New Pinterest Feature Caters to Online Shoppers
By David A. Utter
EcommerceBytes.com
August 06, 2013

Social media presences like Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter have been trying various methods of encouraging more ecommerce to happen through their sites. These efforts have had mixed results, and none have come close to challenging email marketing or paid search advertising in becoming a large-scale drive of ecommerce yet.

Pinterest showed growing ecommerce influence this year with the site demonstrating promise as a driver from its "pins" to the online sellers providing those images. Average order values increased for shoppers coming through Pinterest to ecommerce sites through the Easter 2013 holiday period.

Pinterest announced price drop alerts on their blog recently. This feature lets people know via email if a pin's price dropped. Pinterest said they are rolling this new feature out slowly to its users.

Current Pinterest fans who pin items of interest won't have to do anything to take advantage of the new feature. When a price drops for a pin, they will receive an email. Pinterest said they would group these notifications into a single email, but this can be adjusted through one's Pinterest settings if needed.

This latest move follows Pinterest making pricing from certain sites more visible in May, as well as the addition of some basic web analytics in March.

Making use of email as part of their latest marketing effort demonstrates the medium's continued resilience. April-June 2012 figures from Monetate found email providing stronger average conversion rates per session than for sessions driven by search or social media. Pinterest likely hopes its pinning merchants enjoy similar conversions will be derived from its price alert emails.