Which Font Type Gets the Most Clicks on Pinterest? [Case Study]

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You’ve probably heard that clear big fonts in overlays are the golden standard for Pinterest.

The visual recognition part of the algorithm can read any font, so the style of the font doesn’t really impact how well your content ranks, but it has impact on another thing: engagement.

Big clear font will make your content easier to read, and will increase your engagement score, which in turn, will help to boost the performance of your content and account as a whole.

As nearly 80% of your audience uses Pinterest on their phones, having a font in your overlay that’s easy to read will make a big impact.

But what font? Which ones are the best to use? And how big is the difference in clicks?

That’s what I wanted to test in this case study.


Goal of the Case Study

I wanted to find out how big a difference there was in pin clicks and outbound clicks for different types of fonts, and whether it’s true that clear fonts work better on Pinterest.

I also wanted to find out, if the font style I was using on this client account is the best choice for that account, or if I can test some other designs too.

I did this case study in the travel niche, so the references are therefore travel related. Below are the exact graphics I used for the case study – obviously the topic of the pin was different, and instead of the stock image I used client’s own image (identical on all).

I have listed the names of the font for each creative below too.

Fonts tested in this case study:

  • Marcellus
  • DM Sans
  • DM Serif Display
  • League Sparta

How I Set up This Case Study

I used paid Pinterest ads to determine which font delivers the most clicks.

Here is how the study was set up and how I controlled the variables. Please also check the end of the article for the limitations on Pinterest testing to keep in midn.

The pins were identical, with only the font in the headline being the one differentiating factor. To do this, I set up brand new pins as ‘ad pins only’ so they don’t get flagged up as spam in my account.

All pins were in the same campaign, separated into individual ad groups to ensure each of these pins gets their own share of impressions.

If I would put all pins into one ad group, they would compete against each other as creatives and the one that would get traction the fastest would then be pushed more in front of users, and get more impressions.

I had to manually monitor the ad group, to cut off each ad group when it reached the same amount of impressions, around 12,000.

Why not more? It would cost significantly more money and I felt confident that this volume would give me enough data to work with.

I used a manual campaign set up, using only keywords for targeting, not interests, and only asked for the promoted pins to be displayed in the search results, not on homefeed.

Check the case study results below the graphic.

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Case Study Results

So did you guess the right winner?

Surprisingly there wasn’t a huge difference between the best two performing fonts – both had one thing in common – they were clear and easy to read.

I was also happy to find out that my current winner (the font I use regularly) performed the best in this test.

The bottom two pin received significantly fewer clicks. I found it surprising because they were very different, as you can see from the screenshots below the results.

So even the harder-to-read font scored as many clicks as the more clear and eye-catching font.

Here are the results from Pinterest reporting, I also share them in a table if you can’t read them too well:

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is madpin-media-ranking-fonts-pinterest-marketing-for-beginners-3.jpg
Font NamePin ClicksCTROutbound clicks
Marcellus480.36%49
League Spartan460.31%46
DM Sherif Display360.30%34
DM Sans330.30%34

Here are the clicks allocated per each creative:

Takeaways From This Case Study

Obviously, the type of your font will only matter if you get your pins to rank well and get impressions, without that nobody will get a chance to see your content.

As I have already said earlier, the font type doesn’t really matter for the algorithm, and will only play a role when your pins start ranking and generating impressions.

If you choose a font that’s hard to read, people will not click on it or save it, because on the mobile it might be very hard to see what the text says.

And that will automatically translate to a lower save rate, which is a bad bad thing on Pinterest.

Why?

Because it gives Pinterest a direct signal that people don’t save your content, so it can’t be that good. As a result, they won’t show it to many more people.

You have probably noticed that I didn’t use any script fonts in this case study because I presumed it would be a waste of my ad budget.

Script fonts (those that look like they’ve been handwritten) are really hard to read on mobile, and will not do well in the Pinterest feed.

They might look pretty and on brand, but on Pinterest your audience needs to be able to read your pin overlay on a mobile screen. Having a fancy font that nobody can read is pretty pointless.

But again, that’s something I presume and do not know for fact, so I will be adding it to my next testing schedule!

Drawbacks of This Case Study

In this section, I wanted to summarize the downfalls of testing with Pinterest, for complete transparency.

If you’ve already read the previous case studies, you can skip this section as it’s identical for all the case studies.

The Pinterest platform has unique drawbacks that do not allow you to run standard scientific tests because you have no control over many variables, and also because of the unique way they count impressions.

I did the best I could to get results that will make a difference, however, these are the things that present challenges to these results:

1. Impressions Quality

Technically, all impressions should have the same weight in determining the results, but this is not the case on Pinterest.

An impression doesn’t mean that the content was seen by anyone. Impressions are defined as at least one pixel of your pin being loaded for at least one continuous second.

So we can speculate, that some pins get a larger share of these bad quality impressions, when only a tiny fraction of the frame is visible, while others get better impressions and people actually get a chance to see the full pin.

2. Organic Results vs Paid Results

When you promote a pin or pay for a Pinterest ad, you can choose to have it displayed in search results for a specific keyword.

That means that the pin image will be in the top rows together with highest highest-performing organic content.

That will give our content impressions so we can determine what works, but it won’t tell us how to rank the content.

Getting clicks and saves on pins is a big part of the algorithm puzzle, so testing elements like these is crucial as it will tell us what resonates better with our audience.

3. Sample Size Issue

For a standard test, you would calculate the appropriate sample size (audience size) for your ad so you can get a good estimate of how accurate your results are, with 95% confidence being the standard for verifying results.

Due to the limitations of the platform I mentioned earlier, and also the fact that I didn’t want to burn hundreds of euros testing this, I kept the size to 10k impressions for each ad, which I think is a good baseline.

I am planning to run more tests, and rather stretch the budget across several tests instead of testing a single variable.

Want to Learn More?

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Lucia is a senior marketing professional with over a decade of experience in digital marketing. She is dedicated to helping bloggers and business owners grow their revenue through strategic and data based marketing strategies. Her areas of expertise include SEO, Pinterest marketing, branding, social media marketing, and e-commerce.

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