Pinterest is a frequent topic of conversation these days and I don’t want to jump on the bandwagon for the sake of it, however I do want to share some useful tips about how to integrate email and Pinterest.

Firstly, for the initiated, Pinterest is the third most popular social media site in terms of site visits, behind Facebook and Twitter. (According to Hitwise) Pinterest is a virtual pin board where people can ‘Pin’ images from websites, upload and share their own images, and ‘Re-pin’ images from other people. It allows you to collate these images into categorised boards which you can share, and others on Pinterest can see and share & re-pin. It is visual in nature, and draws a largely female audience – obviously it resonates with females due to our ‘gathering’ instincts, and appeals to our visual nature, and particularly appeals because of the strong themes around home, fashion, food and family. (Among many other categories) and it can be, and is, used heavily for planning weddings, birthdays, vacations etc.

It is also being used for brands to showcase their products, art, designs, and show ‘behind the scenes’ of the company, which helps build the brand personality and personal connection to your customers. So it is no surprise that it is quickly becoming a key player in online marketing. You might be surprised to learn however that the ability to integrate Pinterest with your email marketing channel to build and grow your Pinterest presence is relatively easy. So here are a couple of tips about how to bring these two channels together, beyond just adding a “follow us on Pinterest” button to your email.

Here are the five most productive ways to increase social media ROI by linking the two:

1. Use Email to Announce Your Pinterest Presence
It is often said and well known that your email subscribers are your best and most loyal customers. If your brand fits with the typical demographic of the Pinterest user, you have every reason to promote your presence on the site, and share your images with your customers. One great example is how zulily has embraced its Pinterest presence by not only telling their subscribers what they can find on Pinterest, but also creating content specific to the channel via poster creation and even featuring an incentive to encourage Pinning from their site. (Click here or on the image to your right to view the full email)

2. Include “Pin This” Icons within Your Email
Including a Pinterest icon with a simple string of code is all you need to do to get your content from your email to your Board. You even have the ability to pass through a description to accompany the image – and descriptions in Pinterest are important. A few fun things to note here: if you include a dollar amount price in the description, Pinterest will automatically place a banner in the top, left hand side of the image feature the price; it will also place the Pin in the Gift Guides from the main drop down. Another fun note is that descriptions can also help impact SEO. Think the descriptions through as carefully as you choose your imagery.

3. Co-ordinate New Boards or Pins Around Email Deployment
If you are including references to Pinterest within your email communication, chances are your customers may visit your Pinterest wall of various boards following an email deployment. It is a good idea to have new content available when they get there. To that point, you should be putting up new content, arranging boards and managing the “above the fold” appearances of your Pinterest presence frequently to deter fatigue.

4. Here are some other ideas you might like to consider: 

• Create new pins and update your Pinterest boards around email deployment schedules to complement the email message.
• Add the Pinterest icon to your social media sharing icons in email campaigns and newsletters etc.
• Create specific boards around your email marketing calendar (holidays, big events, social media trends, special sales, or any popular Pinterest category that’s relevant to your brand).
• Include visuals of Pinterest activity in your email campaigns, including the Pinterest activity of your most social community members or ‘behind the scenes’ shots.
• Prepare your boards before an email deploys, so that the content is updated and fresh by the time traffic spikes.
• Keep your boards looking fresh by rearranging them frequently, make sure featured pins are “above the fold” and make sure you choose the best ‘album cover’ for each board.
• Stay social – repin other people’s pins, monitor the community, and start a conversation with users.
• Tap Pinterest’s potential to add to your social media ROI and create boards that mirror the interests, activities, demographics etc, of your customers or followers.
• Have customized boards for different segments of your email database, and of course you’ll want to know who is pinning from your site and engage them on other social platforms as well.
• Pin emails to Pinterest for faster ROI, by linking your email marketing campaigns to your Pinterest.

As you can imagine, this is an ever-evolving topic and new information is coming out every day – we are just scratching the surface of what marketers can do with this channel, so look at this as a few tips to help get you started.
Want more? click here to read more advice about combining email and Pinterest.

So start thinking about what you want to share with your prospects and customers – think about how you can communicate those things through email and social media. Those are the key questions that will determine whether or not pinning email to Pinterest should be part of your plan. If you are using both email and social media, then you’ll find that linking them together in a planned, coordinated effort will make a significant positive change in your social media ROI.

It’s not about size, it’s what you do with it right?

Well, yes… and no.  Small databases may just be perfectly formed, but your contacts are always changing, so some growth is essential.

The real question is, if your’s is too small, what can you do about it?  Growing your database relies on some MUST-DO’s. But cry, wail, berate though we do (even to *gasp* our own clients) every single day, they are not done, all over the web, on sites from all over the world.

Don’t be one of them.   Here are a few of the MUST-DO’s to grow your email list:

• Ask. This is direct marketing. You must ask, directly, in many ways – buttons, text links, in-copy prompts, and from landing pages, blogs, Facebook and LinkedIn, etc.  If you are a large business with a busy website this is even MORE critical.  Get someone who has no involvement with your website – you mum for example – and ask them to get their name on your mailing list; watch over their shoulder while they sign up.  Everywhere they attempt to look should have  a text link, button or directive to join.  Note how the GAP family of sites and RachelZoe.com do this right on the home page – their most valuable real estate. And they should know – we’d guess their testing budgets are big…

• Be attractive and useful. Now is not the time to be coy. Describe how you will help and waggle your benefits right in their face.   Use pain-points that demonstrate you know their difficulties, and can help them solve them.  Use value-adds and bonuses to incentivise their action.   We developed our SmartMail Pro’s email series tools for just this purpose (Get our monthly specials and we’ll send you the ground-breaking tutorial ‘Get the most from health insurance’ in 5 parts, each week for the next 5 weeks, for free’).  Yes your content is worth something but their email address is worth a lot – to you, and, even more to them.  Use examples, testimonials and clear language to exchange value and to minimise their risk: ‘We will never ever give your details to anyone else’.  Are your emails beautiful, and functional?  It costs the same time and money to send an ugly email – but risks less pass-along, poor response rates.  Make it rock.  See email design examples here and ask us for some before and afters to see what a difference design can make.

• Make it easy. See the Bonus Resource on form design below and the example above of the Metrics Report Download on our own website (fill out your email address and then see the form on the next page) - DO ask for the personal details you can (and that you will) use to vastly improve the customers experience, such as Gender, Location, and broad preference categories.  Date of birth is nice if you will use it to acknowledge their birthday.  We’ve already said Do NOT hide the subscribe button deep in your site – get it out there!  Please don’t ask for a mailing address, unless you really, really need it – it’s very offputting.  If you have a call centre or CSR’s calling customers on the phone, or viceversa, then make sure they are asking for the email address, and getting permssion by explaining why it will be good to recieve emails from your company.
• Close the loop.  Do what you said you would, when you said you would do it. Fulfilling the promises that you made is key to extend permission and take Seth Godin’s journey from stranger, to friend, to customer and then advocate.  Handing over the email addy is a risk – make the risk pay off and you will have them. and their wallets, right where you need it.
• Use Advocates.     Pass along, and social sharing using social media is one of the strongest advantages email has over other marketing channels, so use your SWYN tools not to send readers to your Facebook page but to get yourself on theirs, and if you don’t have  these tools get us to set you up. Make sure you have clear path to subscribe in every email you send – we explain that fully here. Check out this post Fan, Follower, Subscriber – which one will buy?, and other previous GetSmart posts on social media and email marketing.

Bonus Resources

-Sign up/Registration form design: I have found a fascinating resource on web design usability that has several posts about form design, I recommend them all – just search their site.  Your goal is to optimise the form, and the path to the form, so you increase the chance that web page visitors will persist and complete your form.   
The first post is about the layout of the form: Vertical arrangement works fastest

-How New York Public Library grew their database by 50%.  A case study.

Do you need plans, extraordinary design creative, and a real life team of global email experts to drive your email marketing and social media? Here we are – down under and always ready for action.