How to create a riveting online quiz lead magnet in 10 simple steps

It’s cool to hear content creators talk about how they doubled or tripled their email list, but you never really expect it to happen to you.

You also don’t expect it to happen in ONE DAY with no social media or paid advertising.

So you can imagine my surprise when I looked at my Kit dashboard at the end of my website relaunch day and saw that the brand voice style quiz I created on a whim generated 700 new email subscribers.

At the time, my email list was around 500 highly engaged subscribers after seriously pruning through my cold subscribers before my relaunch. When I saw that my list had doubled in less than 12 hours, I almost thought something was broken.

I never expected that my quiz would steal the show on my relaunch day, mostly because there weren’t many bloggers or business owners using quizzes as an email marketing tactic at the time.

I didn’t have any big hopes for it, but I did know one thing: people loved taking quizzes on sites like Buzzfeed. I thought, “What if I could create the same slightly addicting quiz experience for my own brand?” I got to work on my quiz a day later and launched it soon after.

Luckily, it wasn’t just a one-hit (err, one-day) wonder.

My website relaunch day brought a lot of buzz and traffic, which made the quick email list growth possible. Still, since then, my quiz has generated nearly 5,000 subscribers from its mention on my homepage.

This guide explores how to create a quiz lead magnet to grow your email list.

What is an online quiz lead magnet?

An online quiz lead magnet is a free interactive quiz creators use to grow their email list.

Here’s how a quiz grows your subscriber list

• You create a short quiz your audience will want to take
• You promote the quiz and drive traffic to your quiz landing page
• Your audience answers the quiz questions
• The quiz tool prompts visitors to enter their email address to see their results
• You gain an email list subscriber!

Why creators should use online quizzes for lead magnets

Creators use quiz lead magnets because they’re fun to take and drive serious growth. For example, brand strategist Kaye Putnam used a quiz to generate over $100,000 in online course sales, and designer Jen from TONIC Site Shop generated $50,000 in website template sales with a free quiz.

Here’s what lead magnet quizzes can do for you:

1. Grow your audience. Free quizzes incentivize people to sign up for your email list. Then you use a follow-up email sequence to deepen the relationship.
2. Increase conversions. The average lead magnet conversion rate is 20%-25%. Yet quizzes blow that stat out of the water with an average 40-50% average conversion rate.
3. Recommend your products on autopilot. Want to increase sales? Use a quiz to recommend different products and resources based on the person’s quiz results to make more passive income.
4. Segment your audience. Instead of treating all your email subscribers the same way, you can personalize your email content depending on what segment “bucket” they fall into.

Here’s how to build your quiz lead magnet from scratch (+ real-life examples)

Quizzes help creators connect with their audience, grow their email list, and increase sales. But setting up your first lead magnet quiz can feel intimidating. Here’s a step-by-step guide to get you started.

Step #1: Align your quiz lead magnet with your offerings

Some content creators immediately know what quiz they want to run with, but what do you do if the perfect topic isn’t so obvious? Look to your brand and audience for inspiration.

Pick an online quiz topic that reinforces your expertise

Your online quiz must be interesting for your audience and relevant to your business. Use these questions to brainstorm quiz topics:

• Who is your audience?
• What are your audience’s goals?
• What is your top-performing content?
• What do you want to be known for?
• What topics do you want to teach?
• What product or services do you want to promote?

Blogger online quiz example

Scott Keller uses lead magnet quizzes on his blog, Bird Watching HQ. Backyard birders test their knowledge with a photo identification quiz and then sign up for Scott’s newsletter to see their score.

Graphic design quiz example

Design tool Adobe Create has a ‘Creative Types’ quiz that helps people identify their creative working style.

Your quiz questions should relate to your topic—but the link doesn’t have to be too literal

Wedding florist example of quiz lead magnet

Wedding florist Lynn of Wild Fleurette uses a quiz to help her ideal bride client leads find their perfect floral bouquet style. When they’re ready to work together, it’s easier to know what styles to pull inspiration from because her clients have already taken the quiz.

Step #2: Make sure the quiz type you select is the right fit

Once you have an idea of your quiz topic, the next decision is the quiz type. Here are the four most common types of lead magnet quizzes.

Personality quizzes

Personality quizzes are arguably the most common (and usually most successful) of all the quiz types because they help your audience better understand themselves by matching them up with a personality result.

Style quizzes

Style quizzes help people identify or articulate their preferences, like finding their fashion style or suggesting places to live.

Assessment quizzes

Do you want to test how well your audience knows a subject or how ready they are to invest in one of your services? You can use an assessment quiz to help your audience understand where they currently are and what they need to get where they want to go.

Scoring quizzes

Like the assessment quiz, your scoring quiz tests your audience’s understanding by giving them a score based on how many answers they get correct. If you use this kind of quiz, make sure you positively write your quiz results so people who earn lower scores don’t feel negatively about their results.

Step #3: Craft a clear, concise quiz title

Your quiz idea is starting to take shape—time to give it a name! You may think your quiz title needs to be clever, but it’s more important to be clear and concise. Choose a title that explains what the person will learn or test.

Title ideas for personality or style quizzes

• What kind of [blank] are you?
• What [blank] personality are you?
• Which [blank] should you choose?
• Which [blank] fits you?
• What is my [blank]?

Title suggestions for assessment and scoring quizzes

• Are you ready to be a [blank]?
• How much do you know about [blank]?
• Test your [blank] knowledge!
• Do you know these [blank] types?

Step #4: Plan your quiz’s results before delving into questions

This advice might feel backward, but you should plan your quiz results before writing questions.

Since each answer option will correlate with a specific quiz result, establishing the results first helps you write answers and choices related to outcomes. Plus, knowing the quiz results keeps you focused, so you don’t write unnecessary questions or options.

Use segmentation to create the quiz results

Since your quiz lead magnet should feed into your email marketing strategy, correlate your quiz results to your audience segments based on factors like:

• Personality traits
• Skill level (beginner to advanced)
• Location
• Shared interests
• Years in business
• Lifestyle preferences
• Goals

For example if you have an online course for beginners but a group coaching program for skilled subscribers, group quiz results by those categories.

Create three to five quiz result options

Narrow down your quiz results to three to five options. If you have more, you might overwhelm yourself with extra work and overcomplicate the process. If you have less, you’ll risk creating broad personality descriptions that feel like they’d fit anyone and everyone.

How to write quiz outcome descriptions that spur action

Take time to write intentional and interesting personality descriptions for each option. Writing a paragraph about each result helps your audience understand the outcome and how they can utilize the new knowledge you’ve given them.

Here’s a quiz result template you can use

You are a natural [Title 1] and [Title 2], sharing your [Skill 1] with your [Ideal Audience]. [Skill 2] and [Skill 3] are your thing and you want everyone to walk away from [Platform] knowing [Goal]. You are known for being [Adjective 1], [Adjective 2], and [Adjective 3].

Check your inbox for even more information on how to use your [Quiz Title] quiz result to achieve [Result 1] so you can [Result 2].

Step #5: Craft engaging questions and answers that keep them hooked

Finally it’s time to build out your quiz content. With your quiz results in mind, connecting each answer option to a specific outcome is easier.

How many quiz questions should you have?

Your lead magnet should have at least four questions, but not more than 20. It’s best to aim for between five and ten questions.

How many answer options should each quiz question have?

It’s smart to include the same number of answer options as you have quiz results. Since most content creators have three to five quiz results, you can have three to five answer options.

Real-life quiz Q+A example: Jenna Kutcher

Online educator Jenna Kutcher has built a multiple seven-figure business with the help of her What’s Your Secret Sauce? Quiz. Using a mix of fun and goal-oriented questions, she has created a share-worthy quiz that thousands of visitors have taken. Let’s break down why Jenna’s quiz works.

One of her quiz results is titled the Empire Maker, which describes an entrepreneur who is hyper-focused on scaling their business. Knowing this, we can look back through Jenna’s questions and see how a quiz taker might have received this specific quiz result.

Looking at the answer options below, it’s pretty obvious that an Empire Maker would choose the first answer of setting up funnels, building a team, and wanting to learn high-level growth strategies. Now you can see why it’s helpful to know your quiz results before you write each answer!

Step #6: Select the right quiz creation tool for your lead magnet

After you write your quiz questions, you need to put them into a quiz creation tool for your audience to interact with.

Ideally, your quiz app integrates with your email marketing tool so new subscribers automatically receive their quiz results and join your newsletter. Here are the pros and cons of a few quiz creation tool options.

Interact

Interact focuses on helping content creators and entrepreneurs generate more leads by utilizing quizzes. Pricing starts at $27/mo, but you can also try it for free.

Pros:

• They have hundreds of quiz templates and quiz building guides to get up and running with your quiz in a short time
• It integrates with Kit, so you can create tags, segments, and collect data with ease
• They offer a variety of free stock imagery and Google Fonts you can use to match your visual branding

Cons:

• There are only three main quiz types
• You can’t upload videos to your quiz

LeadQuizzes

Built specifically for marketers, LeadQuizzes is used by marketing experts like Neil Patel to kickstart and sustain email list growth. Pricing starts at $37/mo, but you can also try it for free for 14 days.

Pros:

• Design flexibility
• This tool also integrates with Kit so it’ll be easy to connect it to your email segmentation strategy

Cons:

• Has fewer GDPR-compliant settings than other quiz-building tools

Typeform

Although Typeform is typically known as an audience survey tool, you can use it to create quizzes. Pricing starts at $25/mo, but you can also try it for free.

Pros:

• The easy-to-use platform makes it simpler to get started with building your own quiz

Cons:

• The tool only integrates with Google Sheets and doesn’t integrate with Kit natively—you’ll need to use an automation tool like Zapier
• Has limited custom design capabilities

Step #7: Create a landing page for your quiz lead magnet

Your lead generation landing page is the place subscribers access your quiz. There are two ways you can set up your quiz landing page:

• Ask subscribers to sign up to receive the quiz
• Promote the quiz on the landing page and ask for their email address at the end

The landing page structure you choose depends on what quiz creation tool you use and how it connects to your email marketing. Regardless of whether your landing page has your embedded quiz or a sign-up form, it needs to have the following info:

• Who the quiz is for
• What they’ll learn or test
• How long the quiz takes to complete
• The cost (hint: it’s free!)

Step #8: Create a quiz follow-up email sequence

Your quiz might convince your audience member to sign up for your email list, but what happens once they join? If they hear crickets, they’ll either forget about you or unsubscribe from your list.

Creating your follow-up email sequence before your quiz is live ensures every new subscriber feels nurtured as you educate them on their quiz results and introduce them to your other resources. Consistent contact becomes even more important when you start selling your products and services because you need a well-established foundation of trust before you make a pitch.

Here’s a four-part framework to help you plan your quiz follow-up emails.

Quiz follow-up email #1: additional quiz outcome details

The first email after your quiz should provide extra information on their result and welcome them to your email list.

Quiz follow-up email #2: recommendations based on their results

Next, recommend resources based on their results. Link to relevant books, podcast episodes, videos, blog posts, or other resources that would be helpful.

Quiz follow-up email #3: personal story or case study

Share a personal story or a case study from a past client to build trust before you pitch any paid offerings. Make sure that the story speaks to the subscriber’s personality or the quiz topic.

Quiz follow-up email #4: sales funnel

After your initial three quiz follow-up emails, move new subscribers to your other email sequences, like welcome emails, lead nurture, or sales funnels.

Go ahead—copy our template!

We’ve created a simple quiz follow-up automation. All you have to do is copy it to your Kit account and customize the tags and emails for your business.

Get the quiz follow-up template

Step #9: Bring it all together and test it

By this point, you have a lot of independent pieces that you need to bring together. Here’s what you need to connect:

• Integrate your quiz app with your email marketing and landing page tool
• Set up a tag that identifies new subscribers from the quiz based on their result
• Create an email automation that sends your follow-up emails to new subscribers

While setting up your quiz integrations and email automations in a tool like Kit is simple, testing your new lead magnet and email flow before you make it public is always a good idea. To do this, enter your email on your landing page or quiz to ensure you receive the emails.

Kit lets you preview email drafts as a subscriber or send a test email to yourself

Step #10: Spread the word about your quiz lead magnet

After all your hard work, the last step is promoting your lead magnet. Luckily, there are plenty of paid promotion opportunities and free ways to grow your email list. Here are a few places to share your new quiz:

• Add a link to your landing page in your social media bios
• Create a Pinterest graphic to link to your quiz
• Share a social media post about your new quiz
• Add a banner or pop-up to your website

Kit helps you grow your audience with quiz lead magnets

Quiz lead magnets have a few moving parts—from the quiz app to a landing page and follow-up emails. Your work will be much easier if you can manage your marketing funnel in one place with a tool like Kit.

Kit integrates with popular quiz apps, has a free landing page builder with beautiful templates, and a powerful yet easy-to-use email marketing platform.

If you’re ready to create your first lead magnet quiz, sign up for a free Kit account.