In 2014, we published a profile of J.Crew‘s data-driven approach to content. (For a refresher, check out J.Crew’s Data-Driven Approach To Fashion And Marketing.)

Under the leadership of Mickey Drexler, J.Crew has proven that you can be both fashion-forward and analytically proactive. In just a few short years, the brand’s marketing efforts transformed from a print-only catalog to a robust suite of digital marketing and social media tactics.

In their 2014 S.E.C. filing, the brand disclosed that “J.Crew customers who engage with us via our social media outlets (facebook, twitter, Pinterest or Instagram) generally spend approximately 2x more than the average J.Crew customer.”

Yes, you read that right. By driving meaningful engagement across a variety of social media channels, J.Crew’s data-driven marketing has succeeded in cultivating an online audience that spends twice as much as the average customer.

The brand also highlighted the potential of visually-driven social networks to not only boost the brand’s cache, but also drive sales:

“Facebook is the current leading player in terms of size and time spent on site, but there are significant growth opportunities in our new visual platforms, such as Pinterest and Instagram.”

So has the brand successfully seized on the the “growth opportunities” of these “new visual platforms”? We used the TrackMaven platform to find out.

For J.Crew, Visually-Driven Content Succeeds On Instagram, Flounders On Pinterest

From Summer 2014 through Summer 2015, J.Crew saw astounding follower growth on Instagram. The brand doubled its Instagram audience size year-over-year with 107.33% follower growth. On Pinterest, the brand saw a steady 31.73% follower growth year over year.

Delving into J.Crew’s Instagram content strategy, we can see that the brand was impressively able to increase its output of Instagram content without sacrificing engagement.

Across the past year, J.Crew nearly doubled both its monthly output of Instagram content (up from 31 posts per month in May 2014 to 56 posts per month in May 2015) and its average interactions per picture (up from 8,730 average interactions per picture in May 2014 to 13,290 in May 2015).

On Pinterest, however, J.Crew’s content strategy didn’t fare as well. Year over year, the brand nearly tripled its volume of monthly Pinterest posting, up from 88 Pins in May 2014 to a high of 434 per month for a big holiday play in December 2014.

However, the increase in J.Crew’s output of Pinterest content met with declining average engagement levels. J.Crew’s average interactions per Pin dropped from 193 in May 2014 to only 72 in May 2015.

This pattern mimics Pottery Barn’s Pinterest problem, which we conducted a case study on for our Content Marketing Paradox report. From January 2014 through July 2014, Pottery Barn quadrupled its monthly output of Pins from 38 to 170. And with closer examination, it became clear that trouble was brewing; Pottery Barn’s Pinterest content was actually doing less and less for them.

Across the time period when their Pinterest output quadrupled, Pottery Barn’s engagement level (measured on Pinterest as the combination of Likes, Re-Pins, and Comments) was falling off a cliff. Pottery Barn’s average interactions per Pin decreased by nearly 75%, from a high of 402 in January to 109 in July.

With a revised content strategy, Pottery Barn was able to execute a Pinterest turnaround and regain higher levels of engagement by year’s end.

Will J.Crew be able to follow suit and pull-up the plane on Pinterest? We’ll be watching!

For more on the best ways to overhaul ineffective content strategies, get your copy of The Content Marketing Paradox report!