How Elizabeth McCravy made over $60k in sales with a personality quiz

Disclosure: This case study mentions Interact. Interact is an integration partner with Kit.

Who else remembers taking Seventeen magazine quizzes with your best friends?

Talk about nostalgia. Looking back, you might gawk at how cheesy these quizzes were.

But the reality is, personality tests have come a long way. Quizzes aren’t just for finding out your perfect pet. In fact, you can use a personality quiz to build your email list, increase web traffic, and sales!

You might be full of questions, like:

• What quiz topic should I choose?
• What does a high-converting quiz look like?
• How do you design a quiz without knowing how to code?

All of your questions will be answered in this guide. We’ll show you how Elizabeth McCravy, a website designer, generated $65k in sales with a personality quiz—and how you can do the same.

Why do personality quizzes work?

Personality quizzes are big in the pop culture world, but what does that have to do with your business?

Us humans yearn to feel understood by our families, friends, and yes—even our favorite brands. Salesforce found that 66% of buyers expect companies to understand their unique needs—and yet only 34% of companies treat their audience as individuals.

This communication gap can manifest as poor customer service, dissatisfied purchases, and a decrease in returning customers. That doesn’t sound too great, does it?

Here’s the beauty about personality quizzes: They flip the script from you to the customer.

In a few questions, users can share their needs, interact with your brand, and learn something new about themselves.

Josh Haynam, the co-founder of Interact, shares the power of asking and helping your customers, “Ask me about myself, and I will tell you. Help me learn about myself, and I’m drawn into the conversation. Asking and helping—these are the reasons why quizzes are so effective for reaching people.”

Personality quizzes are also an opportunity to:

• Let down your guard: You get to express yourself as someone other than a business owner. Quizzes show off your humor, sensitivity, and creativity.
• Personalize the customer journey: Recommendation engines are expensive and often unaffordable for many small businesses. A personality quiz can recommend personalized products without burning a hole in your wallet.
• Gather information: Quiz questions tell you a lot about your audience. Elizabeth, for example, gathered data about her customer’s website preferences, struggles, and wants.

And let’s be honest; personality quizzes are just plain fun! Who can resist the insights you’ll learn about yourself via a quiz?

3 strategies Elizabeth used to make $65k with a quiz

Elizabeth McCravy is a web designer who creates intuitive website templates for business owners. With a background in coding, graphic design, and marketing, Elizabeth had no issues building these templates. Her pain point was standing out from other web designers.

Since the tagline for my Showit website template shop is ‘websites with personality,’ I wanted a way to highlight these ‘anti-boring’ website templates in an equally fun way. A website personality quiz made so much sense for my brand.

— Elizabeth McCravy

On top of promoting her site templates, Elizabeth increased her revenue with three marketing strategies.

#1: She refreshed her email opt-in

Elizabeth asked quiz takers to exchange an email for their quiz results. Her email list funneled users into her quiz marketing funnel (more on this later). It’s a nice alternative to the generic downloadable PDF lead magnet.

The results: After five months of running a quiz, Elizabeth generated 500 new email subscribers.

#2: She offered clarity

Elizabeth noticed how tough it was for users to choose a website template, so she built a quiz in hopes of streamlining her customers’ decision-making process.

The results: Elizabeth shares how “I regularly get emails from quiz takers, telling me that their result was spot-on and gave them the confirmation they needed.”

#3: She put sales on autopilot

Once quiz takers joined Elizabeth’s email list, she added those users into her quiz marketing funnel and automated sales.

The results: Most customers don’t check in with Elizabeth before buying a template, “Because of my helpful quiz, a customer doesn’t have to speak to me before buying a template. In fact, most don’t!”

Even better, her happy customers often come back for a custom website design! Add hundreds of template sales and custom clients, and you got yourself $65k in sales.

Do you want to know the best part about Elizabeth’s story?

It’s replicable! Elizabeth’s success isn’t rare. You can rake in just as much revenue (or more!) with a personality quiz. In the following seven steps, we’ll walk you through Elizabeth’s process and show you how it’s done.

How to create a personality quiz in 7 steps

To get started, all you need is an online quiz builder. Elizabeth uses Interact alongside Kit for every stage of the quiz-making process, including the design, email integration, and sales automation.

Step #1: Set a goal

The most successful quizzes have an end goal. Maybe it’s driving more web traffic. Or perhaps you want to follow Elizabeth’s steps and drive sales toward a product.

Dive deep into the why and make 1-3 quiz goals. Most of our clients create quizzes to build their email list, increase sales, or collect customer data.

Something else to consider is the problem you’re solving. Elizabeth’s quiz guides her audience toward their dream website template. And how about you? Is there a problem you can solve with a quiz?

Some pain points you can solve include:

• Recommending products based on your customers’ preferences.
• Helping users reach personal goals with a developed framework (for example, What’s your leadership style?)
• Offering tips and tricks (for example, What’s holding your business back?)

Keep your audience in mind as you answer both questions. Elizabeth recommends “niching your quiz down to a specific target audience so that the follow-up email sequence can be specific to them.”

Step #2: Choose a topic

Now you can use your goals to brainstorm a quiz topic that users will find helpful.

Elizabeth’s goal was to help web visitors find a website template. Her quiz topic, “What’s your website personality quiz?” fits in with her goal—each question guides users to their customized template.

Below are a few topics you can use.

Interior designers:

• What’s your decorating style?
• What’s your organizing vice?
• How should you style your kitchen?

Cooks:

• What should you cook at your next get-together?
• What type of chef are you?
• Are you ready to open your own restaurant?

Photographers:

• What type of photographer are you?
• What type of photography do you need at your next event?
• What photography skill should you build on next?

Writers:

• What type of writer are you?
• What’s holding you back from writing your novel?
• What’s fueling your writer’s block?

Coaches:

• What kind of creative entrepreneur are you?
• What’s your communication style?
• What’s your true purpose?

Still struggling with choosing a topic? Use the template, “What kind of (blank) are you?” to help you brainstorm ideas.

Step #3: Create 5-10 questions

Good questions invite your audience to share their insights, struggles, and desires. They spark connection and a deeper level of trust with your business.

Not to mention, the better questions you ask, the more likely users will finish your quiz.

So what do good questions look like? Let’s take you through three of Elizabeth’s questions.

This question gives insight into someone’s personality without being invasive. The last thing you want to do is bombard your audience with personal questions. Keep it fun and grab attention with answer images.

Elizabeth defines the users’ pain point and helps her better understand their preferred website template.

Their answers give me so much insight into what makes someone buy a new website. Interact provides you with amazing analytics where you can see the breakdown of results for every question you ask.

— Elizabeth McCravy

You can also use pain point questions to segment users into a specific email funnel and recommend certain content.

Onto the last question.

This question invites users to voice their general opinions about design and helps Elizabeth correlate accurate quiz results.

She advises your questions to be “short and easy to read. Don’t overwhelm people with too much information!”

Check out a breakdown of a general question journey for coaches.

1. Hook users in with a “Buzzfeed” question:

• If you were a cocktail, what would you be?
• Your dream vacay spot is…
• People can always find you at…

2. Dig into your users’ wants with a service-based question:

• Business coach: You just hired a virtual assistant! What tasks are they covering for you?
• Life coach: If money was no longer an issue, what would you spend your time doing?
• Relationship coach: You feel your absolute best in relationships when…

3. Target your audience’s struggles:

• Business coach: If you had a magic wand, what business task would you wish away?
• Life coach: What’s your version of kryptonite?
• Relationship coach: Sometimes, you wish that your partner would just…

4. Gain insight into their desires:

• Business coach: In five years, you see yourself…
• Life coach: Every year, you make a resolution to…
• Relationship coach: What’s the number one trait written on your “ideal partner” list?

5. Finish with another fun personality question:

• You just won the lottery! What’s the first thing you buy?
• You just signed a book deal! What are you writing about?
• You’re known as the (blank) in your friend group

Interesting questions get people excited to see their results. Capture this feeling, and It’ll be easy to collect emails with an opt-in form.

An email opt-in is how Elizabeth grew her email list by 500 subscribers.

And did we mention that Interact integrates with Kit? With Interact’s lead generation feature, you can add users to your email funnel using Kit.

Step #4: Write 3-5 personalized results

After your audience enters their email, they’ll get their quiz results. Just like your questions, your quiz results should be jam-packed with value. The goal is to get people thinking, “Wow, this is so me!”

Elizabeth divides her results into website archetypes, “Each of my website templates was named after a real person or fictional character. For example, the best-selling Reese template was named after Reese Witherspoon.”

Archetypes are common in personality quizzes because they touch on your strengths, weaknesses, and desires.

Let’s say you created a “What’s your creative entrepreneur style?” quiz. Four archetypal results could be:

• The Innovator
• The Scientist
• The Dreamer
• The Performer

Each result includes a custom description of that archetype under the results.

The Reese archetype is described as classic, feminine and playful—all positive traits! Notice how she uses emojis, exclamation marks, and adjectives to get quiz-takers pumped.

Adding your own flair can help users connect with you on a deeper level.

And don’t forget to offer a freebie! We’ve seen our clients offer anything from an in-depth guide to a consultation call.

Elizabeth got creative with a music freebie. “You get a specific song that goes with your template and a link to listen to all the ‘template songs’ on Spotify. The song was what I listened to the most while creating the design.”

Another way to get the ball rolling is by offering a discount. 71% of consumers like when businesses provide a lower-cost version of their product.

Other than a discount, you can also offer:

• Shipping
• 30-minute consultation call
• A sample

But hey, you don’t have to get into sales just yet. Your email sequence will take over this role soon.

Step #5: Design your quiz

As you design your quiz, consider matching the colors, font, and images with your brand.

My personality quiz uses on-brand colors and fonts for a cohesive experience. That’s really important to me as a designer.

— Elizabeth McCravy

And if design isn’t your thing?

Interact’s design interface is suitable for all levels! Using the design menu, you can add your brand colors, font, and logo.
Then, type your quiz copy directly on each page. And don’t forget to add images. Images give an inviting feel to your quiz. You can use the integrated image search engine or upload your own designs.

Want to take your quiz design a step further?

Use Elizabeth’s tip and “redirect people to another landing page where you tell them what to expect.”

When users click “Take the quiz,” they’ll redirect to this landing page and learn:

• How long the quiz takes: Less than 60 seconds!
• What you’ll get in return: A personalized website template

Step #6: Embed to your website

You’ve done all the things to create a personality quiz. Make sure users can easily find your quiz and embed it on your website.

Elizabeth embeds her quiz in three ways. The first is with an ad banner.

Next is a pop-up form.

And last is a dedicated quiz section on her homepage.

Each of these follows a similar structure. They start with a hook, lead into the description, and end with a call to action.

Hook: How does your quiz serve your audience? Highlight your answer in the title.

Description: Mention what you’ll find out with your quiz and how long it takes to finish.

Call to action: “Take the quiz!” should do.

A quick tip: With Interact, you can create and embed quiz banners and pop-up ads!

But the real question is, should you embed your quiz using an ad banner, pop-up ad, homepage section, or all three?

Honestly? It depends on your customer. Think back to your past marketing strategies and consider what your audience liked best. You can always test each strategy and see which one attracts the most quiz traffic.

Step #7: Follow up with email

Remember when we suggested adding an email opt-in form to send quiz results?

Here’s where your email list comes into play. Elizabeth’s biggest piece of advice is to “have an after-care plan for your new quiz subscribers.”

In this case, an after-care plan is a 10-day email sequence. “What happens post-quiz matters just as much, and adding these new subscribers to your list provides an opportunity to tell a VERY interested group of people about your product or service.”

Elizabeth’s email sequence is her favorite part about the entire process. “All of my emails are strategically written, cover hesitations from all perspectives, and have lots of humor thrown in to make it fun!”

A quiz email sequence has the same goal as a standard sales funnel: converting quiz-takers into customers. Elizabeth mentions how “people typically buy around the fourth email.”

We dove deeper into her strategy and found five key themes:

1. Quiz results: The first email is always the users’ results. Think of it as a welcome email.
2. Present the problem: Connect with your readers and identify their struggles with a story of your own.
3. Find a solution: Introduce your product as the solution to the problem.
4. Confront hesitations: Answer your most frequently asked questions head-on. Use customer stories, demos, or tutorials to counter each one.
5. Highlight unique selling points: What do you offer that nobody else can compete with? Make it known.

Use this strategy, and you might hit Elizabeth’s average open rate of 50%!

Are you ready to create a personality quiz?

Selling your creation doesn’t have to feel intimidating. Personality quizzes are an authentic way to automate sales so you can focus on what you do best: Creating.

Three takeaways to reflect on before you go:

• Consider your audience throughout the entire quiz-making journey. Excite your quiz takers with interesting and relevant questions.
• Embed your quiz on your homepage for easy access. And utilize pop-up forms!
• Put your sales funnel on autopilot with a follow-up email sequence. P.S. Kit integrates seamlessly with Interact.

Elizabeth isn’t the only successful quiz story out there. We’ve seen business owners hit as high as $100k in sales with a quiz. Will you be next?