Reciprocity is the most powerful human effect. It has spanned every society and culture from the beginning of time. When someone gives you something, you feel obligated to give something back. That’s just how psychology is set up in our brains.
A quiz funnel can tap into this reciprocity principle by offering to give people their outcome in exchange for an email address. You can further improve the power of reciprocity by making the exchange optional for the quiz taker (meaning they can skip the opt-in and just see their results).
The way you ask questions in the quiz, prior to asking for the email exchange, is super important. You have to demonstrate that you can ask questions which are relevant to the quiz taker and their life situation. If you ask questions that don’t make sense, or don’t apply to, the quiz taker, then they won’t feel like you “get” them and they won’t want to make the trade at the end. After all, the trade is for you to give the quiz taker some valuable information about themselves, and if you can’t show the quiz taker that you at least understand them in the way you ask questions, then they won’t believe you can be helpful in the results either.
The concept of the quiz itself is also vital to the success or failure of the reciprocity principle. People must want what it is you are offering in the results if it’s going to be something worth reciprocating for. So you have to be addressing a topic, problem, or personality aspect, that people really want to know for themselves.
But if you address a topic that people want to know about for themselves, and you ask great questions that are relevant to the quiz taker, then the reciprocal effect at the end is very powerful, and on average, we’ve found that 40% of people take the trade and give their email in return for seeing their results, even when it is optional.