchant does have a budget for promotion, there are also paid ads merchants can opt in to, which Pinterest will promote, and the ad will take users straight to to the merchant’s online store.

Pinterest and Shopify Partnership

Of Shopify’s 500,000 active stores, over 100,000 of those are based in the U.S. and Canada, so a lot more products will be heading to Pinterest if those merchants decide to take advantage of this new channel. The partnership is great for both Pinterest users and Shopify merchants, as this will now make it much easier to shop through Pinterest, and merchants will have access to a much bigger pool of consumers. Merchants will also be given $100 credit to promote their ads once their first ad is posted through Shopify. The Shopify tag on Pinterest even has over 110,000 followers, which tags boutique fashion, beauty, and other products that are only available through Shopify stores, so there is already a level of demand on Pinterest.

Pinterest-Shopify Partnership Marketing Explained

How to Use Pinterest with Shopify

The best thing is, though merchants can upload their whole catalogue and turn them in to product pins, merchants don’t need to be IT wizards and there is no code that needs to be edited. The feature includes tag installation, automatic updates, it holds your hand through the whole process and it will track your results too.

If you are a merchant outside the U.S. and Canada, you might be asking yourself if you can use this channel. Unfortunately, as of right now, this channel is only available to merchants based in the U.S. and Canada. The good news is, it has been announced that the channel will roll out in to Australia and some European countries in the foreseeable future.

Retail just got even better with this match made in heaven that evolves both companies’ stature in the online retail sector. This could lead to repeat customers for merchants, not just one off buyers. The Pinterest channel is available on Shopify now.