Pinterest, the 4th most popular social network, aims to spark new relevance to marketers with their announcement of its analytics tools for brands and businesses. This product expansion, which is tailor made to soften their transition into the monetization phase, helps the channel appeal to businesses and marketing firms looking to optimize their efforts and gain clearer perspective on the channel’s ROI.

Companies now have the ability track activity of users who pin posts from their website and monitor their various engagement actions. All this coming on the heels of major updates from Twitter and Facebook who’ve recently ramped up their analytic tracking game.

To get these new features , convert your current Pinterest channel to a Business account and then verify your website domain. It’s as simple as clicking a few buttons and adding a small meta tag to your site. For more about how to get your analytics set up, feel free to drop us a line.

The Jacob Tyler Pinterest Analytic Dashboard

I just received this gem of an email and had to point out a few fails for you all to learn from. While I’m sure you all know better than to do what Fox 5 has done, it’s better to be safe than sorry, right?

Point 1: Keep your content consistent
The subject line mentioned a lion attack. That should mean that the associated body copy and image would be about – this is not rocket science – a lion attack. Instead, both the body copy and image are about a woman who has been found guilty of a sex assault with a golf club. Not only is this depressing and sad, but I feel cheated. They set me expectations for a lion attack and I got a sex assault. Not cool.

Point 2: Make your calls to action clear
Aside from the fact that the navy-ish black links below the main story are both tragic and painfully boring (I mean seriously – we go from a murdered roommate to an old water main bursting for the second time in 2 weeks), they are completely unobvious. If you want someone to click something, make it clear. Give them no reason to question where it is you want them to click. Simple as that.

Point 3: Serve ads in appropriate places
This point is more of a rant – but I digress. Not only do the colors of this YAZ ad totally clash with the branding of the email, but I resent being sold anything via email unless I’ve asked for it. Beyond that, I’m not sure if YAZ is aware of their placement, but beyond never ever buying birth control from an email ad, after reading that tragic content, I’m in not in the mood to purchase much of anything. The only thing I can think is that they’re promoting birth control to prevent such occurrences from happening in the future.

In sum, be consistent. Set expectations and deliver on said expectations.

When concepting and designing any asset for any campaign, be sure to think about the bottom line, ie: what do you want the consumer to do when they interact with your brand?

People are, generally speaking, simple creatures so- break it down for them. Don’t give their eyes too much to focus on. Be systematic. Be clear. In essence, don’t over complicate and you’ll be just fine. Use the following as an example.

After analyzing 3,200 different companies, the Startup Genome project has determined the most important dimensions companies must balance to optimize scalable growth.