It was only a matter of time before marketers figured out a way to benefit from Pinterest, and after that only a matter of time before ecommerce tool providers turned their attention to the platform to benefit from marketers asking that question: ‘What’s the ROI of social media?’.

Already boasting 10 million registered users, Pinterest’s potential for brands and online retailers is still being explored, but so far it’s allowing retailers to attract new customers as users share products to their social networks, to incentivise influential users who drive traffic to their site and as a market research tool it’s giving preference and taste data that can be used to optimise customer experience and even to direct future merchandising decisions.

Given the waves Pinterest is making in online retail, it’s probably no surprise that one of the first additional solutions is coming from an online retail personalisation service provider. iGoDigital has launched the Pinterest Tracking Tool with the aim of helping retailers understand and make use of the data collected by Pinterest.

iGoDigital’s existing offering includes personalisation product recommendations, and this new tool claims to let retailers “dig deeper into Pinterest data and use it to make smarter marketing and merchandising decisions” by tracking who is pinning products, quantifying their spheres of influence, and determining the revenue associated with users’ Pinterest activity.

iGoDigital president Eric Tobias says, “With more than 10 million registered users, retailers are seeing Pinterest as a way to inspire shoppers and drive traffic, but many brands have been unable to track, monitor or understand how Pinterest activity affects their bottom lines. The Pinterest Tracking tool will begin to give them this insight.”

And there are bound to be more to follow in this field as the social network’s implications for brands, retailers and marketers are explored, but it is perhaps the speed at which ecommerce metrics have arrived for Pinterest that is interesting in light of the continued discussion around ‘the ROI of social media’.