Engaging consumers online to drive up sales is nothing new, but the latest retail customer intelligence revealed that the social media sector of retail marketing is growing and changing. Experian Marketing Services recently released a report that highlighted the growing importance of social media when it came to marketing, and Pinterest appeared to be growing more prominent.

"While search still dominates, social media is becoming a significant source of traffic across the Internet as consumers increasingly use sites like Facebook, Pinterest or YouTube more as discovery platforms," Bill Tancer, Experian Marketing Services' general manager of global research, explained. "… For retailers, all eyes are on Pinterest."

Overall, consumer traffic to ecommerce stores via social media sites jumped from 6.59 percent in March 2013 to 7.72 percent in March 2014. The main driver of this increase is Pinterest, a site where retailers and consumers can post, share and save photos of merchandise. The report found that 64 percent of retailers include Pinterest in their marketing emails, making it the social media site with the largest year-over-year increase in use by retailers.

Pinterest has been operating for about four years, but it is still relatively new compared to sites like Facebook and Twitter which have been around for 10 and eight years respectively. Retailers can use the site to advertise new products, highlight trends and encourage brand loyalty.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Saturday, March 29th, 2014 at 9:57 am .