How to Build Your Email List Using Quizzes

For your business to succeed, you need customers. You’re looking for people who will buy your products or book your services. You can’t have a viable business if people don’t give you money in exchange for something.

So you need people. But where do you find them? How do you connect with them? How do you tell them about your business?

For many business owners, they’re now finding those customers online. They’re connecting with them through ads and social media. Business owners are marketing their businesses through blog posts and social media posts.

But then what? How do you move the relationship to you reaching out to your potential customer, instead of waiting for them to come to you?

The answer, my friend, is an email list. (You probably got that from the title, right? 😉)

For many business owners, the struggle is actually getting those people onto the list. You can’t just randomly add people to your list because of CAN-SPAM and other privacy laws, so you need something that will make them want to join your list.

That’s why we’re talking about how you can build your email list with quizzes. Some of the things that we’ll discuss include:

  • Using a quiz as a lead magnet;
  • Steps to using a quiz on Interact to build your email list;
  • What to do after they’re on your list.

By the time we’re finished, you’ll be ready to make a fabulous quiz and grow your list. 

Let’s get started!

Using a quiz as a lead magnet

When the internet was new, people were fans of getting emails. They would sign up to get emails from all of their favorite companies. There was nothing more exciting than logging in to your inbox and hearing those three little words that made your heart sing. 

It was the best feeling to know that somebody wanted to talk to you. 

Time passed, the number of emails that a person receives everyday grew, and the emails in our inbox no longer fill us with joy. 

Probably because it’s predicted that there will be 321 billion emails sent DAILY in 2021. With only about 7.8 billion people on the planet, that’s a lot of emails!

For a business owner, what that means is people are a lot more thoughtful about signing up for an email list than they used to be. Which means business owners have to be a lot more convincing to get them to subscribe.

Enter the lead magnet

This powerful tool goes by many names. Some people call it a freebie. Others call it an opt-in. Sometimes, it’s called a free gift or a content upgrade. They all mean the same thing.

Your lead magnet is something that you offer that entices people to give you their email address to get whatever you’re offering. 

Just as a lead magnet can have many names, it can take many forms. A discount code or coupon that an eCommerce business offers is a lead magnet. A trial to your SAAS product is a lead magnet. Offering additional resources that complement a blog post you write qualifies.

And a quiz built on Interact is a very powerful lead magnet. (It’s definitely our favorite!)

Since the goal of a lead magnet is to convince people to give you their email address, you have to make sure that what you’re offering is interesting and attractive to the right people. This means that not everyone who sees your ad, social media post, or blog post is the right person. 

Traditionally, the median conversion rate for a lead magnet landing page is between 3-5.5%. That means that for every 100 people who see your lead magnet, 3-5 of them will join your list. It’s not very encouraging. 

There are, however, lead magnets that do significantly better than that 3-5%. Some examples of this are Interact customers like Tonic Site Shop, who has a quiz that’s converting at 65%, or Jenna Kutcher, who adds about 5,000 to her email list per week through her quiz

Imagine if you could add that many people to your email list on a regular basis!

This makes people wonder why quizzes are so effective when you want to build an email list. How does a quiz convince someone to give their email address to get a quiz result?  

There are a few reasons that quizzes work:

  • They teach people about themselves.
  • They let a business show value.
  • They’re fun.

Quizzes teach people about themselves

People are interested in themselves. They like talking about themselves, they spend time thinking about themselves, and they like to learn about themselves. An Interact post about how to create a Buzzfeed-style quiz discusses the effectiveness of using words like “you” and “your” in quiz titles. Studies have shown that blog post titles containing questions with “ you” in the title have a higher click-through rate than declarative titles. 

People respond to these blog posts because they want to learn about themselves.

Likewise, quizzes can teach quiz-takers about themselves. A quiz might help the quiz-taker recognize a struggle that they’re experiencing. Then, the quiz results can give ideas on how that struggle can be resolved, specifically with the business’ products or services. 

Can you think of anything better for a business than the opportunity to teach the quiz-taker about themselves and promote itself?

Quizzes let a business show value 

Quizzes are like a sample of a business’ offerings. I once heard Ryan Deiss of Digital Marketer say, the goal of a trip wire is to convince people to give you money (buy a low-cost item) or give you time (test out a free trial). If you can do that and show value, they’re more likely to buy from you again. I’m paraphrasing, but that was the gist of what he said.

A quiz can do that, too. When people give their own time to taking your quiz, you have the opportunity to show them value by giving them insights into themselves. Of course, to make that happen, you want to make sure that you’ve got a fabulous quiz that provides value to your quiz-takers.

Quizzes are fun

It’s important to remember that taking a quiz should be a positive experience. When you’re creating the quiz, you can keep it fun by including GIFs, pop culture, and images. You also want to make sure that it isn’t too long and that the quiz results have a positive tone. While people are open to ideas for improvement, they also want to be reminded of things that they’re good at

If your quiz is a positive experience for your quiz-takers, they’re more likely to have a positive impression of your business. When they have a positive impression, they’re more likely to buy from you or hire you. 

It’s important to know that creating a quiz for business results needs to have a balance. You don’t want your quiz to be too heavy on the business so that it’s not a positive experience for the quiz-taker. You also don’t want it to be all fun, so that it doesn’t provide value. Make a quiz that has both, and you’ll build your email list in a flash!

Now that you understand why you want to use a quiz to grow your list, it’s time to learn how to build it.

Steps to build your email list with a quiz

When you’re creating a quiz, there is a basic format that you follow. No matter what industry you’re in, you will need to:

  1. Decide on a topic that attracts people
  2. Create valuable quiz results
  3. Ask good questions in your quiz
  4. Create an optin form that works
  5. Optimize for social sharing
  6. Connect your email list

Let’s walk through each of these steps so you’re ready to create a quiz that converts. For each of these steps, I’ve got some examples of quizzes that work. 

Decide on a topic that attracts people

When you’re creating a quiz, you need to choose a topic that relates to your business. While quizzes created for fun can be on any topic, a quiz that you make specifically for marketing your business should build a connection in your quiz-takers’ minds between your quiz and what you do. If you’re in the taxidermy business, a pop culture quiz on your favorite TV show might not be the most effective choice. 

You also want a quiz that interests people. If your quiz topic isn’t interesting, people won’t take your quiz. No matter what your niche is, you can find a topic that people will want to take a quiz on. 

The wonderful thing about this is you can be creative in how you connect your quiz topic to your business. Chanteuse Marie of Blockbuster Copy Co. has the perfect example of this. She’s a copywriter who specializes in launch copy. She creates email copy, sales page copy, and quizzes. 

Her quiz topic is about product launches and she connects it with movies. She includes red carpet moments, actors, and the quiz results are types of funnels as movie titles. Since people love movies and business owners recognize the importance of launches and funnels, her quiz topic is definitely a hit!

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If you’re struggling to come up with a topic for your quiz, there are a few ways that you can find ideas: 

  • Check out the Interact quiz templates and find one that you could adapt and use for your business. There are hundreds of templates of templates in almost 50 different categories, so you’re sure to find a quiz topic that fits.
  • Look at popular quizzes on Buzzfeed or Zimbio and see how those topics can be adapted to your business. 
  • Identify top-performing blog posts on your site and create a quiz where the results can lead to those posts.
  • Create a quiz that connects with an upcoming holiday or event.

Create valuable quiz results

Since your quiz is like a sample of your business, you want to make sure that your quiz results show value. They need to connect with your topic, have a positive tone, and provide insights to your quiz-takers. Some quiz creators go above and beyond in their quiz results and create landing pages for their quiz results. These landing pages provide so much value that people can’t wait to buy from them!

One company that does this especially well is Primally Pure Skincare. Their deodorant quiz (Yes, deodorant!) does much more than simply provide a product recommendation in their results. The quiz gives personality results to show how their product recommendation matches the personality. They educate quiz-takers on why natural deodorant is better, and they share testimonials, both written and video, from happy customers. The result page also includes comparisons to other natural deodorants. And, of course, there are the Shop Now buttons that take quiz-takers directly to their store to buy the deodorant.

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Other ways that you can provide value in your quiz results include:

  • Link to resources that would benefit the personality type. These could include blog posts, podcasts, or products. Jenna Kutcher’s quiz recommends specific podcast episodes for each quiz result.
  • Include a special bonus that fits with your quiz result. Tonic Site Shop adds a cocktail recipe AND a playlist for each of their results. Those are fun, unexpected bonuses that people love.

Ask good questions

After you’ve created your results, you need to make sure that your quiz asks the right questions. Your quiz questions should be a mix of providing insight about your quiz-taker and fun. You can include image choices and GIFs to provide variety to your audience. When you’re creating your quiz, you can include a mix of question types, as well.

We’ve got additional tips for creating engaging quiz questions, so be sure to check those out!

When creating your quiz, you also want to make sure that the question answer choices lead to the results you offer. In a personality quiz, you can connect your answer choices to one result or more than one result. Make sure whatever answer choice you connect makes sense with that quiz result. 

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Notice how some answer choices go to one result and some go to more than one result.

If you’re creating a scored quiz, you will need to set the scoring for each question. As you add more points to your quiz, the score range will automatically adjust for your quiz results. You can also manually adjust the score ranges like in the picture below. For more information on setting your scoring range, read how to create a scored quiz.

Create an opt-in form that works

 After you’ve added your quiz questions, it’s time to create an opt-in form that gets people to respond. If the whole purpose of your quiz is to build your email list, your opt-in form has a very important job. 

It’s also an area that many people neglect. 

I get it. When you get to the step in the process where you create the opt-in, you’re tired. You’ve worked hard to create this amazing quiz, and you just want to be done. The only thing that the opt-in page does is let people enter their email address and name. Do you really need to spend time on the form?

Yes, you do. You want the form to work as hard as the rest of your quiz for your email list. You want it to make sure the opt-in form fits with the language of your quiz and the branding of your quiz. It’s also a good idea to include why people should want to subscribe to your list. Share the value that your list will bring to them. 

Interact provides a solid starting point for the opt-in form. It gives you everything you need to make people want to opt-in. 

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They even highlight what you should change to customize the form. It’s a good idea to edit the information at the top to match the language of your quiz. You can change the wording of the button and the color to match your brand. It’s possible to add additional fields for information that you need from your new subscribers, including last name, company name, phone number, and zip code. 

When you’re deciding what to include in your opt-in form, be sure that you only ask for the minimum information that you need to know. People are hesitant to share personal information, so you should explain why you need any extra information that you want them to share.

It’s also a best practice to give the quiz-taker the opportunity to opt out of sharing their email address. You will miss out on some people’s email addresses, but you’ll know that the people who share their email addresses with you are ones that want to hear from you. They’re then more likely to open your emails and you’ll have a healthier email list. 

Optimize for social sharing

When you’re creating a quiz to grow your email list, social media is a powerful tool. That’s why people will share their lead magnets on the social networks that they use. But, the power of social media is it’s social. There are lots of people there!

You don’t want your quizzes and other lead magnets to only be visible to your Facebook friends and Instagram followers. Think of how many people would see your quiz if some (or all!) of the people who take your quiz recommended it to their social media followers. Then those people could take the quiz and share it to their friends. Imagine how you could grow your list like that.

Creating positive quiz results can be helpful in getting social shares. People are more likely to share results that make them look good. We want to present the best version of ourselves on social media. If your quiz makes people look good, they’re more likely to share their results with others.

Another way that you can optimize your quiz for the social share is by asking for it on your quiz results. In the example below, you’ll notice that the call to action (CTA) for the quiz specifically asks for the social share. 

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If you have another CTA that you need to include for your business, you don’t want to ask for the social share there. However, you can always include the Share Your Results at the bottom with your preferred social media platforms. Plus, Interact lets you customize your quiz social settings to make them even more powerful. You can change the social sharing image, text, the link, and you can choose where you want the social sharing buttons to show up. 

You can decide how to best optimize your quiz to get shared!

Connect your email list

Once you’ve created your quiz, you’re ready to set up the tool that will add your new subscribers to your list. You have to connect your email marketing platform to your quiz. Since Interact connects to A LOT of email platforms, I’m not going to share the steps of how to connect to each one. 

Basically, you’ll choose your email platform from the list and add your API key found in your email account. If your email platform doesn’t have a native integration with Interact, you can usually connect through Zapier and use that app to pass the information to your email marketing service. 

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Once you’ve connected your email platform, you will be able to add your new subscribers to your email list. You’ll be able to segment them according to their quiz results and answers to specific questions on your quiz. You can add them to lists, segments, and automations depending on how they answer. It’s even possible to update custom fields with information from your quiz. You can use all of this information as you nurture the relationship with your new subscriber.

What to do after they’re on your list

Growing your email list doesn’t stop once you get that email address. It’s what happens next that matters. 

The goal of email marketing is to encourage your subscribers to take that next step with you. For some businesses, the next step is to schedule a phone call. Another business might want their new subscribers to sign up for a trial. Some business owners might have a goal of purchasing one of their products. No matter what the next step for your customers is, getting their email address lets you continue the conversation to get to that next step. 

The wonderful thing about email marketing platforms is that they can let you set up automations that help you continue those conversations without having to write individual emails to every single person that gets added to your list. While I love writing emails and I do it a lot, I don’t have time to write to hundreds or thousands of people every day!

What that means is you need to take time to write quality emails that will be delivered to people automatically after they take your quiz. You want your follow-up email sequence to connect with your new subscribers and nurture the relationship. When you continue to show up for your new subscribers and give value, they’ll want to move on to that next step, whatever it may be.

You’re now ready to build your email list. You’ve got all of the information you need on why quizzes make amazing lead magnets. We also talked about the steps to setting up your quiz, including how to:

  • Decide on a topic that attracts people;
  • Create valuable quiz results;
  • Ask good questions in your quiz;
  • Create an optin form that works;
  • Optimize for social sharing;
  • Connect your email list.

Finally, we discussed the importance of nurturing the relationship with your new subscriber in your email marketing.

Now go and grow your list with a quiz!

What is the best quiz for you business?

Quizzes are super effective for lead generation and selling products. Find the best quiz for your business by answering a few questions.

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