Ellen Yin converts new leads at 76% with a personality quiz!
HERE’S HOW SHE DID ITFinding a solution to new challenges.
When Ellen restructured her business and retired her signature program, she needed a new lead magnet to help her reach a wider audience and build up a new brand sponsorship income stream.
The stakes were high.
Ellen was now running a media company — something she’d never done before. And she needed this new income stream to work.
What used to generate leads for Ellen Yin wouldn’t cut it for her new media company, and she was looking for a lead magnet that could do two things:
- Provide value for all types of CEOs she was speaking to now: coaches, service providers, and e-commerce business owners.
- Make genuine connections with her audience.
“I've been seeing this shift where people are really wanting to go back to prioritizing more relationship-driven marketing, referral-based marketing, and collaboration-based marketing.
I think the only way to do that is to build connections and have conversations with people."
-Ellen Yin, Founder & Podcast Host of Cubicle to CEO
Enter: me—Linda Sidhu, Personality Expert & Quiz Creator
I was headed to the theater to see The Nutcracker when Ellen Yin Voxered me and asked if I’d write her quiz.
You might know Ellen.
She’s a successful entrepreneur and host of the podcast Cubicle to CEO. I met her when she interviewed me on her show. I talked about the strategy behind my quiz and how it helped generate $70K in revenue.
Listen to my interview on Ellen’s show
I knew that a quiz could be exactly the solution she needed, and Ellen hired me to write her personality quiz: “Discover your Unique CEO Style.”
How we built Ellen's quiz:
The first thing I did when I partnered with Ellen to write her quiz was to interview her clients. Or, in her case, her podcast listeners.
This kind of customer research is the first thing I teach you how to do in The Quiz Lab, my 12-week signature program where you learn to write your own quiz.
Customer research helps you determine your Ideal Customer Avatar (ICA) and gather voice of customer to use in your copy.
Once we’d nailed Ellen’s ICA, I wrote her results pages — one for each of the four DiSC personality types.
The DiSC model is the tool I teach you to use in The Quiz Lab that helps you easily segment your audience into four different personality types so that you can address their distinct buying behaviors.
After writing the results pages, we needed a call to action. Where would we send people after they took Ellen’s quiz?
Ellen decided to push to her podcast. The benefit of this was two-fold.
- She could repurpose content and serve up valuable resources without building something new.
- She got more eyes on her podcast (1000 downloads in the first week!) on a notorious platform for low discoverability.
You don’t need a podcast to repurpose content. You can also curate a list of:
→ Interviews
→ Blogs
→ Social media posts
They’d all work here.
The idea is to provide your audience with resources to continue learning from you…
… and eventually buy from you because of the value you provide.
So I curated a selection of Ellen’s podcast episodes — one for each personality type — and included them as resource links in the results.
Then I wrote Ellen’s quiz questions and Interact set up the tech. Time to launch her quiz!
(There’s a tech module in Quiz Lab, meaning you actually walk out of the program with your quiz connected to ConvertKit, Active Campaign, or whatever email marketing platform you use.)
How Ellen launched her quiz (without much effort!)
Ellen was super busy and had little time to promote her quiz. But she’s an action-taker and wanted to get it out.
So here’s how she introduced it to her audience in the most low-lift way:
→ she recorded a bonus episode on her podcast talking about the quiz.
→ she did a three-part case study in her newsletter's Note From The CEO section, detailing the quiz's build, launch, and impact phase.
→ she sent out one solo email about it…just one email!
The results? Her simple launch generated 500 new email subscribers in the first two weeks, with a conversion rate of 76% from quiz page view to email opt-in.🎉🎉
Here’s the cool thing about that.
She had another PDF lead magnet she ran ads to on Facebook. For that, she was paying $2 per lead.
But those quiz leads? She didn’t pay a cent for them — it was all from word-of-mouth, organic traffic.
So, because she didn’t pay for the quiz leads, she essentially added $1000 worth of value back into her business after only 14 days.
“I’ve never experienced something like that before — where you launch something, free or paid, that's so valuable people are banging down your digital door.” — Ellen Yin, Founder & Podcast Host of Cubicle to CEO
Besides her not having to pay for those leads, that extra 500 people on her list in the first two weeks is huge. What would it mean for you to add 500 extra people to your email list?
Think about it.
Say you sell a $1500 course, and your list converts at 3%. You could add an extra $22,500 in revenue to your business.
Ellen’s quiz success doesn’t stop there.
Here’s what else happened during the first two weeks of the launch:
⭐️Her podcast was downloaded 1000 times.
(That happened in just 7 days.)
⭐️50+ ppl shared their quiz results in their stories and social media posts and tagged her. (Their quiz results were that juicy.)
⭐️4 people volunteered, unprompted, to share it with their email lists.
(Quizzes are shareable!)
⭐️The quiz was used as a workshop tool at a networking event.
(Quizzes spark conversation.)
The verdict is clear, and Ellen Yin sums it up best in her newsletter:
“Quizzes are more shareable and convert better than any other lead magnet we’ve tested before. They naturally spark conversation and connection, and are assets that pay for themselves!”
- Ellen Yin, Founder & Podcast Host of Cubicle to CEO
I enjoyed writing Ellen’s quiz so much and loved hearing the responses from people who took it.
Here’s what Toyin said about Ellen’s quiz:
“My CEO style is Whip Smart Achiever!
The podcast recommendations were spot on. And I resonated most with the reminder that I’m human and don’t always need to lead with data and numbers.
This is hard for me (the academic!). But it’s something I need to keep in mind when I’m connecting with my audience because they might not think the same way.” Dr. Toyin Alli, Founder of The Academic Society
Wondering if a quiz is for you? Let's look again at the key takeaways from Ellen's quiz:
- Ellen's quiz allows her to segment her audience into four buyer types so that she can tailor her content to speak directly to them.
- Perfect for you if you’ve got multiple services and want to attract the right customers for each.
- Ellen’s quiz allows her to repurpose podcast episodes.
- Perfect for you if you’ve got a podcast or bank of favorite interviews you know will benefit your audience.
- Over 50 ppl shared Ellen’s quiz in the first 14 days.
- Perfect for you if you want a shareable lead magnet that sparks conversations and builds genuine connections.
- Ellen did the minimal promotion, and 500 people still took the quiz and converted into new email signup leads in the first 14 days.
- Perfect for you if you want to grow your email list but don’t have a lot of time for promotion (people love taking personality quizzes. They fuel our curiosity because we love learning about ourselves!).
- Ellen’s quiz converts at 76%, triple that of the average lead magnet.
- Perfect for you if you’re serious about growing your online business and want a lead magnet that outperforms anything else you could build.
Ready to harness the power of quizzes?
Sign up for my free 3-day Nail Your Quiz Idea Challenge
to get the ideas flowing.
Why choose me to help you write your quiz? I’ll leave you with these final words from Ellen.
“I couldn't imagine working with anyone else to bring this quiz to life.
Linda’s level of expertise and understanding of quizzes, not just from a lead generation standpoint, but really her background and deep understanding of personality types, plus how many quizzes she’s successfully built for not only herself but for others, is unparalleled.”
— Ellen Yin, Founder & Podcast Host of Cubicle to CEO
