Since the 2011 holidays ecommerce has seen steady action; many of those retailers are using email to stay connected with shoppers, finds new data from Responsys. But email isn’t the only space having a retail impact – the data from Responsys finds a growing number of retailers are turning to Pinterest to promote their goods.
According to Responsys retail email saw a 19% increase (Year over Year) in May, with retailers sending just over 16 promotional emails during the month. Overall email volume has increased about 18% compared to January – May 2011.
Added to email is the new social bookmarking/photo sharing site Pinterest, which has seen rapid adoption from the consumer side. According to Responsys nearly one-third (33%) of retailers have used Pinterest to promote products; 28% are linking to Pinboards through promotional emails, 7% are promoting contests and 4% use Pinterest’s ‘pin it’ buttons to encourage sharing within the site.
“Retailers are still in the earlier phases of launching their Pinterest pages, with many just trying to build awareness of their pinboards,” said Chad White, Responsys Research Director. “While adoption has slowed significantly over the past few weeks, I expect another wave of adoption this summer before retailers gear up for the critical holiday season. Evidence is mounting that consumers engage with more retailers on Pinterest than on other social networks and are much more likely to purchase based on that interaction, so the opportunity is just too big for most retailers to ignore.”
The summer months of June and July are traditionally slower for the retail market, but Father’s Day (US) is coming up in just one week and that could push a big more ecommerce spending. Data from the National Retail Federation predicts American’s will spend over $12 billion on Dad this year – that is a 10% increase over 2011 numbers.