Pinfluencer joins a small group of startups, including Curalate, that offer analytics technology for the Pinterest platform. The challenge here is that Pinterest does not have an open API; these third-party tools instead work by crawling Pinterest, searching for and analyzing relevant company or competitor URLs. (This is relatively easy to do, since Pinterest actively discourages the use of shortened URLs.)
Pinfluencer had previously run a private beta program with a number of companies, including 1-800-Flowers.com, nutritional supplement retailer GNC and fashion retailer HauteLook. The company also announced a $1.4 million round of seed funding to expand and scale its operations.
The service offers three paid service tiers, with the higher tiers offering additional competitor tracking, additional data storage, more up-to-date analytical results, email marketing integration and more.
For B2B marketers looking to quantify their social media marketing investments, analytics tools such as Pinfluencer will clearly play an important role. One question remains unanswered for now: Will Pinterest do more to support this emerging ecosystem, or does it have plans to offer at least some of this functionality on its own?
