What Is Measuring Success On Pinterest? — Part 2

Published in

Inside Revenue

8 min readApr 16, 2018

The Intermediate Guide

In Part 1 we spoke about what measuring success on Pinterest is and why you should care about it when using the platform in your company’s’ marketing strategies. We also gave you an overview of the topics we will be covering in the next few articles in this series, including this one. If you missed this article you can click here to read “What Is Measuring Success On Pinterest? — Part 1 (The Beginner’s Guide)”.

In this article, I will take you through how measuring your efforts on Pinterest can help you hit your company’s revenue targets. As marketing is such a key step in achieving success, it is always important to know how your efforts are affecting the bottom line.

How Can Measuring Success On Pinterest Help Me Hit My Company’s Revenue Targets?

In this article we will cover:
#1 Understanding The Important Terms
#2 8 Must Track Metrics On Pinterest Analytics
#3 Metrics For Measuring Paid Ad Campaigns

Lets get going…
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#1 Understanding The important Terms

In order to ensure that you are able to not only effectively understand, analyse and report on your Pinterest performance, you need to be able to understand the basic terms for the metrics used on both Pinterest Analytics and Google Analytics.

Pinterest Analytics Terms

1. Followers

The number of Pinterest followers you have on your profile

2. Repins or Saves

The number of times Pinterest users have re-pinned a particular pin

3. Impressions

The number of times your pin was ‘seen’ by someone on Pinterest — not the number of times it was interact with, but rather the number of times it was viewed by users on their feed or search

4. Daily Views

The number of unique people who viewed your Pin that day, which should not be confused with the total number of times it was seen

5. Daily Saves

This is the same metric previously known as “Repins”, but is just a new term for the metric

6. Average Daily Visitors

This refers to visits your website has received from Pinterest — which you should always compare with your Google Analytics figures to ensure accurate results

7. Average Monthly Viewers

This refers to the number of unique people who see your Pins and act on them (repin, like or click)

8. Average Monthly Engaged

This refers to the average number of engagements your Pins have received

Google Analytics Terms

1. Pinterest Pageviews

This refers to how many pageviews you received from Pinterest, including those who click through to another page.

“A pageview is defined as a view of a page on your site that is being tracked by the analytics tracking code. If a user clicks reload after reaching the page, this is counted as an additional pageview. If a user navigates to a different page and then returns to the original page, a second pageview is recorded as well.” — Google

2. Pinterest Sessions

This indicates how many people came from Pinterest and started a session browsing your site.

“A session is defined as a group of interactions one user takes within a given time frame on your website. Google Analytics defaults that time frame to 30 minutes. Meaning whatever a user does on your website (e.g. browses pages, downloads resources, purchases products) before they leave equals one session.” — Google

3. Percentage of Pinterest Traffic

This refers to the amount of Pinterest traffic you receive, which is broken down down into percentages. For example, Pinterest drives 14% of your traffic, Google is 50%, Facebook is 20% and then direct traffic is 16%

Video Taken From Pinterest For Business’ Official YouTube Channel

“If you can predict the rate at which you create (or create and grow) qualified pipeline, and you know your average close rate(s), then you can start predicting your revenue.” — Aaron Ross (Author Of Predictable Revenue) @motoceo

#2 8 Must Track Metrics On Pinterest Analytics

Pinterest Analytics allows you to track and measure specific things to determine how your Pins are performing and ultimately impacting your bottom line. There are three main areas to focus on:

- Pinterest Profile Analytics
- Pinterest Audience Analytics
- Pinterest Website Analytics

While there are overlaps, the different metrics you can track for each of the Pinterest Analytics sections are outlined below. I should note that the metrics you track will be determined by your Pinterest marketing goals, and therefore you should add to the below basic metrics list based on what you are trying to achieve on the platform.

Pinterest Profile Analytics
This is how the content of your actual Pinterest Boards and Pins are performing

1. Impressions
What it measures: The number of times your Pin showed up in the:

Home Feed
Search Results
Category Areas

Why it matters: An impression is a view of your content. It gives you an idea of how many people your content is reaching and lets you assess its effectiveness by tracking how many people then interact with what you’ve posted

2. Repins
What it measures: The number of times your Pin has been saved to somebody else’s board
Why it matters: The ultimate measure of how good your content is if someone considers it worthy of sharing with their followers, which also helps you attract new followers. And, by identifying your most repinned content you can gain insights into your audience’s likes and needs, and use your findings to optimize what you create and share going forward

3. Clicks
What it measures: The number of times someone clicks through to your website via a Pin (also see Pinterest website analytics below)
Why it matters: Clicks are an effective way of measuring social ROI. When someone clicks through to your website from your Pin, it means you’ve grabbed their attention to the extent that they want to get to know you better

4. All-Time Stats
What it measures: You’ll get a breakdown of average daily impressions, average daily viewers, average monthly viewers, and the average monthly engaged viewers you reach in relation to:

Top Pins from the last 30 days,
Pins with high repins
Pins with high clicks
Your best Pins of all time, etc.

Why it matters: This lets you identify your best-performing content every month, allowing you to continually refine your Pinterest content strategy

Pinterest Audience Analytics
Pinterest Analytics enables you to find out who your audience is, who follows, connects, and engages with you on the platform

1. Demographics
What it measures: Audience Insights on Pinterest Analytics includes information on:

Country
Gender
Language
City
Interests, or other topics your audience engages with
Boards that contain a high number of matching Pins
Other businesses your audience is interested in

Why it matters: The more you know about your audience’s interests the easier it is to create content they will like and share, increasing your chances for Pinterest success

Pinterest Website Analytics
Find out what content people are most likely to Pin or save from your website, and how that content performs on Pinterest.

1. Impressions
What it measures: The number of times a Pin from your profile has appeared on the:

Home Feeds
Category Feeds
Search Results

Why it matters: Tells you how much reach your content has and gives you an idea of how big your potential audience is

2. Saves
What it measures: The number of times people have saved, or pinned, content from your website, using a Save button, to one of their own Pinterest Boards
Why it matters: Saving is another measure of the quality and share-ability of your content. Every time someone saves your content to Pinterest, you increase your reach on the platform — leading to more impressions and clicks

3. Clicks
What it measures: The number of times someone clicks through to your website via a Pin
Why it matters: Clicks from Pins through to your website show that people are interested in your content and business. It’s the action that proves your content has done its job

#3 Metrics For Measuring Paid Ad Campaigns

All money matters, especially when attempting to drive your brand’s bottom line through the use of social media marketing. The Pinterest Ads Manager has a number of reporting features that help users see where their spend on the platform is going. I will take you through the standard metrics available, but keep in mind that you are able to record custom metrics that you require to measure your performance vs your business goals, by accessing the settings field on the dashboard.

Success Story Taken From Pinterest For Business’ Official YouTube Channel

The Main Metrics Of Measurement

1. CTR
Click through rate reflects the number of clicks to your website that you get per paid impression.

2. ER
Engagement rate reflects the total number of engagements you get — including taps on your Pin to get a closer look, clicks through to your website and saves — per paid impression.

3. Conversions
Use the Pinterest Tag to track the number of actions completed on your website — including purchases, sign-ups, downloads and more — that can be attributed to Promoted Pins.

4. CPA
Your effective cost per action reflects the total you’ve spent per conversion gained.

5. ROAS
Your return on ad spend is the total income your ads have generated divided by your total spend.

Fields For The More Advanced

1. Report Graphing

Pinterest recently introduced a customizable graph to allow marketers to compare metrics and trends in your campaigns.

2. Delivery Metrics

Your delivery metrics show your reach and overall performance.

Review these metrics to see how often your Promoted Pins have appeared on Pinterest (impressions), and your cost per one thousand impressions (CPM). Your total engagements, engagement rate and CPE (cost per engagement) will help you get a sense of how much interaction your Promoted Pins are getting.

You can always export your graph if you prefer to view these numbers in a spreadsheet.

3. Performance Metrics

Your performance metrics tell you how effective your campaigns are. Here’s where you can take a closer look at conversions, CPA and ROAS.

A few points that are good to know:

Click on the + sign to expose more columns
Conversions are available in the performance preset
Some presets will impact the metrics available in the drop downs
Custom views are saved to your browser, which means you can’t share the view across all account users

4. Custom Metrics

If you want to try customizing the metrics in your view, just click on the view drop down menu. Then you can customize all types of views, including performance, delivery and more. You can also adjust your attribution windows to 30/30/1 — that’s 30 days for clicks, 30 days for engagements and 1 day for views.

This is the best way to start getting a more accurate picture of your Promoted Pin performance. Just click on settings and expand your attribution windows to see how more conversions roll in over time.

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Measuring your success on Pinterest is vital to any marketer’s job when using it in your overall marketing strategy.In our next article, “What Is Measuring Success On Pinterest? — Part 3 (The Advanced Guide)”, we will cover what to watch out for when measuring your success on the platform to help you get started on the right foot.

We will guide you through the following topics topics: