Michaels

Michaels moves holiday shoppers from idea to “I did”

A multi-objective strategy paid off for Michaels, giving the retailer a boost in sales and foot traffic.

White woman decorating a holiday tree with an oversized red and white peppermint ornament

With over 1,200 locations throughout the US and Canada, Michaels is a household name for crafters, makers, diy’ers and anyone looking for inspiration for their next project. Sound familiar?

Pinterest is all about discovery and inspiration–not to mention, shopping–so it makes sense that the arts and crafts retailer chose the platform to test to see if digital ad spending could increase foot traffic in a meaningful way.

120%

lift in foot traffic1

$12+

platform ROAS1

Michaels chose the crucial holiday season to run collections ads across awareness and consideration objectives by creating Pins that showcased holiday decor to tap into a sense of discovery for upper-funnel prospecting.

The conversion campaign featured Pins meant to mimic the shopping feed that followed creative best practices like tasteful branding, a strong product focus and a CTA button.

The strategy focused on increasing share of voice in key categories for Michaels, and bolstering engagement and conversions by using the trends tool to incorporate popular Pinterest searches.

Search terms like “DIY wreath” and “DIY gifts” were trending, so they were able to target against them by creating Pins like the DIY Wreath Builder that linked to an interactive design tool where shoppers could create their masterpieces virtually before buying the supplies.

Wish list-worthy results
Pinterest drove a whopping 120% incremental lift in store visits and generated over a $12 platform ROAS for Michaels.1

This success proved the power of reaching unique Pinterest users at each state of the funnel, with less than 6% overlap.1 

Michaels plans to continue testing creative to improve conversion rates, as well as leaning into Idea ads to drive even better results.

Pinterest is a natural alignment for our customers. Going forward, we want to continue to use a full-funnel approach on the platform with everything from inspiration to consideration, all the way down to conversion.”

Kathleen Moler,
Media Director, Michaels

Act on the insights

  1. Make sure your creative includes a mix of awareness, consideration and conversion campaigns, but don’t forget the importance of in-store data for understanding the impact each campaign has on offline sales.

  2. Leverage our trends tool to see what people on Pinterest are searching for before these trends blow up in a big way.