Grow your email list, grow your email list! This mantra is drilled into our brains from the day we start a blog.
And sure enough, sooner or later, we learn that in order to make real money from our blogs, we need to create great content so that we can gain the trust of our readers so that they’ll sign up to our email lists so that we can send them more great content and eventually sell them a paid product.
Yes?
Yes. So we look for ways to creatively get people to sign up for our email lists. We try…
- Opt-in forms in our sidebars, post footers, headers, etc.
- Various sign up pages throughout our blog
- Resource libraries
- Opt-in freebies like eBooks, free courses, product previews, etc.
- Content upgrades within our blog posts
Well now I’ve been playing with a fun new way to grow your email list:
- Quizzes!
Everyone loves quizzes. Whether it’s an assessment quiz or a personality quiz like “Who’s your celebrity boyfriend?” these are shared all over social media and people eat em up.
For a long time, I had wanted to create a quiz to help people determine which blogging platform was best for them and I finally decided to try it a few weeks ago using an awesome new quiz and giveaway software, called Interact.*
By the way, this post contains some affiliate links (denoted by a *) which means I will receive a small commission should you choose to make a purchase through these links on this page. In full disclosure, I received an upgrade to Interact’s paid plan in exchange for my honest review. My review is based completely on my own experience with the software and Interact is not responsible for any content on this page. Read my full disclosure here.
Interact provides an easy and super fun way for bloggers like you and I to grow our email lists by allowing us to embed a quiz directly on our blogs or share it on social media.
You can create three different types of Interact quizzes:*
- Assessments, which tests someone’s knowledge on a specific subject,
- Score (or Tallied) Quizzes, which gives each quiz taker a score range depending on their answers, or
- Personality Quizzes, in which each quiz taker gets a certain personality applied to them that they can share with their friends.
Here’s a Personality Quiz quiz I recently created. Try it out and see where you land!
So far this quiz has helped me grow my email list by about 100 new subscribers a week. I probably could be gaining more but I haven’t promoted it nearly as much as I should be. Still, I think it’s a good start.
Related: 7 List Building Engagement Tips to Impress Your New Subscribers
Creating a quiz is super simple. The Interact dashboard walks you right through each step and this “Best Practices for Creating Lead Generation Quizzes” post helps a lot.
One thing I really like about Interact is that if you use ConvertKit,* you can tailor your email sequences depending on the results people get.
So for example, if someone gets a result that WordPress is the tool for them, I can send them an email sequence all about starting a blog on WordPress. If it turns out they are a Blogger Blogger, then I can send them a start a blog sequence specifically for the Blogger platform!
If you use ConvertKit* too, it’s really easy to do this, just follow these instructions.
A few things to note when building your first quiz
Choose an Intriguing Topic
You’ll want to create a quiz that people actually want to know the results of. You also want to make it fun.
Think it Through
It does take some forethought and planning to create a successful quiz. You first have to think about the quiz results you want to show and create graphics for each one. For example, mine were WordPress Wonder, Squarespace Savvy, Wix Wiz, etc. I wanted each result to have its own graphic to make it more interesting.
You also have to think hard about the questions you want to ask. Make sure they’re not repetitive (I had some that were at first), and make sure they help to differentiate the various results so the quiz has a chance to actually give the various results as answers. You don’t want everyone to get the same result!
But don’t let this stop you from publishing a quiz now!* You can always start with one, then improve it over time. Pay attention to where people drop off and where they may not finish the quiz. You can see this in the analytics!
Test Your Quiz Many Times Before Publishing
After you’ve published your quiz, each time you go in to edit something then republish, the stats will restart. If you’re on a free plan, you will lose any previous stats, so be sure to download them first or lose them forever. However if you are on a paid plan, you will have access to any previous sets of stats.
Test Your Email Sequence!
Newb mistake right here folks! If you took my quiz in the first week or so, you may have noticed that my new email sequence was not formatted correctly. Oops! That was something I had forgotten to test before promoting my quiz. Don’t let this happen to you!
Grow Your Email List Today by Creating a Free Quiz Now
Interact* has a free plan that allows you to create a quiz and test it out, so go ahead and try it now. Keep in mind however, that you won’t be able to capture emails on the free plan. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try it out. A viral quiz will bring you traffic regardless!
Another thing you can do with Interact is create Giveaways! This is another great way to not only grow your email list, but to also get additional followers and shares on social media! You can give people extra entries by sharing or following you on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest.
A paid plan will allow you to add your own logo, track conversions, and generate leads by integrating with the following email services providers: ActiveCampaign, Aweber, Campaign Monitor, Constant Contact, ConvertKit, Drip, GetResponse, Klaviyo, MadMimi, Mailchimp and Zapier. Paid plans start at $29 a month.
Regardless of which plan you opt for, Interact has great customer service. They even have a live chat option so if you’re stuck on anything at all, help is just a click away.
So, did you take the quiz? Which answer did you get and does it sound right to you? Tell me down below!
And don’t forget to try out an Interact quiz* today to grow your email list!
Hey Marianne,
The state of content marketing is constantly changing, so marketers have to keep up with the pressure of adapting when necessary.
Not every brand has a concrete marketing strategy to grow their email list, and most marketers spend months on end along with a percentage of their revenue testing various forms of content to see which would benefit their brand in the long run.
Quizzes are a fantastic way to both generate leads and gathering information about your visitors all while they are having fun. Eventually, thanks for sharing your best experience with us.
With best wishes,
Amar kumar
I’m glad you agree Amar, have you created any quizzes yet for your lead generation goals?
I have really been struggling with my email list – this has given me some refreshed ideas! Thank you!!
That’s awesome Summer, glad it’s helpful to you!
Hi Marianne,
Great tips and I’ve heard a lot of people using quizzes to grow their email list. I actually see pins on Pinterest linking to their quizzes.
I haven’t heard of Interact, but I do have a quiz plugin I picked up from Thrive. To be honest I haven’t used it 🙂
I wasn’t really sure what kind of quiz to start. I guess I just need to get a little creative and think of a quiz that someone wouldn’t mind taking.
Thanks for sharing these tips with us and show us how your building your email list.
100 subscribers is NOT too shabby considering that you haven’t really done a lot of promotion.
Those newbie mistakes that you made in the beginning. We all make them, thanks for sharing yours. Now we know what to look out for when we set up our quizzes 🙂
Good luck with your quiz and I’ll let you know when I set mine up.
Have a great weekend 🙂
Susan
Hey Susan, thanks for sharing your thoughts, I can see that it might be difficult to think of a quiz, but I think it works really well to compare different options or help someone make a decision, even if it’s just for fun. I would imagine that a fun quiz, like a personality type one, would be more viral than a serious one like mine, but I didn’t want to do a silly quiz for the sake of doing a silly quiz. Although maybe that’s not such a bad idea. Of course you have to be a lot more creative with those, right?? 🙂
Thanks for the tips Marianne!
I have Interact opened in a different tab right now! Haha
I’ve never made a quiz before so I’m a little nervous, but excited to try it 🙂
Also going to get to work on my first giveaway as well.
Hey Eli, that’s awesome! I will admit, it took a lot more thought and preparation than I originally thought it would, but it’s a pretty darn cool opt-in and I love offering it as many have found it quite useful.
I have not used email as my marketing strategy. And I still need a lot of learning to manage and develop this email marketing
Email marketing is one of the best strategy of all time, and literally, it’s my favourite one. But the building of good email lists are very difficult, the quiz technique you introduced in this post is going to be very helpful for me. I will surely try this technique in my email hunting campaign. Let me say thank you for this amazing technique @MARIANNE love you.
You’re welcome, glad you enjoyed the post.
Thanks for your sharing! It helps a lot. Can I ask you how to have a justified alignment that gives clean, crisp edges to your text? We have that in Word, but I find it hard to do so on the online platform. Thanks!