Natalie Gordon, founder of Babylist, describes how the baby registry platform unlocked scalable paid acquisition through Pinterest's advertising launch in 2015.
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“A really important thing happened in 2015, and that's that Pinterest opened up their platform for advertisers. And so they had the Pinterest promoted pins where you could pay them like any other advertising platform, and they would show your pins more often to more people. We finally got into the program. We put money in on the first day, and many people signed up. And the key thing about BabyList is it's free to sign up, and hopefully three months later, actual people will start coming to your registry, and that's when we actually make money. And the business just actually had that hockey stick growth by, like, actually figuring out this first paid growth platform.”
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AssertionSupported
Babylist uniquely lists direct competitors like Target alongside its own retail store
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