I was on the train to NYC, headed to my first textiles trade show two weeks ago and I got an email from Pinterest. Two weeks later, I am now a verified merchant on Pinterest! I still can’t believe it so I have to share with you how this happened!
In 2020, Pinterest launched a Verified Merchant Program or VMP. VMP status on Pinterest gives your Pinterest profile a blue checkmark which really elevates the trust in your brand and it provides your profile with a shop that features all of your products that automatically syncs with your product catalog. This allows your products to become shoppable pins!
Here is what my Pinterest profile looks like with verified status.
Why become verified?
Billions of searches happen on Pinterest every month. It’s also a great platform to showcase your artwork and creative products that consumers may be searching for. Being verified allows pinners to pin your shop items or to purchase them directly from your eCommerce platform. Pinterest can be a great alternative to Instagram for creative artists and surface pattern designers. It may also attract a different audience from your Instagram audience and drive more traffic for your business. You can still view analytics and create targeted ad campaigns to increase even more traffic or engagement.
So how can you become verified?
Here are the steps that I took to help me get verified and tips to help you with the process.
- Make sure that you have a Pinterest Business account and not a personal one or you can link your personal account to a business one and switch back and forth. I started with a personal account many years ago and switched it to a business account a few years ago. Here are the steps to creating a Pinterest business account.
- Claim your website. This will require you to add a DNS TXT record to your domain host or to add an HTML tag to your website depending on what domain host you use. Pinterest provides instructions for that too.
- Find an eCommerce platform to set up your shop and integrate with your website. I recently added the eCommerce platform WooCommerce to my WordPress website. It was an upgrade from my basic WordPress account.
- Really work on your website and shop. Part of the Pinterest verification process requires you to have a high-quality website and product pages. I applied for verified merchant status in 2021 and I was denied. The process seemed complicated so I actually gave up on it. I realize now that I wasn’t ready yet. I’ve spent the last few month’s really working on improving my website not trying to get verified. You also have to have your website for at least 13 months to be approved for the VMP.
- Get an expert to review your website. I was lucky that in December 2022, as a member of Stacie Bloomfield’s, the Creative Powerhouse Society, I was able to apply for a Website Heart Seat and I was selected among others to have my website reviewed and shared for other members. I gained so much out of this and I immediately implemented the suggestions for my website. It now looks so much more appealing and more polished than it did before. It’s still a work in progress but I now feel much more confident about my website.
- Have fun with idea pins. Idea pins launched in May 2021 and allow you to create single multi-page video content. It is easy to use and a lot of fun, you also can use existing static pins and you don’t have to have video content to get started creating them. This is where you can have fun because you have to show that you’ve had your Pinterest account for at least 3 months. I think showing you are an active and engaged user already creating interesting pins can help with the verification process.
- Apply for the Pinterest Verified Merchant Program (VMP). Once you have all of the above completed, you may be ready! This is where I was lucky and Pinterest noticed me and emailed me out of the blue about the verified merchant program. I told them that I applied a while back and I was denied and when I reached out to Pinterest no one got back to me. This time my experience was much different. The team immediately got back to me and within minutes, started the verification process for me.
- Be patient. It says it takes 24 hours to be approved for the Verified Merchant Program but it took me about a week, I think it took longer because I work full-time and I could only work on it for small durations. I found out I needed a Pinterest tag and the tag had to be healthy in order to be approved. I had to figure some of this out with my eCommerce provider, WooCommerce and WordPress website. For me it included a plugin that wasn’t free. I really didn’t want anything to hold up the process this time since I was one step away from verification so I decided it was worth the cost. It then took a while and several emails with Pinterest to figure out how to have the tag become “healthy”. Once it was determined to be healthy, I was approved!
Overall, it was worth all of the above steps to see the blue verification checkmark next to my Pinterest profile! I feel like I am now ready to start promoting my Pinterest shop and I’m interested to dive in further to learn more about selling on Pinterest! It is exciting to be part of their Verified Merchant Program and I feel like it is a big step in the right direction for me. I still have to work on my product names and descriptions but that is something I can work on over time. Learn more about the Pinterest Verified Merchant Program guidelines to see if you can also be approved for VMP status!
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