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How to Use Quizzes and Facebook to Build Your List… Fast

Posted By Guest Blogger 1st of June 2015 General 0 Comments

This is a guest contribution from Luke Moulton.

If you’ve spent even a small about of time in the blogging world, you’ll be aware of the power of building an email list. Email is still one of the cheapest and effective forms of online marketing so as a blogger it should be high on your priority list.

But how do we build a list quickly if we aren’t getting a whole lot of traffic to our blog? How do we incentivise people to hand over their email address once they get there?

Sure, we can use the good old “Sign up to our Newsletter” or give something of value away for free. But these don’t always work for fresh visitors who haven’t seen your content before.

I’d like to introduce you to another list building option: quizzes.

You’ve probably seen them in your social media feed, you may have even taken a “Which Sex and the City Character Are You?” style personality test. They’ve been made popular by the likes of Buzzfeed and Mashable, but that’s not to say humble bloggers like you and I can’t use them to build a list.

The Technique: Facebook Ads + Quiz

The case study I’m about to show you combines traffic from Facebook Ads with a quiz. Yes folks, we’re actually going to be spending some money, hope I haven’t lost you yet… stay with me.

1-facebook-quizz-campaign-summary

The results above are from a Facebook Ads campaign I used to drive traffic to a quiz. The campaign lasted 13 days on a budget of $30 per day and from this I was able to build a list of 571 people. Yes, I know, it says 560 in the screenshot above but I also had some viral traffic, so ended up with more leads. This means my cost per conversion, or the cost to acquire an email address, equaled $0.66.

To some, this cost per conversion will seem expensive, to others it’s cheap; all depends what niche you’re operating in. If you know you can generate $1 from every email address you collect, then you’ll be making 50% on your investment… better than any investment I’ve come across recently.

Let’s dive in and build the campaign.

Building the Quiz

Choosing the topic for your quiz is the most important step; obviously it needs to relate to the overall content on your blog, and it also need to appeal to a specific social media audience.

For this particular example, I’m going to pretend I have a fashion/beauty/cosmetics blog. The topic for my quiz: “Would You Qualify to be a Makeup Artist?”.

I used Sit the Test Builder to build a 10 question, multiple choice test. Sit the Test requires people to enter their email address before taking a test (or quiz). As the test creator I can then export these email addresses to my favourite email marketing platform.

2-sit-the-test-screen

While I know nothing about being a makeup artist, Google does, so make sure you research your topic thoroughly and build a quiz with legitimate questions. You see the example of my quiz here.

With my test written and published, it’s time to build the Facebook campaign.

Creating the Facebook Campaign

To begin, I created three ads to “split test”. I say split test in quotation marks because Facebook automatically favors the better-performing ad after a period and I’m not convinced they wait for statistical significance, but I digress.

3-facebook-ads

The only difference between the three ads above is the image used. It’s important to only test one aspect of your ad at a time.

Ads created, it’s time for the build the audience that I’m going to target.

For this particular campaign I targeted women between the ages of 18 and 24, interest in cosmetics and living with 25 miles of Australia’s two largest cities, Melbourne and Sydney.

4-facebook-ad-sets

I did experiment with a couple of other Ad Sets, but the Sydney and Melbourne campaigns were the best performing. I also made sure I had Facebook conversion tracking setup so I could closely track the performance of my campaign without having to continuously check to see how many people had taken my quiz.

Launching the campaign, after a day or two you will usually start to see one Ad performing better than the others.

5-Facebook_Ad_Set_Summary

If you’ve chosen your topic and target audience well, you should be rewarded with a healthy click through rate. In this case the best performing ad generated a click through rate of 2.29%.

After a day or two I usually pause the two poorer performing ads. If none are performing well, try changing the messaging and the image.

The Quiz Results

So how did our participants fare? For this particular test, I set a pass rate of 70%. On average, participants scored 64%. 571 people started taking the quiz, and 521 people completed it. Because we collect the email address at the start, it doesn’t matter if people don’t complete the quiz – although we hope they do!

6-test-results

What’s Next

So I’ve built my list of 570 odd – what do I do with it now? That’s really up to you and what you have to offer your audience. But here are some suggestions:
Segment out the people who failed and offer them some cosmetics training
Segment out the people who passed and offer offer them accredited training courses
Send them regular email updates from your blog

If you don’t have your own products, there are plenty of beauty, fashion and cosmetics affiliate offers you can present to your audience, just make sure you’re adding when you email the list you’ve build… use it for good not evil and you’ll be rewarded.

Luke Moulton is a digital marketer based in Melbourne Australia, working with Sit the Test, a startup helping people create multiple choice tests and quizzes.

About Guest Blogger
This post was written by a guest contributor. Please see their details in the post above.
Comments
  1. Virtually everyone and their mother has an account on Facebook. And people love to spill their guts about any and everything!

  2. Thanks, Luke

    You saved my money! Thanks for your money saving tips, i am going to make a new campaign with Quiz .

    Happy Blogging -:)

  3. Thanks Luke for sharing astounding article. In your post you have shared with us some useful info regarding the proper use of Quizzes and Facebook all the points that you have mentioned above are lucrative in this scenario.

  4. Hi Luke,

    This looks like a great way to gain subscribers, but I do have a question. If you’re asking people for their email address for the purpose of taking a quiz, how does that sit within the strict anti-spam laws (particularly in the US and Canada)? Do you send the respondents a double opt-in confirmation message? Or do you simply spell out on the original quiz post that you are going to add them to your list? I’m genuinely interested. I’m trying to get my head around list building in a legal and ethical way :-) Thanks for your insights!

    • Ken, it’s a good question. We do state in the terms and conditions that we may contact you via email. People need to agree to these (opt-in) before they do a quiz. Currently it’s not a double opt-in process as required by the CANN spam act, as we are an Australian based business. We are also in Beta, which is all about getting feedback on issues such as the one you have identified. Appreciate the feedback – it’s an important point.

  5. Hi Luke,

    This is very smart.

    Any way you can grab feedback from intrigued folks, the better for you. Your results prove it and Facebook is a power channel for doing targeted marketing.

    I ran a campaign about a month ago to some nice pop. May be time to run another to seize this powerful platform, and to capitalize on it.

    Ask, and listen, and your biz and list will grow so much more quickly versus if you try to toss anything out there to see what sticks.

    Thanks!

    Ryan

  6. Really an Intelligent Idea ;)

    This is my First Time in your Blog and I really Love it.

    Thanks for this Awesome Post. Was thinking How to Build Lists.

    Now I got a Good Way.

    BTW, Can you please provide us with some insights of the Quality of Subscribers.

    Did they convert well ? Was it Worth it ?

    Thanks in Advance :)

    • Thanks Felix. I would say the quality of subscribers was good in this case. I did email once after they registered and the hard bounce rate was low. How they convert is really a matter of the offer and downstream email or Facebook marketing you do.

  7. I have the same question Ken Lyons has… I like the idea of gathering email addresses this way, but how do you get those people to opt into your list? Answering a quiz is one thing, but using that email address to market to sounds like it could be considered spam.

    Does the quiz itself have a disclaimer on it stating that the testee will be added to an email list used for marketing purposes?

    Thanks.

    • Thanks Brian. Please see my response to Ken. We do have a terms and conditions box that people have to opt-in to, however, this may not be enough for spam legalities in some countries. It’s something we’re working on.

  8. Good strategy. But it needs to be seen whether one can get conversions at a similar rate in other niche. Also, whether these subscribers stick is a question. But it’s a good strategy nevertheless. Thanks for sharing.

    Neil

    • Neil, you are absolutely correct. I have tested some niches where the cost per acquisition was significantly higher. You really have to pick your mark with this strategy.

      Facebook is a great medium for lead generation on niches that people are passionate about. An “Are you a great cat owner?” quiz, might do really well and have a low CPA, but quiz on “Are you an awesome accountant?” would either fail miserably, or have a very high CPA.

  9. Hey Luke,

    Great mini case-study! I’m curious if you’ve already sent emails to the list – if so, how good was your open-rate and CTR?

    • Josh, I did send an email to people who registered for this test to check the quality and to see what the rates would be like. Results where fair: 23.5% open rate and 9% click to open rate.

      This could be improved upon with more experimentation on subject lines and content than what I did, not to mention an autoresponder sequence.

      Also, if you already have some sort of brand recognition with the list you’re acquiring, I’m sure email engagement would also improve.

  10. Hi..
    Thanks for this Awesome Post. Was thinking How to Build Lists.You saved my money! nice post for your money saving tips, and it,s Luke for sharing astounding article. In your post you have shared with us some useful info regarding the proper use of Quizzes and Facebook all the points that you have mentioned above are lucrative in this scenario.

    thank you

  11. I learned how important it is to build your list. I am going to start gathering emails and get better at this. Everyone is on facebook so why not make use of this neat tool of quizs. thanks a lot!

  12. Thanks, Luke

    You saved my money ?

  13. I knew facebook is important to communicate and i learned how important to build the list is. you actually saved my money thanks a lot.I really got many ideas from your posts.

    Thanks A lot .

  14. That’s a great way to do it because you get people’s feeling personally involved.

  15. What an interesting way to build an email list as well as engagement. I can also see how some of these could go viral. Thanks for the tip. I need to see if I can search & reapply for my industry.

  16. It’s pretty cool strategy, I think this technique also helping into view conversion because already saw on facebook if your advertisement have rich media content then this conversion rate is more as compared to simple ad.. Next time I will trying this awesome tips on my fb page..

  17. Hello Luke,
    I had a knowledge of e-mail list earlier but I didn’t focus much on it till now .Your article really gave a good way of getting the list through quizzes guiding in a step-by-step manner.As people on facebook are always ready to have this kind of stuff to assess themselves I can see that this trick would certainly work.Thanks for the article

  18. Quizzes are good way to interact with people. Thanks for the valuable post

  19. Hi
    I know about list building by Facebook but didn’t know about quiz z. Your article help me more to know about list building.Thanks.

  20. Thanks Luke for sharing astounding article. In your post you have shared with us some useful info regarding the proper use of Quizzes and Facebook all the points that you have mentioned above are lucrative in this scenario.

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