Growing your email list can feel like an uphill battle. You get five subscribers! You send an email newsletter – you lose seven subscribers. Get four new subscribers – lose eight on the next email. There’s just no winning the email marketing game!
Okay, so that is (hopefully) a little dramatic, but we’ve all been there. It feels like you’ll never get ahead with your email list and you’re about ready to give up.
Don’t despair yet! There’s a great email growth opportunity just waiting for you: opt-in quizzes. By creating a quiz, you’re giving your audience instant gratification (quiz results) PLUS further value through opting into your email list. Quizzes allow you to better qualify and segment your email list, too, since you can tag subscribers based on their answers within your quizzes. Want to learn how to do this? Read on, my friend.
How to grow your email marketing list and generate client leads with quizzes
There are a lot of ways out there to grow your email list. Quizzes are by far my favorite, though! I don’t know about you, but creating PDF after PDF of opt-in freebies is just not my cup of tea. Quizzes, on the other hand, allow me to quickly target specific interests, engage a variety of audience segments, and NOT put hours and hours into it.
If you’re unsure where to start with the content for your first quiz, check out this comprehensive opt-in quiz tutorial!
Once you have your quiz outlined, hop back over here to learn how to use Interact + ConvertKit to create a powerful engine for email list growth.
Why quizzes can be more powerful than other email list growth methods
Like I mentioned before, quizzes provide instant gratification. You’re trying to decide which CRM is right for your business? A list of features side-by-side for comparison is not going to be as powerful in the decision-making process as taking a quiz. Through a quiz, you can tap directly into someone’s preferences without biasing them as much towards a certain result.
For example, in my Dubsado vs. 17hats quiz, I was able to not only ask text questions but also show various areas of the actual CRM interfaces and allow the quiz taker to choose which one appeals to them more. By engaging multiple senses, the quiz taker is more engaged and can immediately see the value you’re providing them. Through a simple quiz, you may be able to answer a question that has been nagging at them for months!
Quizzes also give you the chance to get a deeper look into your subscribers’ motivations and needs. Since you can tag quiz takes in Interact based on their answer to specific questions (more on that in a moment!), if one of your quiz questions indicates to you that someone is ready for one of your services or products, you could tag them in ConvertKit so you know to include them in your next campaign.
Having this kind of engagement and in-depth view of your subscribers can change your entire approach to email marketing AND help you deliver top-tier customer service!
How to use Interact + ConvertKit to grow your email list
First things first: you need to create a signature opt-in quiz. Yes, you can create blog post-specific and even page-specific quizzes, but if you want to grow your core audience, a signature opt-in quiz is key. This gets your subscribers in on the ground floor and welcomes them into your brand. Since Interact lets you choose a quiz to use as an announcement bar (think Hello Bar) and/or a popup (like so many of us use for regular email list opt-ins), this becomes the first quiz many of your website visitors will see and… well, interact with!
Aside from just creating that quiz, you need to connect that quiz with ConvertKit, of course. You can do this while setting up your quiz by enabling lead capture (when creating a quiz, it’s the very first option in the top left corner, under the Interact logo):
Before you actually connect ConvertKit itself, Interact will have you set up your opt-in form. It’s pretty simple: you choose what contact fields you want (I always use First Name and Email Address), choose whether quiz takers can skip the opt-in step and if you link to a privacy policy, and then you edit the actual form.
Creating the quiz opt-in form
This is where things get strategic. Interact advises that you allow quiz takers to skip the opt-in step, but that’s also obviously pretty much the entire POINT of creating an opt-in quiz, right? So what do you do?
I typically leave the opt-in skip option turned on. If someone doesn’t want to receive the content I provide, they won’t be a quality lead anyways. Just let them get their results and move on. However, I also want to show the value that my email list offers and encourage them to opt-in.
You can do this through strategic copywriting. I’m still experimenting with different phrasing, but by using something like…
…I’ve gotten great results. When you make it clear that you won’t just be spamming them with sales pitches but instead providing them with even MORE value, your quiz takers are more likely to opt-in. You could also use phrasing similar to Kayla Hollatz’s quiz opt-in form (which is a great quiz, by the way!):
Back to integrating ConvertKit with your Interact quiz!
Once you’ve hit Save & Continue after designing your quiz opt-in form, Interact will walk you through all of the steps to connect ConvertKit to your quiz. You’ll need to get your ConvertKit API key and API secret (don’t ask me why it’s called that), but it’s not hard to get those. (Just go to your ConvertKit account settings and your API key and API secret information is on that first page.) Once you’ve connected ConvertKit with your Interact quiz, you’ll be able to map the quiz results and even individual questions to different actions within your ConvertKit account!
This is where ConvertKit + Interact gets a little tricky. You can add the quiz taker to a ConvertKit sequence or form, or you can update a custom field in their ConvertKit subscriber profile. You can’t directly assign a tag to someone like you would within ConvertKit, though. I spoke with Jessmyn, one of the great gals who works at Interact about why you can’t just assign a tag within ConvertKit. She told me that the ConvertKit API is set up a bit different from something like ActiveCampaign’s tagging system, so it isn’t a direct integration. Luckily, I’ve found a way around it! Just keep reading.
How to tag Interact quiz subscribers in ConvertKit
Once I figured this system out, it kind of felt like magic. First, you need to create a custom subscriber field within ConvertKit so that you can update that custom field through the Interact quiz. To do this, just open up any subscriber profile (go to Subscribers → any random subscriber) and look for this section:
As you can see, I’ve already added a custom field (ConvertKit normally just has First and Last Name and Email Address). To create your own field, you’ll want to click the + Add a new field button (the one I highlighted above). Type in the Field Name (this is what shows up on the ConvertKit side) as well as the Field Value (what shows up in Interact). In this case, I just named it Tag and gave it a value of tag. Nice and simple.
Once you have your new custom field set up in ConvertKit, head back to Interact. Add an action to a result that you want to be able to tag and select your new custom field from the drop-down menu in the Update Subscriber Field action:
If the new field doesn’t show up, save your quiz and open it back up. It should be there now.
Add the Update Subscriber Field action for each and every quiz result and/or question that you want to be able to tag in ConvertKit. You can change the value, too; for example, one of my quizzes has a result titled “Booyah – you’re ready!” which is a bit unwieldy for our tagging purposes. I changed the field value in Interact to be “Ready” to make it easier to work with on the back end. Use whatever wording works for you!
Create an Interact quiz tagging system using ConvertKit’s visual automations
Okay, I guess I kind of lied before: THIS is where the magic really starts to happen! Now that you have all of your Update Subscriber Field actions set up in Interact, it’s time to go back to ConvertKit. Go to your Automations and create a new automation. You can name it whatever you want; I usually just name it [Quiz Name] Quiz Tagging. Choose the Custom field updated option, choose the custom field you created a moment ago, then switch changes to changes to and fill in the value you created for the first Interact quiz result, like I did below:
This means that whenever Interact updates that particular custom field based on a quiz taker’s response, ConvertKit will automatically do the action we’re about to set up.
Speaking of, that’s what we’re doing now! Make sure to click Add Event and then click the little + sign underneath your new custom field event. Select Add or remove tag from the options and search for the tag you want to assign:
You can do this for each result or question you assigned a custom field value to in Interact and you can add multiple actions on both the ConvertKit and Interact sides. For example, here’s one of my completed ConvertKit automation sets for an Interact quiz (which adds the custom field AND a sequence on the Interact side):
And that’s all there is to it! It may seem a little complicated at first glance, but once you complete the steps and understand what you’re doing, it’s not too hard. As you can see, ConvertKit and Interact combined can make for a superhero-level email marketing and lead generation system!
Don’t forget to have a great email sequence to send to your new subscribers, packed with value for them to munch on. If you need help creating your quiz or email sequence, let us know – we’re happy to help!
Have any questions or thoughts about using ConvertKit + Interact to grow your email list? Share with us in the comments!
