Run More Effective Ads With Pinterest Tag for Your Ecwid Store

12 min read

That’s right ladies and gentleman, Ecwid is at it again. Now you can score customers on Pinterest with retargeting ads and improved performance insights. That’s just one more sales channel for your e-commerce quiver.

By adding a tiny analytic tool (aka Pinterest Tag) to your store, you can advertise on Pinterest and promote your products to previously engaged store visitors. Curious if your ads are working? Your Tag will track your data to let you know just how much money each ad is bringing in. And because it’s Ecwid, there’s no coding or secret knowledge required to integrate the Pinterest Tag with your online store.

In this post:

How the Pinterest Tag Works
How to Add a Pinterest Tag to Ecwid
How to Advertise with a Pinterest Tag
Who Should Try Pinterest Marketing
How to Create Great Promoted Pins

How the Pinterest Tag Works

A Pinterest Tag is a piece of code that gets embedded in your website to spot visitors, and then uses that data to build audiences for advertising based on actions they’ve taken in your online store.

By identifying interested shoppers who’ve visited your store but haven’t completed a purchase, the Pinterest Tag enables you to efficiently target already-engaged audiences through Pinterest. Known as “remarketing,” this tactic has already proven to be more effective than traditional Pinterest advertising.

But it doesn’t stop there. Your Pinterest Tag also tracks what users do after they click on your Pinterest ad (aka “Promoted Pin”). Rather than count ad clicks (which doesn’t equal purchases), your Tag lets you see just how much money your Promoted Pin has generated.

The Tag sees a number of customers actions giving you the ability to shape audiences for remarketing:

Page Visit: a visitor lands on the page
View Category: a visitor browses products from a certain category
Add To Cart: a visitor adds products to their cart
Start Checkout: a user clicks the checkout button
Checkout: a customer completes their purchase
Search: a visitor used the search box to find something in your store.

Even if you’re not quite ready to make the hop over to selling on Pinterest, by installing the Pinterest Tag now, you’ll begin gathering audiences of almost-there customers to remarket whenever you’re ready.

How to Add a Pinterest Tag to Ecwid

To install the Pinterest tag, you typically have to modify your site header code and add pieces of code on every page where you want to track events. With Ecwid E-commerce, no extra coding is required to make your Tag work. We’ve collapsed the process to a single copy-and-paste in your Ecwid control panel so you get started without special skills.

Before you start, set up a free Pinterest business account and verify your website.

When that’s done, you’re ready to set up tracking in Ecwid (it’s free):

Go to your Pinterest business account → Ads → Conversions, and click Create Pinterest Tag.
Set the Tag name and copy the Unique Tag ID.
Go to your Ecwid Control Panel → Settings → General → Tracking & Analytics.
Find the Pinterest Tag section, and paste the code into the field.
Click Save.

If you’ve added the Ecwid shopping cart to your own website (as opposed to the Ecwid Instant Site), you can add your Pinterest Tag to your other non-store pages as well, like blogs and other content-based landing pages. Learn more in the Ecwid Help Center →

Not sure whether you’ve installed your Pinterest Tag correctly? Download the Pinterest Tag Helper in the Chrome Web Store. This browser extension shows your Tag status on a webpage.

Click the red icon in the top right corner of your Google Chrome Browser to see Tag activity

Note: you’ll need to get consent from your site visitors to track them in order to comply with GDPR and Pinterest Advertising Guidelines. Read how to set up a cookie consent banner for your Ecwid store →

How to Advertise with a Pinterest Tag

1. Target your store visitors

It’s pretty standard that about 80% of your customers won’t buy on their first visit to your store. But as soon as they leave, there’s no guarantee they’ll remember to come back again. That’s where remarketing comes in. With your Pinterest Tag, you can sell on Pinterest by reminding past site visitors about your products at the moment they’re pinning ideas for future purchases.

Go to your Pinterest Ad manager → Ads → Audiences and create a new audience.
Choose “Visitors who went to your site.”
Select your Pinterest Tag from the list and set up your audience. You can even get specific about when they visited, for example targeting only recent visitors. It’s also possible to exclude certain store URLs (like an out of stock product) or Tag events (like completed checkouts.)
Click Create. Note that it may take some time before your audience initializes. The minimum audience size for targeting is 100 people.

2. Target people similar to your customers

The Tag also enables you to sell on Pinterest to its users who are similar to your existing customers. That’s called “actalike” audiences.

Here are four steps to grow your reach with “actalike” Pinterest audiences:

Create a new audience in your Pinterest Ad manager → Ads → Audiences.
Select an “actalike” audience from the list.
Select a source audience that you’d like Pinterest to use as an example (like visitors who triggered the “checkout” event, i.e., made a purchase). Note: you’ll need to have a source audience created in advance to gather enough data for the “actalike” audience.
Choose the audience size and click Create.

3. Track return on ad spend

In addition to allowing you to serve targeted ads through Pinterest, Pinterest Tag also helps to measure the effectiveness of your ads. To get started, go to your Pinterest Ad Manager → Ads → Reporting. There, you’ll find a table showing ad performance and how much money you get from selling on Pinterest.

Source: Pinterest

Some of the most important metrics you’ll receive are:

Impressions — how many people saw your promoted pin.
Clicks — the number of people who clicked on your promoted pin.
CTR (Click Through Rate) — the ratio of clicks to impressions. The higher the number, the better.
CPA (Cost Per Action) — how much money you pay per each desired action on your site (like a sale, for example).
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) — the total revenue for a specific campaign divided by the total spend on that campaign.

Pinterest lets you customize the view to display only those metrics that matter for your business. Click the pen icon in the bottom right corner to edit your report.

Who Should Try Pinterest Marketing

In addition to Pinterest advertising, Ecwid offers a ton of other great marketing tools — Facebook pixel, Google Shopping ads, and Instagram shoppable posts to name a few. We know your marketing dollars aren’t infinite, so how do you know if Pinterest is the right platform to advertise your products?

The thing to remember about Pinterest marketing is that its content serves a particular audience. Pinterest calls this audience “Deciders”:

They are women age 25-54 and they make the majority of purchase decisions in US households. They’re responsible for 80% of household buying, and they control more than 50% of the wealth in the US.

Whether it’s vacation planning, decorating their homes, or family dinner ideas, this demographic goes to Pinterest to save product ideas for later. If your ads and products can engage this group effectively, you’ll be well served by Pinterest advertising.

The following are the most popular product categories on Pinterest:

Home decor
Hair and beauty
Style
Food and drink
Educational e-goods
DIY products.

If you sell something from the list above, you should definitely give Pinterest marketing a try.

Some Ecwid merchants are already on the Pinterest train and seeing some great results:

“Pinterest accounts for 90 percent of my social media traffic.” — Selena Robinson, founder of “Look! We’re Learning!” educational e-goods.

“Look! We’re Learning!” on Pinterest

“Pinterest is my second largest channel for sales traffic. I joined a lot of Pinterest Groups and post there regularly. I post mostly from my shop, and sometimes I share an article, or a blog post, or some ideas and tutorials.” — Elvira Threeyama, founder of the CHEZVIES blog and online store for handmade goods.

Chezvies Pins

How to Create Great Promotional Pins

A general rule of thumb is to promote pins that are already performing well organically without promotion. However, if you’re new to Pinterest, that strategy might not be feasible early on, so here are some tips:

Check out Pinterest’s guide “The Art of Pin” to understand what content its audience appreciates.
Mix static and video Pins for more engagement.
Don’t forget to study Pinterest’s Advertising Guidelines before launching your ads to avoid having your ads rejected.
Brand your Pins.
Don’t be salesy. Use a neutral CTA like “discover more” instead of “buy now.”
Carefully track how your Pins are performing to tailor them for your audience.

The Pin life is longer than a regular social media post. Users save Pins on their boards long after the campaign has ended, generating free views and additional conversions on into the future. So, that means you’ll have to evaluate your Pinterest statistics in the long-term to truly understand the value of your Promoted Pins.

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Aug 1, 2019

About the author

Jesse is the Marketing Manager at Ecwid and has been in e-commerce and internet marketing since 2006. He has experience with PPC, SEO, conversion optimization and loves to work with entrepreneurs to make their dreams a reality.