Pinterest is proving to be a nice fit for secondhand online clothier Twice.
The company, which acts as a sort of hybrid Amazon/eBay-like marketplace for gently used duds, had seen success with all the usual marketing mix suspects – display, search ads, Facebook, Twitter – but it was on the hunt for a fresh channel to reach and acquire new users.
When Pinterest started running beta tests on its ads API with select marketing developer partners (MDP) earlier this year, Twice was one of the first in line, working with mobile ad company Ampush to take the platform’s paid offering for a spin.
Ampush, which is also partnered with Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, was one of eight companies named to Pinterest’s MDP program when Pinterest officially launched its ads API in June. That list also included 4C, Adaptly, Brand Networks, HYFN, Kinetic Social, SocialFlow and SocialCode.
“We were particularly interested in Pinterest because it was new and because Facebook and Twitter are getting pretty saturated,” said Chris Luhur, director of marketing and community at Twice. “We were looking for new areas to test.”
But Twice, whose core audience is young men and women in their mid-20s and early 30s, faces a particular challenge, one that most other ecommerce companies don’t have to deal with. Whereas other ecom players have a storehouse of inventory behind the products they sell, each item posted on Twice is ostensibly unique, like a thrift store.
It’s a consideration that played into both the creative and the copy that Twice produced for Pinterest.
“There was a noticeable increase in click-through rate and conversion rate when the copy explained what Twice is all about and the specific benefits of buying unique secondhand clothes at lower prices than retail,” said Arjun Malhotra, senior media analyst at Ampush, which helped guide Twice as it ran its first paid experiments on Pinterest.
Ampush took a two-pronged approach to targeting, one granular and one broad.
In the first case, Ampush targeted against keyword searches for specific items, such as “jeans” or “denim,” alongside creative featuring an image of whatever product had been the subject of the search.
That was effective at hitting people who already had an idea of what they were looking for. To get reach, Ampush also homed in on more general searches for terms along the lines of “secondhand clothes” or “spring fashion DIY” paired with creative that brought together multiple product shots, demonstrating what an entire outfit purchased off Twice could look like.
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Over the course of the test, Twice saw a 12% uptick in click-through rate and a 46% boost in conversion rate, coupled with a 33% decrease in cost per acquisition and a 4% reduction in the cost per click compared to other channels. The repin rate, in other words the percent of users who were exposed to an impression and then chose to repin it, increased by 22%.
That last number speaks in part to what Jyri Kidwell, head of marketing developer partnerships at Pinterest, referred to as the often “evergreen” nature of content on Pinterest.
“It’s a powerful thing for marketers to get an understanding of how downstream engagement can impact their marketing objectives,” Kidwell said, when AdExchanger caught up with him at the time of Pinterest’s ads API launch in June.
There’s an organic feel to promoted content on Pinterest that in many cases drives continued shares and conversions long after the original posting, said Ampush’s Malhotra.
That could be due to the highly visual nature of Pinterest or to the way most users choose to engage with it as opposed to other platforms. Whereas Facebook might be the place where someone goes to tell their friends and family that they bought a house, Pinterest is more likely the destination when that person wants to look for design ideas on how to furnish the house.
“It’s indicative of the way we’re seeing people use Pinterest,” Malhotra said. “They come to Pinterest looking for products they might potentially want to buy, and when people are in that mindset they’re more likely to engage with content in a shareable way.”
