How to grow your email list with a quiz

To grow your email list with a quiz, build a quiz around something your audience wants to know about themselves, ask for their email right before the result appears, and send the result plus a useful follow-up straight away. The quiz is the reason to subscribe. The email is what keeps the relationship going.

This guide walks through the practical steps, from choosing the quiz to the first email. The examples are hypothetical, there to show how each choice plays out.

Start with an offer your quiz can deliver

A list-building quiz is not a list-building trick. It works when the result is worth an email address, and when the people on your list are the people you actually want.

So start from the offer, not the quiz. What do you sell, teach or publish, and which kind of subscriber do you want more of? Then ask what a person would want to learn about themselves that points toward that.

• A running shop could ask “Which type of runner are you?” The subscribers are runners who might buy shoes.
• A budgeting blog could ask “What’s your money personality?” The subscribers are people who want help with money.
• A coach could ask “What is holding your business back?” The subscribers are owners with a problem the coach solves.

Notice that each quiz attracts a specific person. A quiz called “Take our quick quiz” attracts nobody in particular. A quiz that names a topic your ideal subscriber cares about filters for them before they ever see the form.

If you are short on topics, 7 quiz lead magnet ideas has formats to borrow.

Pick the quiz type that fits

Quizably supports four types: personality (result) quizzes, trivia (score-based) quizzes, surveys and polls. For growing a list, a personality quiz is usually the best fit, because the result feels personal and the answers tell you which group each subscriber belongs to. Trivia can work well for education and community sites, where the score itself is the reward. Surveys and polls are better for research than for list growth.

Build the quiz so people finish it

Only people who finish see your email form. Every question you add loses a few of them, so the quiz should be as short as it can be while still giving a result that feels earned.

• Write the results first. Three to five results, each with a title, a short description and a button that links to a next step.
• Write five to seven questions where each answer leans toward one result.
• Keep answers short and easy to pick on a phone.
• Use one question type for most of the quiz. Single choice is the easiest to answer.

Write the result copy as if it were a small gift. A result that says “You’re a Sprinter: here is what that means, and here’s what to try next” is worth an email address. A result that says “You’re balanced” is not.

For more on the building side, see how to create a quiz in WordPress. If you haven’t settled on a plugin, compare WordPress quiz plugins on lead capture and export first.

Where to put the email form

In the Form tab of the Quizably builder you choose when the lead capture form appears, before the quiz or right before the result, whether it is required or skippable, and you use name and email fields.

For list growth, my default is right before the result, required, with only name and email. The visitor has answered every question, they want the answer, and the ask feels fair. A form before the quiz can work when your traffic is warm, but it asks for trust before you have given anything.

There is a longer comparison, with a way to test both, in where to put the email form in a quiz.

A few small choices matter here:

• Ask for the minimum. Name and email. Every extra field costs you leads.
• Say what happens next. One line near the form: “We’ll email your result and a few tips. Unsubscribe anytime.”
• Add a privacy note. Link to your privacy policy so people know what you do with their address.

Decide whether to use double opt-in

Double opt-in means the visitor gets a confirmation email and is only confirmed once they click the link in it. In Quizably, you turn it on in the form settings. The visitor still sees their result straight away, the lead shows as Pending, and it counts in your analytics only after the click-through.

The trade-off is simple. You get a cleaner list with fewer typos and fewer fake addresses, but you will confirm fewer people than you collected. If your list is small and every subscriber counts, single opt-in might feel better. If you send regularly, care about email deliverability, or plan to send offers, double opt-in protects you.

I would use it for any list you plan to email for a long time. The full walk-through is in how to set up double opt-in for quiz leads.

What to promise on the result screen

The result screen is your best moment. The visitor is curious and has just handed over their email. Do not waste it with a generic “Thanks!”

A strong result screen does three things:

1. Delivers the result with a specific title and a description that sounds like them.
2. Tells them what will happen next. “Check your inbox in a minute for your full result and three tips.”
3. Gives one next step, through the result’s button link. That might be a related post, a product page or a booking page.

If you use double opt-in, Quizably already shows a “Check your inbox” notice on the result screen. Add a line that gives them a reason to confirm: “Click the link in the email we just sent to get your full guide.” Without a reason, some people never confirm and you will wonder where your leads went.

Only promise what you will actually send. If you say “your full result by email,” make sure that email exists.

Grow email list with quiz traffic: where to send people

A quiz does not bring visitors on its own. It turns visitors you already have into subscribers. Here are the places worth sending people, with hypothetical examples.

Your own site

This is the easiest and often the best source. Add the quiz to a page with a Gutenberg block or the [quizably_quiz id="..."] shortcode. Then link to it from your most visited posts. If you have a post on running shoes, the “Which type of runner are you?” quiz belongs in it.

If you want it visible without taking over a page, use the popup shortcode [quizably_quiz_popup id="..."] or the slide-in [quizably_quiz_slidein id="..."]. Both can open on a click, after a delay, after a scroll depth, or on exit intent (desktop only). Use these gently. A popup that appears the second someone lands is an irritation, not an invitation. How to show a quiz in a popup covers which trigger to pick.

Your existing email list

Email your current subscribers the quiz. They are the warmest audience you have, and their answers help you learn who is on your list. It also gives you early results to check the quiz before you promote it widely.

Social posts

Post the quiz title as a question and link to the page. Quiz titles that promise something about the reader tend to read like a natural post.

Partner newsletters and communities

If you know other creators with the same audience, offer to share the quiz. A quiz is an easy thing for someone to recommend, because it gives their readers something to do.

Paid ads

You can send paid traffic to a quiz page, but only do that once you know the quiz finishes well on free traffic. Paying to send people to a leaky quiz just wastes money faster.

Connect your leads to your email tool

Leads land in the Quizably leads dashboard, where you can search, filter and export them as CSV, which includes the result, score and answers. For a small list, exporting and importing by hand is fine. For anything regular, automate it.

Quizably does this through its webhook, which posts each submission as JSON to a URL you choose. Point it at Zapier or Make, and from there add the person to a list or tag in your email tool. The webhook sends an event field, and the submission_completed message carries the result along with the lead’s name and email, so act on that one to get a single record per visitor. Because of that, you can tag each subscriber by their result without doing anything by hand.

The steps in general terms:

1. In your automation tool, create a new workflow that starts with a webhook trigger and copy the URL it gives you.
2. In the Integrations tab of the quiz, paste that URL as the webhook.
3. Take the quiz yourself to send a test submission.
4. In your automation tool, add an action that creates or updates a contact in your email tool, and map the email, name and result.
5. Turn the workflow on.

If “webhook” is new to you, what is a webhook explains it in plain English. Quizably does not connect directly to specific email tools, so the webhook is the route. For a worked example, see how to send quiz leads to Mailchimp with Zapier.

You also get an email notification as the site owner on new submissions and leads, which is useful for catching problems in the first days.

Write the first follow-up

The first email matters more than any other. Send it straight away, while the quiz is fresh.

Keep it simple:

• Subject: repeat what they got. “Your result: The Sprinter.”
• Body: give the result again in two or three sentences, then one useful tip that fits that result.
• Call to action: one link, to the thing that helps most.

Do not try to sell in the first email. Their result is the reason they opened it, so honor that. Then follow it with a short sequence over the next couple of weeks.

For the big picture of how the quiz, the capture, the segmenting and the emails fit together, read what is a quiz funnel.

Check what is working

After the first week, look at the Quizably analytics for the quiz. You get submission count, completion rate, result distribution and per-question drop-off.

• Lots of starts, few completions: the quiz is too long or a question is confusing. Look at the question where people drop off.
• Lots of completions, few leads: the form is the problem. Check the wording, the number of fields, and whether it feels safe to fill in.
• One result gets most of the picks: your answers are unbalanced. Rewrite a few so the other results are reachable.

Change one thing at a time so you know what caused the difference.

Mistakes that keep lists small

• No traffic. Nobody sees the quiz, so nobody joins.
• A topic that nobody searches their own identity for. Pick something the reader cares about.
• A long form. Three fields is already too many for most quizzes.
• No follow-up. People join, hear nothing for a month, and forget why they joined.
• Forgetting the confirmation step. If you use double opt-in, tell people why it’s worth clicking the confirmation link.

Your next step

Write down one quiz topic, three results and the first follow-up email. That’s the smallest version of the whole thing. If you want the full strategy around it, from choosing a goal to measuring results, see quiz marketing: the complete guide. Then install Quizably and build it, or browse the use cases page. Quizably is free and has no cap on quizzes, questions or leads, so the only cost of trying is your time.