There are 11 billion reasons Shopify store owners should make Pinterest a priority in their marketing strategy. That’s how much Pinterest is valued, in part due to the 150 million active users saving 2 million shopping pins on boards every day.
Pinterest isn’t a place where people go to socialize. It’s a site where consumers go to shop. Eighty-seven percent of Pinterest users have already made a purchase, thanks in part to Pinterest, while the rest have plans to make a future purchase.
Promoted Pins are one way to generate interest in your store. However, buyable Pins make it easier than ever to use Pinterest as a personal shopping platform. The entire purchasing process has been simplified thanks to buyable pins and Pinterest mobile app. Users input their credit card information just once, and whenever they see a Pin with a blue price, they can make a purchase right within the app.
Currently, Buyable Pins are only available on Pinterest’s mobile app but expect to see them soon on both their desktop and mobile websites.
Buyable Pins are presently restricted to large brands. However, if you have a Shopify store, you’re in luck! Through Shopify’s integration with Pinterest, store owners can apply to use Buyable Pins too.
The integration between Pinterest and Shopify is seamless for both consumers and online store owners. All Shopify capabilities remain, and Pinterest passes the sales and analytical data back to Shopify.
Are you ready to make Pinterest part of your online marketing strategy? Here’s what you need to know to effectively integrate Pinterest with your Shopify store.
Sign Up for Pinterest
If you haven’t done so already, sign up for a free business account on Pinterest. It needs to be a business account and not a personal one. If you wish, you can convert a personal Pinterest account into a business one.
Sign Up for Shopify
If you’re on a trial plan, you’ll need to upgrade to an active Shopify plan to be eligible for the Pinterest sales channel. Shopify’s free trial allows you to try out a lot of different product features. Unfortunately, the Pinterest and Shopify integration isn’t one of them.
Add the Pinterest Channel to Your Shopify Store
You may need to make a few changes to your online store settings. First, you need to confirm that your store meets the eligibility requirements for the Pinterest sales channel.
- Ship products to the U.S. (add U.S. as a shipping destination if you currently do not ship there)
- Charge in U.S. dollars (you will need to change your store’s currency to USD)
- Using an active Shopify plan (upgrade from a free trial if necessary)
- Use Shopify Payments or another Pinterest/Shopify compatible payment system.
- Have at least one online store and one product.
To ensure you Pinterest account connects with Shopify, make sure:
- You disable your storefront password.
- “Company Name” and “Address Line 2” are optional fields on your store’s checkout form
- The primary domain listed on your Shopify Domains page matches the Website field on your Pinterest business account.
In addition to meeting these technical requirements, your online store needs to meet Pinterest’s Advertising Requirements to be eligible for the Pinterest sales channel. These conditions are created to ensure consumers have a great experience using Buyable Pins.
Basically, it means your online store needs to have a proven customer service history with few chargeback and your product descriptions fit within Pinterest’s advertising guidelines. But don’t worry, you can always hide ineligible products from Pinterest’s view, if required.
If your store is not approved by Pinterest, they will provide you with valuable feedback. Make the required changes and contact Pinterest for reapplication.
Before you can actually apply to Pinterest, you’ll need to add the Pinterest sales channel from within your Shopify Admin Setting page. You can then connect your Pinterest business account by opening the Pinterest sales channel, connecting to Pinterest and authorizing the app.
After that Pinterest will review your store. Once approved, pins of eligible products from your online store will appear as Buyable Pins whether it’s you that pins them or someone else.
Approval of your online store doesn’t guarantee your products will be published as Buyable Pins. Each product individually must meet Pinterest Advertising Rules.
It’s a good idea to check your product’s publishing status from time to time to ensure there aren’t any issues. Go to the Account page of the Pinterest sales channel on your Shopify admin dashboard. There you can review and fix any errors that prevent a product from being published as a Buyable Pin on Pinterest.
One important thing to note. Buyable Pins aren’t the same as Rich Pins and, therefore, cannot be advertised on Pinterest using Promoted Pins. To promote a product from your store using Promoted Pins, hide the item from the Pinterest sales channel by changing its visibility setting in your Shopify admin panel. Now the product will display as a Rich Pin, which can be advertised via Promoted Pins.
Pinterest Shopify Best Practices
There’s more you can do to get additional exposure on Pinterest. Keywords play a major role in getting discovered, so make sure to use them in product titles, descriptions, tags and even image fields. Take advantage of the words that your customers would use in searching for your product. Reference properties like material, color, pattern, and brand.
Product titles are the most important as Pinterest filters products based on this field. Avoid promotional phrases like “free shipping” or risk getting blocked. Also, because Pinterest prohibits alcohol, drugs and firearm sales, avoid any reference to these topics. Their algorithms are not that sophisticated and phrases like “champagned-colored” may also cause a product to be blocked.
It’s best to modify that product’s visibility if you can’t change the product title. This way it doesn’t appear on the Pinterest sales channel.
Pay Attention to Pinterest Analytics
Once customers can purchase your online store’s products on Pinterest, you will receive a notification. From this point forwards, Pinterest will send analytic data back to Shopify concerning sales and engagement.
You can get an overview of recent sales and traffic data for the Pinterest channel. You can see impression, pins, repins as well as top products, sales, and orders.
Pay attention to this data as it will help refine your Pinterest strategy and understand what products interest your audience. Don’t guess what your customers want; use the data to guide you.
Building an Audience on Pinterest
Building an engaged audience on Pinterest isn’t difficult, but will take some time and consistent effort on your part. Here are a few things you can do to make the process more efficient.
Use ShopWoot to boost your product’s visibility among the more than 65,000 users on our Pinterest promotion platform. Enter your Shopify Store name on the ShopWoot website and we will fetch all your products including images, links, and description within seconds. Click on the products you want us to promote on Pinterest for the next 30 days and within minutes your promotions will start. Over the next 30 days, you will get a minimum 25-40 quality visitors to your store per product promotion. Plus you can promote your first product for free!
You can create multiple boards that reflect your store’s organized materials. Avoid having just a couple of boards with hundreds of pins. It’s better to go wide than deep as a well-structured collection of boards makes it easier for people to find your pins.
Sell the sizzle and not the steak. Don’t just pin your own products. Create a story around your brand by the careful curation of pins. Inspire and build your audience by repinning things that you find motivating.
Tap into trends. Find popular pin types and search terms that are relevant to your audience and find a way to connect that with your brand.
Take advantage of group boards. Get instant exposure through valuable contributions to popular boards. Find Pinterest influencers with a complementary audience and contribute to their account. The Shopify Merchant Community Board is a great place to start. PinGroupie is another resource where you can quickly find thousands of boards across every imaginable niche.
Don’t pin all at once or you risk overwhelming your audience. Certain times of the day are better than others, and some Pinterest categories are more popular depending on the day of the week. Viralwoot makes it convenient to schedule pins in advance so that people see your pins at the optimal time.
Pinterest offers the ability to tap into an audience that has proven themselves ready to buy moreover Shopify store owners benefit from access to Pinterest features typically reserved for big brands.
Have you started marketing your online store on Pinterest? Is there advice can you share?
