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I recently wrapped up the launch of the Confident Leader Catalyst, a program for my audience of Christian women leaders, and it has been exciting to see it all come together. There are a few things I did to have this launch go successfully, but one of the biggest aspects that contributed to it was growing my email list beforehand.
There are many ways to grow your email list such as creating lead magnets, and I’ll be writing about some of them in the coming weeks. However, today I want to focus on one specific method of growing your email list: by using a quiz.
In this post, I will share with you the exact steps I took to create and run my quiz, as well as how I shared it. The tool I used to create my quiz is Interact, so as we go through this post, I’ll be showing you the process from within my account.
Step 1: Come Up with Your Quiz Idea
Since my podcast is the Christian Woman Leadership Podcast, and my course is related to becoming a confident leader, I knew I wanted my quiz to be directly connected to this idea.
I started by sitting down and brainstorming ideas for the quiz. Since my goal is to help women become confident leaders, I decided that the quiz should help the woman identify where she is at on that journey.
I developed a framework called the 5 Stages of Confident Leadership, and created a description for each of these stages. All of this started on a blank sheet of paper, scribbling out my ideas. Then I moved it onto a Google Document where I created a table with columns for each stage and came up with categories for questions I could ask in the rows.
After that, I came up with action steps for each stage of leadership. This would allow her to not just find out what her stage was but also understand at least one thing she could do to move forward on her leadership journey.
I truly believe that the first part of growing as a leader is to identify where you are currently, so that was the goal with this quiz.
Step 2: Choose a Template
Now that I had my quiz idea mapped out, the 5 results I wanted to lead to, as well as the ideas for the types of questions I would ask, it was time to start setting up the quiz.
I logged into my Interact account and started by choosing a template. I chose to go with a template rather than starting from scratch because I liked the idea of having a framework to build upon. The templates give you a layout of results, questions, and answers, and then you can edit them to your liking.
I chose the category of “coaching” and then started with the template of “What’s Your Purpose in Life?” There are dozens of categories you can choose from, and then within the categories, there are several templates you can view.
Step 3: Customize the Look of the Quiz
Next up, I wanted to make sure the look of the quiz matched my branding as well as the title of the quiz. I changed the cover photo to a woman that represented the idea behind my quiz. I also edited the background color and the font to match my brand.
Step 4: Add the questions and answers
Within your quiz template, you are able to select a quiz style. I chose a “personality” style quiz because I wanted each person to get a result that was unique to them based on their answers.
The assessment and scored type of quizzes are valuable as well, but they were not what I was needing for this particular quiz.
After I customized the quiz, I needed to add in the questions I wanted them to answer in the quiz. I went back to my table where I had mapped out the results and the categories for questions I wanted to ask.
Then I developed the exact questions I wanted to ask and formulated answers based on the 5 different results.
For the first category “What I believe about myself”, I worded the question: How does leadership apply to you? You can see the answers I listed below the question as well.
For some of the questions, I had 5 answers which correlated with the 5 different stages of leadership. However some of the time, I did 4 answers and had one of the answers correlate with 2 stages.
Personally I feel this part of the process is the trickiest and the most important. That’s why the initial brainstorming and mapping out is really valuable. You want to make sure that your questions and answers make sense. And you also want to make sure the answers will correlate to one of your potential results.
Step 5: Create Your Results
Once the questions and answers are added to the quiz, you also want to add your results. Once again, I referred back to my table that I had created at the beginning. For each result, I created a description that summarized that particular stage of leadership.
I wanted to provide the woman with a description of where she is at currently, but also encourage her to take her next step.
Therefore, in that description I included a “Your next step” line. I also added a call to action to encourage her to join my private Facebook group.
Step 6: Integrate with Your Email Service Provider
Once the quiz was created, I needed to make sure that it was going to actually add people to my email list. So I went to the integration portion to connect my ConvertKit account.
Note: in order for this to work, you’ll also need to create forms or tags within your own email service provider. Within ConvertKit, I created a form for the Stages of Leadership Quiz. I also created 5 sequences: one for each of the 5 results.
Each person who opts in gets added to the form, and then they get the sequence based on their result.
In order to encourage people to opt-in rather than skip the step, I gave them some additional resources if they put in their email address. Those resources are delivered in the sequence email they will receive after signing up.
Step 7: Promote the Quiz
I’ll be honest: creating a quiz is not the simplest way to grow your email list. It takes intentionality and time to create a quiz that attracts the type of person you want to reach. After the work of creating your quiz, you need to make sure you promote it effectively.
Here’s how I promoted my quiz:
- I created a shortlink for the quiz so that it was easy to send people to my quiz. I did this using the PrettyLinks plugin within my WordPress site: https://estherlittlefield.com/leaderquiz
- I created a podcast episode specifically about becoming a confident leader. In this episode, I shared the 5 Stages of Confident Leadership and encouraged people to take the quiz.
- I created posts on my Facebook page and within my private group encouraging my audience to take the quiz
- I ran ads to the quiz to reach people beyond my already existing audience.
Step 8: Review Analytics
I started my quiz in September 2019 and it’s been live ever since. So far, over 1150 people have viewed the quiz, over 640 people have completed the quiz, and 73% of those who completed it joined my email list.
The quiz also has a 41% conversion rate, meaning that 41% of people who viewed the quiz completed it AND opted-in to join my list. If you know anything about email opt-in rates, you know that this is quite high, so I’m very pleased with these results.
You’ll want to take time to review your analytics to make sure the quiz is bringing the results you wanted. If you find that a lot of people are taking the quiz but not converting to leads, you may want to look at providing more value for them if they join your list.
Final Thoughts about Growing Your Email List with a Quiz
Creating a quiz is an excellent way to provide great value to your audience while also growing your email list. It is more work than some other ways of building your list, but I have found it to be very beneficial.
It’s very important to spend the time upfront to create your plan for your quiz. If you try to rush into creating the quiz before mapping out your idea and your results, you’ll likely end up with poor results. Also, I believe that your quiz will do best if it relates specifically to something your audience wants to know. It’s helpful to create content connected to the quiz so that you have an organic way to promote it.
For more help on how to create a quiz using Interact, check out this post.
