A Unique & Compelling Free Gift Idea

Today I am going to share a unique concept for a free gift that you can promote on your website.
As you likely know by now, the goal of a free gift is to:
- build your list
- quickly share what you specialize in
- build the know, like, and trust factor with your audience
- and, last but not least, convert new subscribers into paying clients.
Most models of free gifts require you to ask for the person’s email address before they get access to anything.
While this model works great, if you have a compelling gift to share, what if you could engage with your website visitors (and build trust) BEFORE asking for their email address?
And, what if creating your free gift did not require you to write pages and pages of content?
This free gift concept is a QUIZ.
You can also call it a “personal assessment,” “checkup,” or “personal evaluation.”
The tool I recommend for creating a quiz is Viral Quiz Builder.
There are 4 things I love about Viral Quiz Builder.
- You don’t need technical skills to create a quiz.
- It integrates with most email marketing systems (MailChimp, Aweber, and iContact).
- You can set up the system to send a customized email based on their answers to the quiz.
- They have a built-in social sharing feature that can lead to a viral effect.
Why do quizzes work well for a free gift?
#1 Quizzes and personal assessments are intriguing to people, because it’s interactive and they are able to receive customized feedback.
#2 If one of your website visitors chooses to participate in the quiz, they will simply start answering the questions. Then, when they get to the end, they will be asked to provide their name and email address so you can send them their results.
At this point in the process, they are engaged and have answered the questions. This means that they’ll want to provide their name and email address so they can receive their results/feedback/evaluation.
How you can put this into action!
Step 1: Come up with your topic
Your topic should relate to your audience’s main pain point and key questions they have. An example might be “Are you an emotional eater?” or “Does your metabolism need a reboot?”
Step 2: Write your questions
I recommend 7-8 questions. This keeps is nice and short, but long enough that you’re getting a good amount of information from the respondents.
Step 3: Write your custom responses
With Viral Quiz Builder you can either provide a custom response for each question they answer, OR you can give a custom answer based on their TOTAL score. (You set up the scoring within Viral Quiz Builder.)
You can have your custom responses appear on the “thank you” page they get to after entering their name and email address, OR you can provide the custom responses in an automated email respondents receive immediately after providing their name and email. (I recommend providing the responses via email. This guarantees that people provide a valid email address and it will start to train your new subscribers to open your emails!)
Step 4: Set everything up!
Now it’s time to set up your questions and answers in Viral Quiz Builder and connect the quiz with your email marketing system.
Example quizzes
I know it always helps to see things in action, so here are a couple of quizzes I recently came across.
Click here to view this quiz. (Note that she asks for your email first. I recommend waiting to ask for this until the end – once they’ve completed the quiz.)
Now I’d love to hear from you!
If you were to create a quiz, what topic would you choose? Share your ideas and questions below so I can support you.