Pinfluencer, a popular Pinterest analytics solution, is today announcing a new Pinterest ROI and Pin-to-Purchase tracking system for marketers and brands, as well as support for integrations with other analytics providers, including Adobe Omniture, Coremetrics, and Google Analytics.
With the update, businesses are now able to track specific ROI metrics like revenue per pin, visits per pin, and pageviews per pin, for example. The system offers brands, marketers, agencies, retailers and others a way to essentially track pins the way a traditional analytics systems track hyperlinks, allowing them to discover which of their pins are driving the most revenue for their business.
Pinterest’s ability to directly impact revenue has been something of a hit-or-miss experience so far. Online retailer Zappos said in August that Pinterest contributes the smallest amount of revenue to its bottom line, as compared with Twitter and Facebook. Other studies have found the same thing: Pinterest sends traffic, but visitors don’t covert to buyers. On the other hand, a report from e-commerce platform Shopify, claimed otherwise. In its study of 25,000 Shopify stores, the company found that Pinterest visitors were 10% more likely to purchase than those coming from other retailers’ sites. The discrepancies may have to do with how the various brands are retailers are using, and tracking, their Pinterest-influenced sales, but they also have to do with how analytics systems tend to work – meaning, they attribute a conversion to the last click. Shoppers, however, may wait days or weeks in between a pin and a purchase – and even Pinfluencer can’t capture this “intent” data yet, but it is creating the database that will help in those efforts in the future.
Pinfluencer CEO Sharad Verma tells us that, today, businesses are clamoring for a solution for tracking pin ROI, mainly so they can lobby for a marketing budget which includes Pinterest. “This ROI data – the revenue per pin – can then be used to make a case for Pinterest within the organization,” Verma says. “Now we can put dollar values there for the first time.”
The system crawls through Pinterest’s website, categorizing all the pins pointing to pages on a Pinfluencer customer’s own site. “We create a database of pin URLs and the landing page, or the product URLs, that each of these pins point to, then, we integrate with brands’ revenue and analytics provider – it can be Omniture, Coremetrics, or Google Analytics,” says Verma. “At the end, we know that this particular client pin drew ‘X’ amount in revenue, ‘X’ amount in purchase – actually correlating the data we get from the APIs [from the analytics providers] and the crawled database of pin URLs that we collect.”
Over 50 retailers and brands have already tested the integrated analytics systems prior to today’s formal announcement, including Martha Stewart, Ross-Simons, HauteLook, Build-a-Bear, Gemvara, and others which the company is not allowed to name. In October, Pinfluencer said these early beta testers saw an average of $0.46 in revenue per pin.
The company has also worked with 250 businesses since its August launch, including Gilt, Ann Taylor, Birchbox, Johnston & Murphy, 1-800-FLOWERS.com, GNC, Piperlime, Rent the Runway, Minted, Beau-coup, Shop It To Me, and wikiHow. Indicating the demand for such a solution, the company had raised $1.4 million in funding before it even opened its doors to the public.
Pinfluencer, while currently one to beat, has some competition in the space. Other startups, like bootstrapped Ohtootay, U.K.-based newcomer Pinalytics, Reachli (formerly Pinerly), PinLeague, Curalate, and others, are out there with their own Pinterest marketing solutions for businesses. But Verma points out that with his solution, retailers don’t have to make changes on their end, like Ohtootay does with code embeds, for example. They can essentially just sign up to start tracking pin ROI.
While it’s possible that further down the road, long after Pinterest debuts its own API, it could decide that it, too, wants to get in the analytics business. But Verma isn’t worried. “We’re not just an analytics product,” he explains, “we’re a promotions product.” The company helps brands run contests, sweepstakes and other promotions on Pinterest, and is now brainstorming with its customers on even more initiatives like an email marketing solution that sends out personalized emails based on a user’s pins, for example.
Interested businesses can now sign up for the ROI tracking solution here on Pinfluencer’s homepage, where they can start with a free trial before converting to a paid plan.