Pinning to Pinterest from Email: Toys R Us Case Study

Social network-of-the-moment Pinterest* allows users to collect photos and images from websites into curated ‘boards’. Whilst it’s been around for a year or so, it’s usage from the start of 2012 has really taken off – especially amongst the typical demographics that frequently shop online – and therefore it’s worth having a look at how email marketers can leverage Pinterest to support their email campaigns.

Here’s two immediate ways you can start to integrate Pinterest with your emails:

“Follow us on Pinterest” links

These are very easy to add – and if your brand already has a presence on Pinterest then you can add these links to email campaigns easily. It’s simply a link to your brand’s Pinterest page, or if you require, you can also link to a specific board.

Pinning to Pinterest from Email

This recent campaign from Toys R Us allows the user to post a product shot to Pinterest straight from the email creative:

The code that allows this to happen is straightforward, and similar to the code used in “share with your network” links:

<a href="http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=[1]&amp;media=[2]&amp;description=[3]">Pin this on Pinterest</a>

* Snippet thanks to E-Mail Marketing Tipps

Using the snippet above, marketers can specify:

1. the “pinned from” url, that Pinterest will link back to (for example the product page on the brand’s site).
2. the URL of the shared image (so it doesn’t have to be the exact image in the email)
3. a suggested description of the pinned image (for example a product name)

Once the ‘Pin it’ button in the email is clicked, the user has the option to post the product onto a Pinterest board, and has the option to share that post on Facebook and Twitter. Other users can then repin the image onto their own Pinterest boards.

Of course this is still new functionality, and the social site as a whole is still growing and evolving, so it will be interesting to see how marketers can use this to their advantage and add innovation to their campaigns. If you use Pinterest in your email campaigns it’d be great to hear about it in the comments!

* For more background on Pinterest, take a look through this great slideshare deck by Michael Litman