How to Create, Use and Promote Quizzes to Grow Your Email List

By Monica Montesa September 9, 2015

The following is a guest blog post from Josh Haynam, co-founder of Interact, a place for creating beautiful and engaging quizzes that help people grow their email list. He writes about new ways to connect and build trust with customers. You can connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Content marketers are always looking to get involved in the most innovative ways to collect new email subscribers. With their rising popularity in social media, quizzes have become a recurring motif on one of the largest platforms of lead generation.

It’s one thing to know about an effective method of lead generation, but it’s another thing to actually implement, execute and advocate these quizzes. This is where people are hesitant about testing the waters. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

In order to gently ease you into the world of quizzes, we’ll be going over some guidelines that will help you create an effective quiz of your own.

Still not convinced? We’ll even highlight three successful examples of how you can use quizzes as well as several distribution methods that drive traffic to your quiz.

Now that that’s settled, let’s jump right in.

Part 1: How to create a captivating quiz

There are several important aspects to keep in mind when it comes to creating your quiz.

Picking the right topic

Before you even start writing the questions for a quiz, you need to come up with the overarching concept. For most companies, the answer is pretty clear (like “Which Snack are You?” for a vending machine company, or “Which Luke Bryan Song are You?” for Country Outfitter.) 

For others, the subject is not as obvious. Here are some tips to help you pick out a topic:

• Know Your Audience: Create your quiz based on a specific group of people. Trying to cater to the entire world as an audience can be like pushing a boulder up a steep hill; it’s pretty much impossible. If your quiz targets a particular group of people that’s interested in the quiz, you’re more likely to strike the right chord with them, even if the size of their group isn’t big.
• Make it Personal: It’s a good rule of thumb to avoid making things personal, but this time around, we’re giving you permission to do so. Think of a person who would really enjoy your quiz, and design the quiz for them. This will help you develop a friendly quiz that is relevant to them. 

Create an alluring title

The title of your quiz is your first chance to capture interest from your audience. And as with any first impression, you have to make it count. Here are some title templates that consistently perform well and encourage clicks:

• The “Actually” Title: “How much do you actually know about basketball?” The “actually” title is is just a test of knowledge, but once you incorporate the word “actually” or “really,” it becomes a challenge. Who wouldn’t want a chance to prove himself?
• The Celebrity Comparison Title: “Which celebrity do you have more things in common with?” This template is incredibly similar to the personality quiz. You can easily replace the results in the quiz to be more relevant to your business.
• The “Which (blank) Are You?” Title: “Which rock are you?” These quizzes are based off of the traditional Meyers-Briggs personality quiz; just switch out the personality types with the appropriate results for your quiz topic, like this backpacker quiz below.

Question crafting

The moment you start asking questions in a quiz is the exact moment you’ve started a conversation with your quiz taker. This is where a quiz truly shines. Unlike other forms of content, a quiz is a one-on-one interaction where you can speak directly to a person to build rapport.

Here are a couple ways to build that conversation:

• Express Your Personality: To get the most out of your quiz and create a connection with your audience, inject your brand personality into it.
• Follow the ‘Pub’ Rule: Keep your quiz fun and lighthearted by asking questions as if you were hanging out with some friends in a pub. This rule comes from the Irish Post, a UK newspaper that reached Irish people living in London with a quiz that had questions written in a very conversational style. 
• Encourage Openness: Get as personal as possible with the people you’re talking to. Let them tell you about themselves through their answers on your quiz questions.

Design results worth sharing

The results of your quiz are an opportune moment to encourage social sharing, promote products and drive traffic back to your website. Here are some rules to follow to maximize your chances of success:

• Be Positive: We bask in the idea of sharing things that make us look good on social media. Make the results of your quizzes as positive as possible to encourage people to share your quiz. In the example below, AWeber does a great job of making the quiz-taker feel like a Marketing Pro.

• Don’t Lie: We want to be positive, but we don’t want to lie through our teeth either. Base your positivity on real facts. For example, if you tell someone that they’re a baobab tree, they’re resistant, strong, and shrugs off the years.
• Prepare to be Shared: Make sure your quiz results and quiz title bond nicely together. This way when someone shares their quiz results, it’ll look a little something like this: “I’m a baobab tree! Which tree are you?”

Part 2: Three ways to use quizzes

Quizzes are fun and interactive. Next, we’re going to take a look at three ways companies have used quizzes to promote their brand and collect subscribers.

Driving traffic and subscribers from the social web

Quizzes can bring social traffic back to your domain where your sales funnels can then go to work. Encourage quiz-takers to share their results on social media and include a link back to your website on products or topics you want to highlight to drive visits.

Generating new subscribers for your event

You can use quizzes to help your email list grow by presenting an opt-in just before displaying the result of a quiz. Most quizzes automatically respond to new sign-ups with a nice little thank you letter.

In the example above, AWeber combined a quiz and a giveaway to create a fun way to raise awareness of an upcoming event and get new email subscribers. The concept was simple: “What’s Your Marketing Superpower?” The quiz was a play on superhero abilities with a splash of marketing, creating a fun and interactive way to enter a contest and win a prize.

AWeber’s quiz was also short and simple. It consisted of seven text-based questions with multiple choice answers, all of which stuck to the marketing/superhero theme. 

After answering all seven questions, quiz takers were prompted with a sign up form that asked for their name and email address to receive the results. After they submitted their information, participants were automatically entered to win the prize and added to the event email list. 

So how did the quiz perform? AWeber’s quiz received 800 views, 162 completions, and 103 subscribers.

Gathering valuable information about your visitors

Quiz analytics can reveal extremely useful data about your web visitors. Understanding the kind of people visiting your site as well as their interests, can help formulate future content that will be more geared towards your audience.

Let’s take al look at The Foundation, which created a quiz called “Do You Have An Entrepreneurial Mind? Most People Don’t. Find Out Here.” The title challenged quiz takers to find out if they fell among the consensus of people that didn’t have an entrepreneurial mind. The true aim of the quiz was to match participants with similar-minded entrepreneurs.

The Foundation did an exceptional job of combining both text-based multiple choice questions with an image-based one to mix things up. Their quiz also consisted of only seven questions (seeing a trend here?). By keeping things short and simple, the quiz provided a fast and interactive way to engage with a company.

And it was extremely successful – The Foundation received 16,285 new email subscribers as a result. 

Part 3: Quiz distribution

Once you’ve concocted the perfect quiz for your marketing endeavors, you’ll want to promote it so that people can take it. Here are four easy ways to do so:

On your website or blog

A quiz can be easily embedded into any web page (similar to a YouTube video). When a quiz is on your website, all of the shares, links and comments happen on your domain.

Sharing on Facebook

There are two different options for sharing quizzes on Facebook:

• On Your Timeline: Sharing your quiz on your Facebook timeline is the easiest option for getting it out there. Just grab an image from your quiz and share it along with a link to take your quiz.

• In a Custom Tab: If you want a more permanent option on your Facebook page, embed it into a custom tab.

Tweeting on Twitter

Just like Facebook, it would be a good idea to use an image to visually represent your quiz. The exact time of day you share your quiz will have an impact on how much activity it gets. We recommend sharing it during the middle of a weekday, and then again a couple of more times in the following three days. After that, don’t share it again to avoid overwhelming your audience.

Email newsletter

Want to drive engagement to your website? Share your quizzes through an email newsletter. Make sure you provide a link that subscribers to a dedicated webpage or blog post just for your quiz.

Part 4: Class dismissed

How are we feeling? Are we a little more comfortable with creating a quiz? Lead generation is there, just waiting for you. All you have to do is jump right in and come up with a great quiz. To get started now, be sure to integrate Interact with your AWeber account. 

It isn’t easy making one, let alone watching it get popular, but once you have a firm grasp on how quizzes can be integrated into your content marketing, you can use them as a new way to reach and engage your audience. 

Just have a little faith in yourself, follow this guide, and you’ll do just fine.