It’s definitely an exciting time in the world of Pinterest marketing, with the platform having 60 million plus active monthly users and growing. While there’s been a lot of talk about how online retailers are at using Pinterest successfully, and some great cases of business 2 business marketing, can Pinterest be used to generate more email sign ups for your business?
A Look at Two Pinteresting Case Studies
Let’s take a look at one small case study – Hubspot. The inbound marketing software company reported that between February 1st to February 15th of 2012, Pinterest helped generate 646 links. Of those links, 78 visits lead to a sign up page, and of those 78, 6.4% converted into email sign ups, with total of five sign ups. That doesn’t sound like much, I admit, but it is definitely a start. And by industry standards a 6.4% conversion is pretty good. Since you may not specifically be in the business of inbound marketing, let’s take a look at it from a professional blogging perspective. Kate of thesmallthingsblog.com is on the opposite end. Her blog primarily focuses on hair and beauty tutorials, and shows how the power of education can help you grow your own community. When she started using Pinterest in August of 2011, she went from 7 subscribers to reading her blog to 16,000 within 5 months, and was able to reach 10 million page views. Not bad, right?
How Do you Generate More Email Signs ups with Pinterest?
1) The Direct Method The direct way of generating more email signs up is to create a pin linking to a squeeze page. A squeeze page is a site where visitors can offer you their email address in exchange for some goodies. 
These goodies could be a downloadable eBook, white paper, or video tutorial, as long as it’s a resource that helps your ideal customers. This is what Hubspot and other online marketers have done. They create pins, like the one above, and link it to a specific page where people are required to provide an e-mail address, and other information to receive the eBook. 2) The Indirect Method The indirect method is about getting people to click on your pin to lead them back to website or blog post. There are a few different methods for getting more email sign ups once people have landed on your website. Method A: The Pop Up. I know how people feel about the pop up, it can feel annoying at times, but email pop ups do work when it comes to getting more sign ups. Social Media Examiner estimates that 70% of their email sign ups come from their pop up email sign up. Kristi Hines has put an excellent blog post that covers great case studies of how pop ups can generate more email sign ups. Here’s what an example of Tailwind’s pop up newsletter sign up looks like: 
Method B: Add an Email Sign Up at the End of Your Blog Posts. Once people have clicked on your pin and have read your content on your blog, there’s a good chance that they’re going to want to sign up for your newsletter or resource that you provide. The best time to get people to sign up for an email is when they feel that they’ve received value, and that they’re emotionally excited to get more information from you.
Incorporate a Two Step Optin Process
Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income was able to increase newsletter subscriptions through a two step opt in process by 25%. Most email sign ups are done through a single optin process in which someone enters their email and then pushes the submit button. Here’s an example of how the two step opt-in process works visually. Someone will click on the button to start the process: 
Then a pop up appears where the person enters their email address. 
Double opt-in make sure you are getting high quality signups, since the user is having to complete an extra step.
Try Two Different Pins that Lead to Email Sign Up Pages
Like anything in the world of marketing, a little A/B split testing can go a long way. If you’re using the direct method of getting more email signs ups consider using different style of pins. Since Pinterest is relatively new, it’s been hard to gather data and the type of pins that would help convert pins into actual email signs ups. It’s best to be able to do your own studies. But you may be asking, “How do I measure the success of these email campaigns?”
Keeping Track of Your Email Sign Ups
In the past, Pinterest didn’t allow for UTM tracking codes to be attached to the source URL’s of pins. Now you’re able to add UTM tracking codes that will allow you to keep track of how well specific Pinterest campaigns are doing. This way you’ll know which pins are generating email sign ups and which ones aren’t. If you’re using Google Analytics you’ll need to set goals to determine the success of email sign ups by having a destination url as your goal, such as the “Thank You” page for successful email sign ups. Have you found an effective way to generate more email sign ups on Pinterest? Please share in the comments. If you would like to know more about Pinterest Marketing and use it grow your business, Vincent Ng will be launching the Pintalysis Academy, an online, on demand Pinterest course starting August 31st, 2014. Sign up for the early bird special.
