How to Boost Your Email Marketing with Pinterest

Have you ever heard marketers say, “The money is in the list”? They’re talking about your email list. There are ways that Pinterest can help you to grow and nurture the connection you have with the people that have subscribed to your email list.

Growing your email list

Don’t yet have an email list or don’t have many people on it? Pinterest can help. One of the best ways to grow your list is to offer something in exchange for a person’s email address. For a long time I made the mistake of having a generic sign up form for people to join my list for “free weekly updates.”  My list grew at a snail’s pace.

Looking back, it makes sense. Why should I expect people to just give me their email information, what’s in it for them? I wasn’t providing them with any initial value for this action.  Sure, I said that I would send them weekly updates but exactly what does that mean and did they really need more random email clogging their inbox?

Things began to change when I did something to make it worth people’s time and effort of submitting their information. I created a free 7-part Pinterest video training course and I offered to people who joined my email list.  Now my list started to grow but only the people who came to my site knew about it. I had to get the word out and this is where Pinterest comes in.

I created an image for the course and pinned it to my Pinterest account. People clicked through the image and were taken to a page on my site where they sign up to get the free videos. Easy, huh?

You don’t have to go through all of the trouble to create a video training series. You can create something much more simple such as a PDF list of resources or your top ___ tips for doing/ getting/ maintaining/organizing/fixing… _________ (whatever your subscribers would find interesting or helpful).

What’s a must is that you also create an image to go with it that you can upload or pin to Pinterest and link back to your optin form. Tools such as Canva and PicMonkey are free and easy to use.

For the image above, I made sure that the image was easy to read and used keywords in my pin’s description to make it more searchable.  Each time somebody pinned or repinned the image, more people saw it and some came to my site and joined my email list.  I was also clear in my message on the optin form they would be receiving additional emails from me when they signed up.

Connecting with your audience

When communicating with your subscribers, it’s best to do so in a way that’s relevant to them. For example some of your subscribers might not use Pinterest and prefer to use another social network, gasp! If that’s the case, you wouldn’t want to send them information about what your favorite pins of the week are or encourage them to pin the products you’re sharing with them in your emails. They just wouldn’t care or wouldn’t understand and you could risk loosing them as a subscriber.

One way to avoid this is to survey your subscribers and ask them what platforms that prefer to use. You can create a survey with a tool like Survey Monkey or Google Docs and include the link to it in an email. Some email service providers even offer survey tools as a part of their service. Once you get the results of your survey you can then segment your list according to their responses.

Once you know what part of your audience uses Pinterest, you can  and should start incorporating Pinterest into your emails. For example, you can include images with Pin it buttons just as Sephora does in some of their email campaigns to promote their products.

Growing your Pinterest account through email

The larger your Pinterest following, the more exposure your pins can have right? You can use your email list to help grow your Pinterest following. It’s very possible that your email subscribers don’t follow all of your Pinterest boards. You can let them know when you add new boards to your account. Who knows, it just might be the kind of board they’re looking for.

Melissa Middleton of JNSQ and alumni of the Oh So Pinteresting Pinterest for Business Workshop recently shared a great feature of MailChimp with me. MailChimp users can easily incorporate their Pinterest boards into an email campaign.

They have the option of including all of their pins or just pins from a particular board in the campaign. There’s even an option to set up an RSS campaign, which will automatically send subscribers a weekly email of your latest pins.

I love the RSS feature. A board created just for your email subscribers is a great strategy. In my case, I can see creating aboard with all of the latest Pinterest tips and news that could help my subscribers master Pinterest. What kind of board would you create for your email subscribers?

If you don’t use MailChimp and don’t have access to this nifty feature, there are other ways to promote your Pinterest account and grow your following.

• Ask them to follow you on Pinterest in your emails.
  •  Be sure to tell them why
  • Include a link to your Pinterest account
• Include the Pin it button on the images in your email and link the images to corresponding pins on your Pinterest account.
• Announce newly added boards in an email with a screen shot and link back to that board.

There are several ways to incorporate Pinterest into your email marketing. Growing your list, keeping your subscribers engaged with your pins and attracting followers can all lead to more traffic and sales for your business. Will you be using Pinterest in your email marketing?  Let me know in the comments below. Thanks!