Today I was lured in by gamification. I opened my Twitter window and the second post was a link to a quiz to see if a company could guess which state I was born in based on my answers to questions. I was obviously an easy mark today because 99 percent of the time I ignore this this type of gamification. Their guess was New Jersey; I was born and raised in Nebraska. The completely off-the-mark results are why this particular gamification technique rarely gets a click out of me. I am the minority. There are quizzes out there with more than 20 million unique visitors (there are probably many more out there with 100 or less unique visitors too).
One way is to use a quiz to build your business is to use it to build your email list. The quiz I competed did not request my email address. For me that requirement probably would have been a deal breaker, which is why many businesses choose not to ask for an email address upfront. Here are some pros and cons if you are going to request an email address for your quiz.
Cons
People guard their email addresses and will not do a quiz that requires an upfront email. Gone are the days when the phrase “You have mail.” excites people. I rejoice when I receive fewer than 25 emails in a day. One (sneaky) way I have seen businesses get around the upfront email issue is to require an email address to get the quiz results after the quiz has been completed. I am sure there is psychological research out there stating that some big number (like 95%) of people will give you their email address once they have invested the time to complete your survey.
Most of your new subscribers will not be your ideal clients. It takes a lot of test and revamp to create a survey that effectively attracts target subscribers and many business owners are simply spread too thin to develop an effective lead-generation quiz.
You will have a high ratio of unsubscribes. Because your quiz is not effectively attracting your ideal clients you will probably see alarmingly high unsubscribe rate. Most business owners will give up on online quizzes that first time when they get 300 subscribers and 290 unsubscribe after the first email.
Pros
You can get a lot of subscribers quickly. With a fun topic (and probably an ad buy) you can get 100 - 1,000 (or more) new subscribers to your email list in less than a week. 96 percent of people who start a quiz finish it, so that makes collecting those back-end email addresses a breeze.
People can share your survey to broaden your reach. Many surveys have a share-to-social-media option to enable users to post their results to their social media feeds and many users are happy to share their results. If your quiz results align with your user’s desires, they will be very likely to click that share button. For example, if I did a “Which Star Trek Character Are You?” and my favorite character, Spock, was the answer I would be more likely to share the results with my friends, who would then do the quiz to see who they would be. (I searched and found a Star Trek character quiz created by the Science Channel just now and I was Spock! -- HINT -- The last question had an obvious response that would indicate the user preferred Spock.)
You can direct survey finishers to specific follow-up sequences. To get more targeted subscribers that will more likely stay on your list, some quizzes do not require an email to get results. Instead these businesses place an opt-in offer on the results page. Perhaps you are an image consultant, so you create a “Which Project Runway Designer Are You?” quiz. On the results page that says I am Mondo Guerra, in addition to the share buttons, you would place an image and link to your free report, “10 Ways to Look Stylish on a Budget”. Because these subscribers (although much fewer in number than if you had required an email address from everybody) choose to get your report, they are more likely to stay subscribed to your list and continue reading your emails.
There are many other forms of gamification you can use in your marketing, pick one and test it for yourself.
Until next time…
Have a great day,
Susanne
Check out my upcoming workshops here!
One way is to use a quiz to build your business is to use it to build your email list. The quiz I competed did not request my email address. For me that requirement probably would have been a deal breaker, which is why many businesses choose not to ask for an email address upfront. Here are some pros and cons if you are going to request an email address for your quiz.
Cons
People guard their email addresses and will not do a quiz that requires an upfront email. Gone are the days when the phrase “You have mail.” excites people. I rejoice when I receive fewer than 25 emails in a day. One (sneaky) way I have seen businesses get around the upfront email issue is to require an email address to get the quiz results after the quiz has been completed. I am sure there is psychological research out there stating that some big number (like 95%) of people will give you their email address once they have invested the time to complete your survey.
Most of your new subscribers will not be your ideal clients. It takes a lot of test and revamp to create a survey that effectively attracts target subscribers and many business owners are simply spread too thin to develop an effective lead-generation quiz.
You will have a high ratio of unsubscribes. Because your quiz is not effectively attracting your ideal clients you will probably see alarmingly high unsubscribe rate. Most business owners will give up on online quizzes that first time when they get 300 subscribers and 290 unsubscribe after the first email.
Pros
You can get a lot of subscribers quickly. With a fun topic (and probably an ad buy) you can get 100 - 1,000 (or more) new subscribers to your email list in less than a week. 96 percent of people who start a quiz finish it, so that makes collecting those back-end email addresses a breeze.
People can share your survey to broaden your reach. Many surveys have a share-to-social-media option to enable users to post their results to their social media feeds and many users are happy to share their results. If your quiz results align with your user’s desires, they will be very likely to click that share button. For example, if I did a “Which Star Trek Character Are You?” and my favorite character, Spock, was the answer I would be more likely to share the results with my friends, who would then do the quiz to see who they would be. (I searched and found a Star Trek character quiz created by the Science Channel just now and I was Spock! -- HINT -- The last question had an obvious response that would indicate the user preferred Spock.)
You can direct survey finishers to specific follow-up sequences. To get more targeted subscribers that will more likely stay on your list, some quizzes do not require an email to get results. Instead these businesses place an opt-in offer on the results page. Perhaps you are an image consultant, so you create a “Which Project Runway Designer Are You?” quiz. On the results page that says I am Mondo Guerra, in addition to the share buttons, you would place an image and link to your free report, “10 Ways to Look Stylish on a Budget”. Because these subscribers (although much fewer in number than if you had required an email address from everybody) choose to get your report, they are more likely to stay subscribed to your list and continue reading your emails.
There are many other forms of gamification you can use in your marketing, pick one and test it for yourself.
Until next time…
Have a great day,
Susanne
Check out my upcoming workshops here!
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