{"id":51734,"date":"2026-04-06T06:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T13:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tryinteract.com\/blog\/?p=51734"},"modified":"2026-04-06T06:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T13:36:10","slug":"reciprocity-the-secret-to-quizzes-for-email-list-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tryinteract.com\/blog\/reciprocity-the-secret-to-quizzes-for-email-list-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"Reciprocity: The Secret to Quizzes for Email List Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Getting someone to join your email list is an art and science experiment in how do you convince a person to join your email list when they weren’t previously planning to do so?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After analyzing, and speaking to the creators of, quizzes that have contributed to the 1 Billion total quiz views on Interact, and 100 million email subscribers converted, here is my supposition on why a quiz built on Interact has a 40.1% average conversion rate to email subscription over a 14 year span. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It all comes down to the principle or reciprocity. Specifically, people feeling like you made an effort to connect with them in the questions of your quiz. Which makes them feel like they owe you something in return. It’s not nefarious, and in fact, if you try to game this process it will completely fail. People can smell fake connection a mile away, and they will drop off from your quiz in a second. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asking questions to build connection is the final boss of knowing your customer. In order to ask a set of 7-12 questions, which is typical in a quiz, you have to know 7-12 unique things to ask about. Every question has to be on a different subject, which is something I learned there is actual scientific evidence on from Professor Ye Li, head of Behavioral Science at UC Riverside, when he appeared on our podcast<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So you have to ask a lot of questions, each question has to be about something different, and you have to ask questions that are specific, unique, and personal, to your audience. If you get even one wrong, it will burst the bubble and people will drop. Questions also can’t be leading, but they have to get to the heart of the issue at hand. When I interviewed Erin McGoff<\/a>, whose quiz has added 140,000 email subscribers to her list, she said that she had to modify some questions to get even more specific and divisive because if you leave them too general they won’t actually spark the reaction you want from people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So why am I talking about asking questions when we are trying to get to reciprocity where the quiz taker is at a deficit and feels the need to reciprocate? Because the fastest way to build connection with someone (intimacy, the normal kind, not romantic), is to be into someone. “Into-me-see?” If you are into someone, meaning you are paying attention to them, acknowledging them, speaking into their world, you will build intimacy almost instantly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asking questions that show definitively you know what is going on in the world of your ideal customer is how you can build enough of a reciprocity deficit in a quiz to where you get a 40.1% conversion rate at the end of the quiz when you ask people if they would like to join your email list. Then they feel like it’s only right to join your email list because you’ve given them so much value in just seeing them as a person in the way you asked them questions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the secret to growing your email list with quizzes is to ask questions so relevant and compelling, that by the time someone finishes answering those questions, they feel like you’ve done a PHD in them as a person, and when you ask them if they’d like to join your email list, they think “Of course, if you did that much work to really understand me, I’d like to hear more!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Getting someone to join your email list is an art and science experiment in how do you convince a person to join your email list when they weren’t previously planning…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51735,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tutorials"],"yoast_head":"\nReciprocity: The Secret to Quizzes for Email List Growth | Interact Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tryinteract.com\/blog\/reciprocity-the-secret-to-quizzes-for-email-list-growth\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" 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