Brand engagement should never go unnoticed. Specialty clothing brand Free People is rewarding its Pinterest followers for their interactivity this month by offering a Limited Edition Holiday Dress Capsule Collection exclusively on Pinterest.
When one of Free People’s 200,000-plus Pinterest followers clicks on an image of a limited edition dress, she is whisked to a hidden section on the brand’s website where she can pre-order the six dresses featured in the collection (ranging from $350 to $650) before they’re released to the public at the end of the month.
“The dresses are limited in quantity, so offering our Pinterest followers the only access to pre-order is a fantastic reward,” says Jed Paulson, director of marketing and e-commerce for Free People.
Before launching the limited collection, Free People reviewed social network demographic data published in the Pew Research Center’s report The Demographics of Social Media Users, 2012. The report states that 15% of Internet users use Pinterest. The report also says that Pinterest is particularly appealing to white female adults who are under 50 years old, have some college education, and have a higher household income (between $50,000 to $74,999).
In addition, Pinterest is the second highest source of social traffic to Free People’s e-commerce site, right after Facebook, Paulson says. And Free People has seen high Pinterest engagement before. For example, the board “FP Me,” which aggregates street style pictures shared by Free People customers, has more than 113,400 followers, and the brand’s “Lookbooks” board has more than 123,300 followers. But besides engaging its customers socially, the campaign aims to drive traffic to the brand’s site and increase the number of Free People Pinterest followers, Paulson says.
“Knowing that many of them are influencers within their social networks, we expect [that] they will pin and share this capsule with similar minded friends [or] followers,” he says.
To help direct fans to the pinboard, Free People has been spreading word of the limited edition collection via its other social channels; however, he says fans are also discovering the collection organically without marketing. As of October 7, the top collection dress has received more than 100 re-pins since its October 3 debut. In addition, the “Limited Edition” pinboard has received approximately 4,000 re-pins, making it one of Free People’s most highly engaged boards, with more than 113,000 followers.
