Following its launch in Canada and the United States last year, Canadian ecommerce giant Shopify has expanded its partnership with American social media company Pinterest to 27 additional countries.
Shopify and Pinterest first launched their partnership in May 2020, rolling out a Pinterest app that gave Shopify merchants the ability to easily upload product catalogues to Pinterest and convert their products into “pins.” The new expansion enables Shopify sellers in the United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil, Australia, and 23 other countries to tap into Pinterest’s user base.
The development is the latest in a series of expanded partnerships Shopify has made with big social media companies.
The development is the latest in a series of expanded partnerships Shopify has made with big social media companies over the past year, a move designed to broaden the reach of its merchants. In February, Shopify announced plans to grow its partnerships with TikTok and Facebook.
Shopify’s deal with TikTok was first announced in October, while its agreement with Facebook was initially announced last May. The publicly-traded ecommerce company is also reportedly working on an integration with YouTube that would allow Shopify products to be sold directly through the video-based site.
“At Shopify, our job is to make this possible by giving merchants the ability to market and sell in multiple places while removing the complexity of managing various channels,” said Lola Oyelayo-Pearson, Shopify’s director of UX, channels and financial services.
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“By expanding our partnership, merchants across the world can now access the Pinterest channel to create targeted, audience-building campaigns all without leaving Shopify,” Oyelayo-Pearson added.
Shopify called discoverability “top of mind” for the platform’s merchants, and said “social commerce presents a powerful opportunity for independent businesses to grow their audience.” Between February 2020 and February 2021, Shopify said it saw installs of our social commerce channels grow by 76 percent.
Pinterest claims its image-sharing platform currently serves over 450 million monthly users.
According to Pinterest, 83 percent of its users have bought items based on content they saw from brands on the social media platform. Given this, Shopify and Pinterest see significant potential for discovery and sales through the expansion.
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“Small and medium businesses in particular have the opportunity to thrive on Pinterest because they connect with consumers in a positive environment when they are early in their decision-making journey and full of purchase intent,” said Bill Watkins, Pinterest’s global head of mid-market and small business sales.
In addition to expanding its Pinterest channel, Shopify has introduced dynamic retargeting ads, which the company said will allow merchants to build intuitive marketing campaigns through the United States-based social media platform, and multi-feed support for catalogues, permitting merchants to add up to 20 product feeds to their accounts.
Pinterest also recently announced plans to expand its presence in Toronto with the launch of a new engineering hub, for which it aims to hire 50 employees.
Last week it was announced three senior Shopify executives are set to step down from their roles at the company in the coming months. The executives include chief technology officer Jean-Michel Lemieux, Brittany Forsyth, chief talent officer, and Joe Frasca, chief legal officer. The moves came six months after another major executive shuffle at the company.