After 9 years in business, I’m ready to say it: Email marketing is THE most powerful form of marketing there is online. Especially in the digital and physical product industries. It has been the lifeblood of my business for 4 years running now and has helped me grow my digital download business to over 6 figures.
So what’s so great about email?
In one word: Personalization.
At its core, marketing is simply the act of sharing what you sell.
But marketing done well, is about presenting the right product to the right person at the right time.
When you’re solely using a tool like Instagram or Facebook to market your business, you lack the ability to line up the right offer for the right person when they are most likely to buy.
You publish one post that ships to the masses and hope someone, anyone will be primed for your product in the 28-48 hours that your post can survive in the algorithm.
Email allows you to connect with your customers in a way you never could with social media alone while simultaneously freeing up your time through strategic automation.
Tagging is an example of how email marketing allows you to get truly personalized in your marketing efforts. I’ve got dreams of long Target strolls with a Venti Pink Drink in hand, so let’s use our fave red big box as an example on how this works:
You sign up for Target’s email list to receive their weekly ads in your inbox.
As promised, those ads start showing up.
You never knew you wanted a golden leopard picture frame, but that Opalhouse room inspo is just calling your name and the frame is 30% off. You click that link in the email to shop the look and pat yourself on the back for being right on trend AND saving money. You go girl. ????
You know what Target did?
They learned something about you.
- You like the eclectic, global design aesthetic of Opalhouse products.
- You like leopard.
- You like to shop for home decor products.
You wanna guess what content is going to start showing up more and more in your emails?
- Opalhouse
- Leopard print
- New home decor
With email marketing software, everytime you send a subscriber to a spot on the internet via a link, you can connect a “tag” to that behavior to help you better get to know the likes, desires, needs, and wants of your potential customers so you can get more personalized in your marketing efforts toward them in the future.
Guess what I just bought online the other day…. Leopard print shorts. You know me so well, Targ. ????
In the past, email marketers had to spend quite a bit of time “learning” about your motivators as a customer to better personalize your experience. But now all that has changed.
Thanks to quizzes.
3 Reasons Why a Quiz Is the Perfect Lead Generator
#1 Quizzes Open the Door for Immediate Personalization
We live in an instant gratification world. When we’re interested in a product or idea, we want to be able to get it now. So while you will absolutely still want to play the long game of learning more about your customers’ preferences through tagging overtime, quizzes allow you to get personal right off the bat.
When created strategically, you can cut the learning phase down to minutes and get a clear understanding of what your new subscriber is most interested in as it relates to your products and services.
And you can deliver on that data through automated emails and a branded experience right away to present exactly the right product that will serve their needs and wants best.
#2 They Convert Like Crazy
Quizzes are pretty darn powerful lead magnets (aka opt-in). Using their database of 40,000 quizzes that have been taken over 50,000,000 times, Interact (the software I use to power my quiz!) found that quizzes average a 50% conversion rate for lead generation. That number may seem arbitrary, but the average email opt-in benchmark for websites is a staggering 1.95% per Sumo. So if 100 people visit your site this month, you’d get almost 2 new subscribers… if you’re average.
Now I bet that 50% conversion rate looks mighty fine! In fact, that is why Interact was created. They were seeing entire websites convert at only 1% in email lead generation until one of their clients came up with the idea for a quiz as an opt-in and the numbers blew the lid off any lead magnet they’d ever seen!
6 months after launching my new quiz, it consistently converts between 55-70%!
#3 They Create a Memorable Experience
One of the hardest things about e-books, guides, mini-courses, and the like as opt-ins is that you actually have to get your subscriber to consume and implement the content in order for them to be valuable. You’d think that if someone signs up for a freebie, they’d consume it, right? You’d be surprised by how many just plain don’t.
But why does that matter? Isn’t the goal to grow your email list? Who cares if they don’t read it?!
Well, it really does matter. Yes, opt-ins help grow your email list, but having a huge email list just for the sake of having a huge email list doesn’t do much for your bottom line.
The real goal is to grow an email list of leads who highly trust you and want what you have to offer.
Those freebies not only entice leads to exchange their email address but more importantly, they are created to engage your potential customers to further build trust and affinity with your business as you begin to nurture the relationship to lead to a sale. If they don’t consume your content and love it, you’re going to have a hard time convincing them to pull out their wallet when it comes down to the ask.
Quizzes are inherently different. Quizzes create a memorable experience! Your leads answer questions, have a little fun, might learn a thing or two right as they are answering, and they don’t have to download anything for the result.
People remember experiences far more than facts, figures, and lessons. I’m pretty sure that’s why they convert like crazy. ????
How to create a compelling opt-in quiz that converts (like crazy)
Quizzes are super fun for your website visitor to take, but let’s make sure your quiz sets you up to nurture your new lead and make the sale.
#1 Start Backwards from the End Goal
First things first… start at the end.
Decide WHAT the goal of your quiz is. Whether you are actively selling a service or product yet, your quiz should tee you up just perfectly to make the ask when the time is right.
Connecting the dots of your quiz theme to sales goals is key!
In case we haven’t had the joy of connecting just yet, I’m Megan. ???? A conversion-focused website designer creating Showit website templates at Megan Martin Creative and Community Leader and Educator for Digital Business Owners at The Digital Lab!
In my website design business, I have a few similar yet very distinct target customers. I serve the creative entrepreneur community through website templates and resources to help small business owners learn how to leverage their website to sell on auto-pilot, but within that market, I have a handful of target customers with different experiences.
For example, I serve both service-based and digital product-based business owners. They both have similarities as they both run businesses, but the type of business they run, their business models, and the day to day picture of their businesses are vastly different.
A service-based business owner is going to have a different customer buying journey than a digital product based business owner and therefore their websites are going to have vastly different needs.
The goal of my quiz?
Help my customers self-identify what type of business owner they are so I can tee up the perfect collection of website templates to help them to sell more and ultimately make a bigger impact through their unique talents.
#2 Reverse Engineer Your Quiz Questions
Once you have a quiz theme, continue working backwards by determining what the end results will be.
Make a list of the results and then under each, write statements that are true. You’ll start to see themes appear for each result list that you can create questions from. The answers that correlate to the end results are those statements of truth!
My quiz has 9 possible results. I have 4 main categories of business-type:
- Service-Based
- Digital Product Based
- Physical Product Based
- Multi-Passionate (you like to do different things… no shame, me too!)
For each category, there are 2 distinct levels, Building and Growing, depending on how far along in business the quiz taker is.
My 9th result is “Eager to Start” for my friends who have a big idea and dream, but haven’t quite gotten all their ducks in a row to begin.
So on my paper, I listed out each result at the top and then started writing statements that were true about that person.
For example, under “Building a Digital Business” I wrote a few things like:
- You’re dreaming of, in the middle of creating, or have created your first digital product.
- Whether you’ve sold none or have seen a couple cha-chings coming in, you are excited about the potential of this venture!
- But you feel a litttttle overwhelmed with all the foreign sounding tech things that these big digital boss pros keep talking about.
- You know you need to start and grow an email list, but what should you say to them? Which platform should you use? How do you get people to sign up? Help!!
- You know what you are creating is valuable, but you need help finding the right people. Let’s do it!
Take my quiz and you’ll see questions like, “What do you currently sell on your website?” and “If you could get my help on one thing, what would it be?”
If you answer “Digital Products” and “Email Marketing” respectively, I can probably guess that you are in smack dab in the world of building a digital business!
List out your results and then write those statements of truth. Then just flip them into questions where you can fill in the answers that correlate to your respective results!
#3 Build Out Impactful Results Pages + Email Automation
After a new lead takes your quiz, don’t leave them hanging!
A new subscriber is SUPER engaged at the point of popping in their email to get their quiz result, so it is the BEST time to deliver big value.
One way you can really deliver with a high-quality branded experience is to send them to a built out quiz result page that makes them feel seen, heard, and cared for to build the like, know, trust factor right off the bat.
Don’t be afraid to put your product or service in front of them on the results page. They are primed for the introduction!
If you use a tool like Interact to power your quiz, you can integrate it with your preferred email service provider (I love Convertkit!) to tag your subscribers with relevant information about them from their quiz results and even their individual question answers to begin that coveted personalized experience right off the bat.
And that is the real magic of quizzes!
You can create an automated welcome sequence unique to each quiz result that continues the conversation and opens the door for you to present the right product to the right person at the right time.
Even if you only have one product or one service to sell, the concept still works. You can simply tailor the messaging on each result page and automated email sequence to really dig in and employ every conversion copywriter’s secret: The Rule of One. (Get to know The Rule of One to write better copy that converts right here!)
It All Comes Back to Cultivating Confident Customers
With a quiz as your lead magnet, you are set up to have a deeper understanding of exactly who your subscriber is as it relates to your business. Moving forward, you can better show up in their inboxes with relevant and engaging content that serves them well while boosting confidence in you and your brand.
Cultivating confident customers is the key to long-lasting business success. Confident customers help do your marketing for you long after an email or social post. Confident customers are repeat customers. Confident customers feel like they are a part of something special. And they are.
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