The Wall Street Journal studied how different reader habits affected subscriber churn. It looked into how various products and subscriber actions affected customer retention during the first 100 days after a reader had signed up. They found that “playing a puzzle had a more dramatic impact on reader retention than other actions the team had been promoting.”
We know that quizzes can be good for lead generation, but interesting that they can boost retention as well.
Research last year from Northwestern’s Medill Local News Initiative looked at audience data from three major metro dailies. Their conclusion was that the frequency with which a reader comes back to a publication’s website “is the single biggest predictor of retaining subscribers—more than the number of stories read or the time spent reading them.”
So with that established, here are a few successful quizzes and one contest:
Remote education. After a brief hiatus, Education Week quizzes are back and they’re timely. “Quiz Yourself: How Much Do You Know About Elementary Remote Instruction? How are elementary educators responding to the shift to remote learning, and what challenges do elementary students and teachers face with remote instruction?” It’s sponsored by Square Panda but Education Week maintains editorial control.
You have to give your email address to see the results. For this quiz, there have been 994 participants. In the past, Education Week would regularly achieve nearly 90% quiz completions and around 60% of people who completed the quiz filling out the registration form. That’s a lot of lead generation. I got 63%, 5 out of 8 right. The average is 66%. They awarded me a “genius badge”—a bit of a low bar—and when I click to “claim” it, I have to sign in again, and 140 people have done that.
The Fulcrum. I came across this quiz recently on a site called The Fulcrum: How Much Do You Know About the Electoral College? Good to see that on the bottom it says, “This quiz is powered by CredSpark,” one of our members. “Think you know all there is to know about the Electoral College? Test your smarts with this quiz.” I didn’t do very well—got about half right. But it certainly engaged me.
Financial Times. The Financial Times is still doing an FT Weekend Quiz that seems to be gated to visitors. These are centered around popular culture—last week’s was titled, Marilyn Monroe, Rachel Watson and ‘The Arnolfini Marriage’—with this subhead: “Our ‘Round on the Links’ quiz tests your ability to draw connections. Thinking caps on!” Last year’s quiz focused on “The Week in News.”
Farming questions. Lessiter Media has been getting good results from their sponsored quizzes. How Much Do You Know About Soil Enrichment Practices? they ask. “Take this quick 6-question quiz to find out. We didn’t create this quiz ‘just for fun,’ but to act as an educational tool.” For a previous quiz, they received 3,346 total submissions from Nov. 2019, through the end of March 2020. About 1,658 were new email addresses and 120 new subscribers.
PR News. On Access Intelligence’s PR News grammar quiz, a Scrabble-like image of “G R A M M A R” emerges with the headline, “How Good Is Your Grammar?” “Do you correct others on their grammar? Or do you get corrected? See how you stack up…”
Screen time. Lastly, I found one that’s more a contest than a quiz, but it has a great lead generation gimmick. “Show Us Your Ugly Screens to Win! Enter Today to Win FREE Window Sun Screens for Your Arizona Home! Show us your faded, torn, & worn window sun screens, and enter to win FREE Window Sun Screens for your Arizona Home from AZ’s #1 Trusted Shade Installations, All Pro Shade Concepts! See below, for details.” It’s accompanied by a photo of a torn screen.
What would the B2B equivalent be? Show us your worst marketing copy to win FREE upgraded marketing copy. Hmmm not bad.
