Creating a Quiz Email Strategy to Nurture Leads

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors. SPEAKERS Dawn Petrin, Erin Ollila Erin Ollila 00:00 All right friends, today we are here with Dawn Petrin. And you might know her when it comes to things like quizzes and copywriting and messaging. But you might not know that she actually got into copywriting by owning a yoga studio. So tell me about how you went from yoga to copywriting. Dawn Petrin 00:20 Oh, okay, good question. Hi, everyone who’s listening, I ended up taking over a yoga studio that already had a 3000 person email list. And my business partner at the time was into conversion optimization. I have a creative writing degree now. But I actually finished that while owning the yoga studio. So I started studying copy, I just never realized you could make money writing. And when I sort of like leveled up our newsletters at the yoga studio, all of a sudden, attendance got way busier. And our workshops ended up filling up. And it was all because of the newsletter. So that just got me excited. Erin Ollila 01:02 Wow, that’s awesome. I love how you mentioned that I always feel like as separate as these fun facts are, for most people, in some ways, I can always relate them back to the episode at hand. And what sticks out to me, at least for this series is how you mentioned like, you were owning a yoga studio, and you did not realize that how much of an impact copy would play like one the the amount that you had to write and to how it actually attracted more people to your business. And I think that’s true for all business owners, you know, like, a home builder doesn’t sit down and think to themselves, what am I going to say to attract new clients today? Or like, what am I going to put on my website until they’re either, you know, in a period of time where they’re not getting as many leads in, or they someone has said something specifically about the copy that they’ve written. So they know they need to make adjustments, or other clients are like, Wow, I love what you’re doing on social, I love what you’re doing in your email. And they can then equate the effort that they’ve done to like writing the words to marketing and to how it plays such a big role in their business. And, you know, I mean, in some ways, you prove that to yourself by being the business owner. And then because of your interest in it, you decided to kind of go make a shift in your business into something else. So it’s such a great starting point, since we’re talking about like, the things people don’t think about, you know, we the last episode we had with Jackie, we talked about how everyone knows that quizzes are marketing, like quizzes, equal marketing. But a lot of people don’t say copywriting equals quizzes, they just imagine that it’s like a magical thing, that you can make a quiz. And it will do marketing for you. But it’s all based on strategy and messaging and how you speak to your clients and what they need to hear. And they’re all of the things. So it’s gonna be great to talk to you today. Because, you know, we talked a lot about like the strategy behind quizzes and things that go into quiz building. But I’d love to discuss with you like the importance of the follow up to the quiz. What happens after that results page does do they read the results and then go on with their life, what’s the best strategy here for staying connected with a lead Dawn Petrin 03:09 to backup a tiny bit 100%. So much of an effective quiz is about the copy that goes into it and the work like the research that you did, and starting with the end in mind, both your business goals as well as, like your quiz goals or quiz funnel goals. Definitely. And I think one thing that happens is people write a quiz or get someone to write a quiz for them, and then post it once and then drop it. And that’s problematic, as well as if you like, if you don’t introduce yourself in the quiz using the same name that you’re going to show up in your email marketing. And you don’t send them a follow up email right away with your quiz. They’re not really likely to remember you and no matter how amazing your quiz is, although some of them might blow people out of the water. If you I mean, it’s like any lead magnet, right? Like if you just like get people to download your lead magnet and just send them that one email. Or if they can download it right on the page. And you never send them a follow up email, you’re not going to stay top of mind. So yeah, 100% and quizzes for marketing and for lead generation are about not just generating leads but actually nurturing them and making sure that you are in contact with them enough so that when it’s time for your offer, you’re not all of a sudden sending them like a 14 day launch sequence but they haven’t heard from you in three to six months to a year. Erin Ollila 04:49 I think you made a point that was so important that I didn’t even think of of making for this whole episode is making sure that who you say you are as the business on your quiz is reflected and who you’re actually emailing them from. Now, for someone like me, my name is Erin Ollila, I run my business under my name, it’s a little easier to do that, right. But for the there are so many businesses out there who do not use a personal brand for their businesses. So let’s say your business is we’ll do treat landscaping like George’s tree landscaping. And all Sam, Sam from marketing starts emailing you. And it’s like, you know, the email comes from Sam spam at George’s right or GTL for nobody’s gonna know who that is like, that’s like, unless they’re sitting at their inbox waiting for those quiz results, which they probably aren’t, we have to all understand and detach ourselves from our marketing, that our leads are not desperate for us. So unless they’re sitting there and searching you out, they’re going to forget about you. And if you’re not consistent, that’s going and you’re you know, popping in every once in a while your unsubscribes are going to be higher, your deliverability rates will sink a little bit, and there’s a lot that goes into it. So making it clear, like who’s going to be responding from the emails is a huge thing and and then Dawn Petrin 06:13 tell them what they’re getting in their inbox. So I love to combine a freebie, but don’t call it a freebie. But I love to combine a freebie or a downloadable PDF. And if you already have one that does pretty well converts pretty well. And you can personalize it a little bit to your quiz results. That’s a great way to do it. I actually don’t recommend sending the quiz results in email form alone, you can send them an email form. But I feel like if you just got someone to answer, like five to 15 questions, and then you’re like, now give me your email address. And then they give the email address and it’s like, Great, now go check your email, but it’s gonna take my email marketing platform three to five minutes to get there like you’ve lost them already. So even if you do want to send most of your results in a PDF, or what have you, or like long form in an email, I would really write like a good open loop teaser. For the result, I would fulfill the promise of the quiz, but introduce like an even better thing that’s coming in in the email. So if it if the promise of your quiz, going back to this arborist is like your tree means spring pruning, you’d be like your training and spring pruning. And here’s three things you need to know about it. And the most important four or five are coming at you in your inbox. So check right away. Also, there’s a special offer for you, or what have you. So you really do want to entice them, too, to make that like it’s almost not even a micro conversion at that point. It’s almost like a larger conversion. If you give them their quiz results and give them a reason to actually open that first email, it at least will get them to go in, open your email. And then hopefully, you’ve sent a good enjoyable email that makes them want to open more of them. It’s a relationship, right. And I think this is something email marketing, for sure. 100% it’s more about relationship than marketing, which isn’t to say it’s not marketing, I think I hate to use these words, but like now more than ever, and this like whether it feels like post COVID to you or not, but post COVID era, human beings want to work with other human beings, even if it’s like II calm, even if you’re they want to know who you are that your actual person and what your values are, because we’re kind of tired of all this online living, which isn’t to say that we’re not checking our email way more than ever before. And we’re not listening to podcasts way more than ever before, and all of that. But yeah, it’s a relationship and you want to fulfill whatever you promised them at the beginning of the quiz, you want to fulfill that in your quiz results. And then you want to make them another promise, which is like how I’m going to show up in your inbox and how I’m going to help you. And you want to fulfill that promise as well, which apparently will become easier after you listen to an episode a couple episodes from now, consistency with email marketing, if you already have a welcome sequence, you can probably massage I mean, you always want to optimize, but you can probably massage the welcome sequence that you have to be in alignment with your quiz. I don’t think we want to have to reinvent the wheel every time we create a new, like marketing tactic for for our businesses. And if you’re a course creator with a whole bunch of different courses, then using a quiz to learn about your audience and segment your list would be a really great way to send more personalized messaging or like send the right people to the right course. Erin Ollila 09:48 Absolutely. I’m gonna go back to my favorite phrase it depends, right so if we look at like different types of welcome sequences that different people would do in their marketing’s like you said sometimes the only adjustments you’re making is changing a phrase here, right? So the strategy behind the welcome is still happening, you know, you’re introducing yourself, you’re sharing with them what you’re providing them, you’re telling them what to expect from you as the business owner, and how frequently you’ll be emailing them the consistency, things like that, you know, but if one of your courses is on finances, let’s just say like profit in your business, that first email when you’re doing the deliverable, you’re saying like, this is what you’re getting. And this is why it’s important, then if you have another one that’s like on business taxes, as an example, the only changes you’re really making is explaining, this is what you’re getting. And this is why this tax deliverable is important. You’re not most of the time, you wouldn’t be changing your whole bio, when you introduce yourself, you wouldn’t be telling them that they’re going to get a completely different experience when it comes to emails, because likely after the sequence, they’re dropping in your general email newsletter list, right? So they’re all going to be expecting about the same thing. So tiny changes are all you really need. I love that you mentioned how like, you know, course creators would be a great type of people to have a quiz because they can help them learn more about their audience. And I would argue that like, I don’t think that there’s many industries that wouldn’t do well with a quiz. I think that it can help in so many ways. But what you specifically meant by that was that the quiz can help them better market better, like chips share better messages with their audience. So can we talk a little bit about how to use your quiz to segment your list? Dawn Petrin 11:31 Yeah, totally. I mostly work with interact. But I’m pretty sure that most of the other quiz hosting platforms also allow this. And with interact, you can tag people in your CRM by which result they get. But you can also tag them based on how they answer questions. And you might not want to have like this crazy, like too many lists or segments. Because you take them how they answer each question. But if there are certain things that you need to know about your audience, that might not have anything to do with which quiz result they get, it’s totally fine to have some of those questions. In your quiz, you kind of want to make sure that they’re, it’s not like coming out of nowhere, like it doesn’t have to be exactly in alignment with the quiz promise, but you probably would want to like, put it in as the third or fourth question or what have you. So that as they start taking the quiz, the experience is like, Oh, this, this, this quiz is learning about me. So it can tell me something about myself? And then maybe you have a question. It’s like, how do you prefer to learn? And the answer could be, oh, I’m like a one on one person, or like, only in person, or I love on demand online courses, because I’m busy. And I want to be able to, like, listen to them as I hike the mountain, or what have you. And you can take people based on that. And you can both massage the messaging in your emails about that. But you can also send people to certain offers that you know, will resonate with them. Based on that I’m writing a quiz right now to help people figure out like, which, like copy course to start with. And one of the questions is like, Well, how long have you been copywriting. And that doesn’t really matter so much about which copy course they should start with. But it does give the business that I’m writing for an idea like more more, more promoters, a more understanding of who the person is, and where they’re at, at the trajectory. So they might, they might not might not even have anything to do with a copy course, but might have to do with like, say a community that they might invite them into if they’ve been doing it for a long time. Or if they’re total newbies, there might be like certain blog posts that are like, you know, here’s how to make your first 1000 As a freelancer or something like that. So having it’s hard, right, like demographic questions can be if it’s useful to your business, like sometimes demographics might matter. And sometimes they might not. But if it is, you can put those questions into your quiz and then tag people or just use it as research. And even if you don’t tag people, you can like get a pretty heavy ROI. Anyway, so one person who was my client as well as, like, Sean D student, and she, like she went further than this in the future. But like within the first couple of months of having her quiz written, she had just sent it to a small list just 300 people, right? So she had sent it to a small list mostly to segment her list and realize based on one of the questions that she didn’t have an offer for a quarter of her list. So she created an offer and within three months, I brought in more than 50k in revenue because she and and she served her audience better because she learned what they need it. I don’t even think she tagged them. So it wasn’t necessarily about segmentation, but it was more about The research like, oh my gosh, I don’t even have anything for these people. I’m like I said, 300 people 50k? Like, that’s a pretty. That’s Those are great numbers, right? Erin Ollila 15:11 Absolutely no. And I love that you said that because it’s in some ways similar to my experience a lot, I have a quiz that speaking to your earlier point that you were you can segment them based on the messaging as well as the offer. My quiz basically tells you how to improve your website. So in that, I think people when they hear website copywriter, they expect that what I’m doing is I’m just writing a website from scratch. But I don’t believe people need that. I mean, they’re like, if you especially if you hired someone previously, and your messaging has changed, your offers a change, sometimes you need an audit, sometimes you just need an edit, sometimes your website is great, but boy, have you done no effort with SEO or like your effort is just it’s not working for you. So there are different types of ways that might I tried to show my clients what they could need, I would speak to them about that need, because if it’s that they need a complete rewrite, there’s no need to talk to them about like improving their SEO, right. Other as a silly example, every spring, I do a spring clean your website like mini challenge. It’s for people who want to completely DIY things that just basically shows them how I do my website auditing process, how they can take that and then use the templates that I’ve given them to do it once and then continuously recheck it. So it becomes this easy thing later versus like there’s one big audit that they have to do. So for the people who have taken my quiz, and it’s that they’re in a pretty standard place with their website, they just need some adjustments. Those are the type of people that I’d send my website audit course to, I wouldn’t send them to the people who got responses that they really need to redo their copy, especially if I haven’t nurtured them. And they haven’t changed in a different type of different lead, right? Because why would they be auditing their copy, they know that they’re not happy with it, they know that their messaging or needs to change or whatever the specific need is. So in some ways, I’m just kind of reiterating what you said and sharing a different example. But to follow up in the last point that you had shared about your client, I recognize that I actually come to copywriting from a content and SEO background, I worked with really big brands to do blog content, case studies, ebooks like that for their business, all with an SEO lens. So really SEO drove any content that we created, I then shifted my business because I recognize that me being a small business owner, I didn’t have the tools available to me the marketing tools or skills as these bigwigs did, because my budget was very different from the budget of a fortune 100 company. So, you know, it just kind of became a passion that I wanted to help the smaller guys like me, you know, get quality websites use SEO, to the best of their ability. But we all have our own blind spots. So I didn’t talk about SEO very often, which is really the one of the things that set me very far apart from my other copywriters because it’s not just I know a little bit like I know it since. And I wouldn’t say early days, because I mean, I’m not that old. But you know what I mean? Like I’ve known it for a very long time and how it’s changed. So I started have people asking me about it from just hearing things of different clients I’ve worked with, and so many people were like, Oh, I’d love an SEO editorial calendar. I’d love an SEO audit that I finally recognized. I was like, well, this needs to become a thing, right? Like I need to actually if people are asking me coming to me on their own, imagine how many more people I could get if I were to attract them for things I already do, things I enjoy doing. So I think that, you know, I’m agreeing with you and your example. And I’m, I’m sharing more of myself. So I if anyone’s listening, they recognize that like, there are things either you don’t see in your own business, things that don’t feel possible in your business, that getting more information from your clients, really, or like your leads could help you make those strategic business decisions. Now, if you did a quiz and a 25% of your list came back saying this one thing. And in your gut, you’re like, I hate doing this, like I hate doing website audits as an example, which is not true for me just an example, then you don’t have to pre an offer, you might then decide, You know what, this isn’t what I want to do, maybe I’m going to adjust to like pull back. Because if I’m having such a visceral response to this, I need to not I need to change my offerings to exclude this right. So I mean, we’ve talked about the value of quizzes in the last episode, I don’t think we need to go back down there too much. But it is true like these, like the information you get, can be so helpful to make decisions in speaking or talking today, specifically, how you talk to them in emails, right? So once you’ve segmented that list by you know, determining how you’ll do the tags and then how you’ll speak to the people who are tagged differently or segmented differently in your list. How do you think that affects like? Relationship building, I guess, right, because we’ve determined the tag helps you make decisions on how you’ll market to them. But then I think there’s a lot Say About then once you know how you will market to them, you can build a relationship at that point. Dawn Petrin 20:05 Oh, yeah. 100% I really think it’s, I feel like so many of us like, we’re like, oh my God, what do I write to my list? Or like, what are these people even care about? And, and as much information as you can get about them, the better, especially if it’s not creepy information, right? Like, we all get creeped out when we like Google like, I don’t know, whatever you’re like on Amazon, and you’re looking for like new yoga pants, and then all of a sudden, like, all of your ads, or like different types of plastic pants or what have you. And that sort of creepy, but you’re right, but with a quiz, like people know, like zero party or first party data, they know that they’re giving you that information. And so they’re less creeped out. If you’re like, Yo, I know this about you. And so that right away, is creating, yeah, less of a creepy experience than like, if you’ve your cookie on an E commerce site, and you didn’t even like add to cart, but you were browsing and then it’s like you forgot about this? Yeah. Oh, my God, the data is so frightening, right? I think you could look back over your quiz analytics, and whether it’s based on segmentation, or if it’s just like, Alright, I need to write a newsletter for this week, what am I going to write about? And you can look and be like, oh, yeah, look at this, like 50% of people are answering this question in this way. And you could literally be like, Yo, I was just looking over my quiz analytics. And I noticed that 50% of people, so maybe this is you, and then you can speak directly to how they answered that question. And then how you help them. But on top of that, let’s say like, so there was a quiz I wrote for like a really amazing woman who helps. Teachers have like teacher side hustles, like sell their stuff on TPT have memberships etc. And it ended up having eight results. But it was a personality quiz. But there was like beginners, and then there was like intermediate people. So there were like people who either had never heard of Teachers Pay Teachers, or who used it. But what I didn’t have anything ever for sale, didn’t have a website didn’t have a blog, didn’t understand anything about why they didn’t have a teacher account on Instagram or AD. So they call it teacher gram. And so those people, they were, they are given a different offer. And they were also, like, nurtured differently, because this client had, like so much amazing information for these teachers. But like, if I already am making like $1,000 a month on TPT, do I want my welcome email to be like how to make your first sale on TPT? Certainly not right. And if I read if I’m, if I’m that person who’s like, or the opposite, if it’s like how to launch a membership to your 1000 person list, and I’ve never even like thought about having an email list, then I’m I’m gonna get overwhelmed if I get this email that’s like, Oh, my latest blog post is you know how to get to 10k followers on Instagram, and you’re like, Oh, my God, I said, I don’t like Instagram, or what have you. Right? So I think that by using the information that you gather, whether you’re like explicitly being like, Yo, you told me this in the quiz, therefore, I’m telling you, or I’m offering you this information has value and also you can buy this thing. Yeah, it’s just so much like it’s I think it’s refreshing. I honestly think that when quizzes are done, right, and I’m on someone’s email list, and they’re like, Hey, Don, we see you’ve been copywriting for three years and maybe now you want to join our really baller copywriters mastermind I’m like, oh, yeah, thanks. Right, compared to Yeah, I think I think I’ve kind of made my point that we want our messaging to meet people, not just where they’re at, in the stages of awareness of our products and our offers, but also like where they’re at in their life and what their goals are, what their pain points are, you will literally in your asking your who is like, where are you struggling with most when it comes to SEO? And for me, I would be like a spy? No, I’m exaggerating. Right? But like, I’m, I do not come from copy from there. So I’d be like, I’m struggling with everything. Why would I want to have have my headline? have keywords in it? How would I find out the key? Like, I don’t know anything? Whereas if it’s someone who’s like, Oh, I’ve been writing content for a long time. Now I kind of rocket SEO, then you might be like, Oh, here’s some secret things you probably didn’t know. Right? And it wouldn’t help me. If I was this beginner person who didn’t understand I would probably be better to get like a SEO vocab sheet or something like, right, yeah. Or how to how to find out what what words are being searched on Google would be something that I’d be like, oh, yeah, I don’t know. Please share that with me. But other people would be like, Oh, Erin can help me she’s a beginner too, or what have you. So I think you also get to like display your authority in a way that resonates with your reader. So I’m not saying you have to have a quiz to do it. You Do you need to segment your list and make sure you’re tracking where people are coming from and what that has to do with your offers. And you’re more likely to get a whole bunch of information in a two minute period with someone with a quiz, and be able to have a more like complex but robust, and effective email marketing strategy, Erin Ollila 25:20 I would say that quizzes are probably my absolute favorite type of a lead magnet period. And I always recommend them to all different types of clients for a few reasons. One, they are the sneakiest least sneaky type of marketing, lead magnet you can do, because like you mentioned earlier, people like to take the quizzes, right, like, I don’t know if it’s a millennial, you know, Gen X, Gen Z thing of just growing up on magazines, where you got to, like, do this for fun. And that’s like, we’ve been conditioned to want to do that. And even if it’s not like, if you don’t, if you’re not in one of those generational groups, I think it’s because you’re making the decision that you’re okay with sharing X, Y, and Z to get a result. Whereas if you sign up for a lead magnet, that’s like a checklist, it’s like, worse we as a consumer society are so just past that, like, we know we’ve gotten some junk over time. So there’s such an A level of not sure if they trust you or not before with a non quiz. Now, once you’re done taking the quiz, you filled it all out, you get your results, there’s that immediate trust built, right. So even if you don’t agree with the results, you’re able to see the process that the business owner, check Ilan, and then the results and and why they’re explaining the results. So you might not necessarily be on board, but you’ll be able to see why the answer is there. And that’s before email even starts. Right? So the second you jump into email with them, they already have a layer of trust. And that layer of trust is like, you know, there’s a range, right? It could be like, Oh, my God, I am totally this result, I cannot wait to see what they send me in my emails. Or it can be like, I’m apprehensive. But I still trust you. Like, we’ll see where this goes. Right. And you don’t get that from any other type of lead magnets. So I say that, like, I think it’s helpful for that reason. And then what you’re saying at the end, it’s like the VOC that you get right like that. Not only are you building trust with the people, so you can have better relationships, better messaging, but the information that you have informs I mean, it’s just repeating what you said, it informs how you build those relationships informs how you the messaging you share with different types of people, for the level of readiness for the level of awareness for the level expertise, whatever it falls under, so that way, you’re not off putting, you know, like you mentioned, like if I am you know, you know, there’s a lot of copywriters that get SEO and a lot that don’t, and that’s totally fine. But if I were to talk to you as if, assuming you’re a copywriter who should get SEO, and I talked to you as if you should get it. So I’m not sharing the basic things for you, you’re gonna feel off, you’re gonna you’re gonna be like annoyed or feel shame, whatever, right? There’s a lot of feelings that come along with how people market to us. So it’s why knowing your clients, which you get in quiz results, and you know, how they’re filling out the quiz is why knowing them helps you not like avoid that. Avoid those feelings of an uncomfortableness and just start to build a natural relationship where they trust you and feel more confident purchasing from you. Dawn Petrin 28:26 Yeah, and even if you got it wrong, like you were saying, like, Oh, if the quiz result doesn’t totally resonate, like in your first email, if you get like, you know, hit reply, and let me know how this resonates, then I’ve got a chance to be like, hey, this didn’t resonate at all, you totally got me wrong. And that is a relationship that is like being built, right? It does is like it doesn’t even matter. Like, like, you didn’t really see me. And then you would be right back and be like, Oh, shit, I wonder what I got wrong. Maybe I’m gonna go back and check my quarterly you know? Or like, sure. Actually, I think that this result does work for you in these whatever however, you’re going to do it. I mean, just like caveat, don’t say hit reply if you’re not going to respond to people, because that’s going to help dress but it is it’s like you’ve already given people so much to think about and chew on that you can ask them to be and be more intimate right away. Which, I mean, I really do think that that building that nurturing relationship is what it takes for like, I’m like, Oh, maybe I already I already am sold on the fact that when I rewrite my website because I have not really even written it ever. I do want to have SEO in it. And you’re right if you were like speaking to me like I should know then I will be like oh probably I don’t even want to talk to this person because like they’re like, I feel bad that I’m a copywriter who doesn’t know that much about SEO right now Erin Ollila 29:55 and I know you shouldn’t because yeah, I see in SEO are two different things like it actually drives me crazy when I hear copywriters who I don’t necessarily feel have enough training in SEO to be like, Yeah, I’ll do the SEO for your website. What? And honestly, we’re all at our own learning phases, you know, they might have learned a little and they’re putting in practice and that’s better than nothing. Absolutely. But I really firmly whenever I hear a copywriter be like, Well, I don’t know how to do that. Well, I’m like, That’s okay. That’s good. You don’t need to like, right, there are things that you’re doing Don that I don’t know how to do as well myself, because I don’t need it within my business, right. That’s why we rely on different businesses to do this. And I say that to you don’t but I’m saying that to anyone who’s listening like you’re a landscaper? Why the heck should you know about SEO, like interior designer, like I tell all my clients, I love for you to know marketing, because I want you to understand the conversations I have the decisions we’re making together. But I don’t want you wasting your time on this. Like it’s not your job to do this research. It’s my job to do it. Like I want you to sit back and feel confident that you’re getting the best end result. That’s it, right. So yeah, Pep Talk for everyone does. Dawn Petrin 31:02 And like to go back into the quiz and segmentation. You could ask like, what, you know, oh, you’re what kind of job do you have? Oh, you’re a service provider? Cool. What kind of service provider? Great. Now, you know, I’m a copywriter, and you’d be like, Oh, cool. Like, what? You could ask an income question. I’d be soft with that. But you could ask like, how long have you been copywriting? Or what type of clients do you work with? And then you could get a feel that like, oh, shit, Don works with some ballers. And she says she doesn’t know anything about SEO. So in my email, I’m gonna be like, girl, you are a baller copywriter. And you don’t need to know anything about SEO? Because I’m gonna take you through it right or literally has a pretty good even ask people like, I don’t know, like I said before, like, what are you struggling with? But you could also be like, what’s the worst possible way anyone has ever tried to sell something to you? And then not sell it to them in that way? Right? Oh, you know, of course you want to keep it? I don’t know, if it’s for lead gen. It’s always like, oh, between seven and 10 questions. I don’t know, if you’re writing an engaging quiz. And the questions are easy to answer. You could probably do more than that. It’s totally fine. And you and you could get more information. But I really think whatever you learn about people don’t ignore it. Erin Ollila 32:12 Yeah, totally. I think what you just said was really helpful because it’s something I wanted to kind of conclude our conversation on. And it’s, I have a big bone to pick with marketing in regards to social media and email marketing when it comes to storytelling. Because I think it’s something we’re not taught well as business owners, not as copywriters. I think that, you know, we’re all taught in school, early childhood days that like, here’s the few parts of a story that you want to tell. And then later on in life, we learn about like, personal storytelling. And that’s how we communicate with the people in our lives to like, build and nurture relationships. Well, we jump into this online marketing world. And then I feel like a lot of the big wigs that sell courses and things say like, tell your story, like, like you communicate with stories, but the question is, how, how do we communicate with stories, and that’s where nurturing and relationship building goes wrong, is a business owner or, you know, marketer, whoever will go into an email and tell this long story that they see the relevance to, but their client does not? Well, I think that if we’re going to dial this way back, like the beauty of VLC, whether it’s done from survey is from interviews from quiz results, is that you can take these facets that you learn, you can take the little like minute parts of the results, you can take all of these things. And that’s where you to tell your story from whether it be personal or imagined or a story about like clients you’ve worked with. Dawn Petrin 33:40 Totally I love that. Yeah, I do. Like do I do do trainings on email marketing, and always like use story that’s relevant to your one reader? And it’s like, well, how do you know your one reader is? Well, why don’t you choose them based on what you know from your quiz? is one way to actually know who your one reader is? And yeah, story works, but only if you know, it’s going to be something that resonates with the person who’s opening that email. Yeah, 100% I love it. Erin Ollila 34:07 And I think that you know, we talked about consistency. A lot of time people are inconsistent. It’s because they don’t know what to say. So like, dude, make it easy on yourself. Like don’t sit there trying to dream up stories of like, what happened even third grade like your high school crush? Like what you are the problem? No, like, stop trying to make up a story and related to business. Look at what you want to say about business and think do have I had any experiences like this? If you’re looking at your quiz results, you find someone answers this specific way and it like something pops into your mind where you’re like, you know, that time I was on vacation in France and like I didn’t know how to speak French at all. And I was so lucky to have someone who like like a you know, on the on the on the tour with you who was so kind so easygoing made you feel comfortable and like you happen to be someone who does something where like your client needs a lot of nurturing and hand holding, let’s say, that’s that’s a great story to share. Right? But you do that because of what you know about yourself as a business. So Under the offers or products that you have the services you offer, and the type of client and I just think that like, you know, repeating everything we’re saying here, because it’s also good, but a quiz can do that for you. Dawn Petrin 35:12 And it should feel natural, not that writing to your list feels natural all the time. But the story came naturally because it was relevant and because it was relevant to your life. And like, the truth is, you don’t want to work with people who don’t want to hear your stories to a certain extent anyway, like, of course, you don’t want them to be overly long or whatever. I mean, they could be really long if you if you write them well. But I just I think there’s there’s something there about. And this is like, so you know, hot tip, and you’ve probably even gone through it already in your podcasts at some point. But like, read your emails out loud. And if when you’re reading it out loud, you’re like, wow, I sound like a university professor. And unless your audience is a bunch of University Professors, chances are, it’s not conversational enough, right. Or if there’s a place where you’re pausing, then that’s probably a place where you’ve written something awkward. So like, just really bringing it down to that conversational element. And if you start with a quiz, it feels like a conversation from the beginning. Because you’re answering questions like you’re saying things answering questions, you have an answer back. Um, one thing I want to talk about, because I know we’re getting shorter times, and it’s actually real quick, and it’s sort of like a trick, sorry, but is your minimum post quiz, welcome sequence, minimum viable post quiz, welcome sequence, one email, okay, you need to send one email right away after you write or after someone takes your quiz. And in that email, you need to reiterate to them how awesome they are based on the quiz result that they got. If you’re delivering a freebie you need to deliver the freebie, and then explain to them the benefits of the freebie based on what you know about them because of the quiz result that they got. And then again, like you said early earlier, tell them what they can expect from you know that like, I’m gonna email you every Tuesday. That doesn’t have to be that but like, I’m gonna email you SEO advice that you can put into place in your business right away on the regular, expect it, you know, and then ask for the reply, like, Sure, download the freebie if you’re giving them a freebie, but I really think you should ask for the reply. This is your chance, your welcome email, you’re just way more likely to get people with that right away. And also I want to say like, it’s okay, if you sell a little bit, I would sell on the PS and I would make it like easy. Something that’s easy to take you up on don’t buy I wouldn’t judge like, Oh, my quiz isn’t working because the people are in taking me up on my like, you know, $7 offer or what have you. But don’t be afraid to do that. But yeah, one email that is personalized to each quiz result, if you don’t have it, I think you’re wasting your time with your quiz. After that, like drop them into your regular newsletter sequence. Or like if you have posts that do really well on social, or emails that you’ve written that people reply to respond to. Great. Use those, repurpose them. And you can you can build a slowly you don’t need to have your whole welcome sequence written before you launch your quiz. But I really hope you have at least one email. Because yeah, like it’s that’s when the opportunity is right. Erin Ollila 38:14 Yeah, it’s so much harder to jump back in six months later, when you actually sit down and write something and be like, do you remember when you took a quiz with me six months ago? Let’s talk about it. Because you’re very likely to just get unsubscribed from at that point. Yeah, I’m done. This has been so helpful. I always like to ask people a couple questions before they go. And the first one is, if you could give a homework assignment, it doesn’t have to be huge. It can be small to the people who are listening and are interested in quizzes and emails, what would you give them, Dawn Petrin 38:43 give them give you all two things. So I’ve got the welcome sequence template that I’ll give you. But I also have this like unabridged, with typos. really dense. I have one person who download it was like whoa, this is dense AF, how to optimize your quiz slide deck from tutorial Tuesday I did with Copy Hackers a couple of years ago. So I would say like, go check that out. It’s basically just like copy tips. But for quizzes, Erin Ollila 39:10 those two things will help you set the goals or implement on those goals. So I love that. All right, John, here’s the tough one. If you could connect with anyone in the online business world who would it be and why? Dawn Petrin 39:23 Yeah, that’s so interesting. I’ve been thinking about that. And I think it’s kind of interesting too. And this is maybe a tip for your readers like if you want to connect with someone on the online business world go download their freebie and reply to their emails because Yeah, they’ll get back to you. That’s kind of a good like Erin Ollila 39:38 third homework assignment right? Like you want to make more connections like that’s what you should do get on someone’s list and actually talk to them. Dawn Petrin 39:45 So um, maybe I want to connect with your your listeners, like I would want to connect with the people who are actually looking to get better at copy because like I do have a like a small membership and I want to know more about like, what business owners and and new copywriters are struggling with. So that would probably be my answer is like more like people who, oh man copywriting has like, not only set me free, where I can, like, make really excellent money and I can live anywhere in the world and have moved around. But it’s also like I have helped other people who are just talented writers also have that same ability to like make a money and help people. So yeah, I think I would just want to connect with more people who are interested in, in in copywriting and how to actually like make it as a freelancer or get a job in house. So Erin Ollila 40:40 I asked them what what we are talking in real life to really friend doesn’t necessarily understand the online business world about what I do and who I serve and who I help. And she was just enthralled with this conversation. I was like, wow, she’s really interested in this. But toward the end, she was like, I’m really confused, because I feel like you’re the type of personality that wants to stand out. So like, what I’m hearing you say is all wonderful, but like, why do you do what you do? Because it’s set, it seems like you’re standing behind all these businesses, like, where’s expert Aaron coming in. And I was like, I don’t think you recognize how fortunate I am to be able to help other people bring these great things in the world, because I’ve worked with people who have made transformation like life altering transformations for their clients, or some of them the teeniest tiniest things that don’t sound life altering, but they’re so helpful. Like, it’s thrilling to be someone who can support other people to do that, you know, as well as like the teaching I do with my own clients are the trainings that I do. So I love that to hear that from a different copywriter. Because I actually don’t hear that very often. And I wonder like, am I a weirdo who like, just doesn’t care? Like, I don’t need the like the street cred for this. Like, I just like I love doing these things. I love being involved. So it’s I love to hear that from you. Final question. I promised that we’re going to be done after this. And I will not ask you one more thing. But one thing you said at the beginning of our call is don’t post it once and then forget it. So what advice do you have? Because I actually hear this a lot from the clients that I suggest that they do quizzes, they’re like, Well, I don’t have a big social group. So I don’t know who to share this with. So you make a quiz, you make your welcome sequence, you’re ready to roll and ready to rock and make it work for you. What do you do with a quiz that point? How do you get people to take it. Dawn Petrin 42:15 So first of all, of course, you don’t want to like be posting every single day about it. But when you first launch, I would post every single day about it, get as many people as possible to take it, send it to your list, if you have a like even if it’s a small list, like send it to your list because they are your people. Ask them for their opinion on it, you know, like, and then ask them if you can share that opinion. So if you are on Instagram and use it well or don’t use it, well start using well, by sharing the responses that you’ve gotten from your quiz that can be really helpful. But just keep sharing it, ask people to share it for you, and then repost them and give a lot of value in the quiz. Also, when you’re writing your posts, ask them to comment and let you know which results they got and then engage with them in the post. Because like, we don’t know, the algorithm is always changing. But engagement is a really big part of it. And if you wanted to one day sponsor a post, the one with the most engagement will be the best one to sponsor. Um, yeah. So I think it’s just about not hiding it and not like this is don’t go viral in the way they used to go way at the beginning. Okay, it’s and virality is like this big thing. Everyone wants to go viral. But if you’re going viral, and my girl Shanti has a really great training about this in the political actors interact, so I’m not gonna go too deep into it. But if you’re going to viral, you’re more likely to get a bunch of people who aren’t your ideal customers on your list anyway. So she talks about like strategic virality. And that’s great. But also just like recognizing that the research you’re doing the zero party and first party data that you’re gathering with your quiz is amazing, even if you’re not getting like Jenna Kutcher numbers, right? Erin Ollila 44:03 And I think you have to also be caution to know if you want those numbers, you know, especially like service based businesses, like that’s why whenever I hear like the word viral, I just want to roll my eyes too, because it’s like, Dude, what are you going to do with all these new leads? Right? Like, I it’s a little easier for people who have like an office suite or products and things like that, because you could just shift them there, you’ve already created but like, if you are a straight up service provider, you can’t serve 600 new people a month period, just so it’s like, figure out the way that you’d growth works best for you. Yeah, Dawn Petrin 44:33 yeah. And then don’t be afraid to share things. I think so often. This is like, since we’re talking about email marketing over this whole series, so many people are like, Oh, but won’t they think I’m spam? And we not If you do a right not if you’re relevant. And it’s the same thing. Like, I have a lot of friends who are coaches, and they talk about their offers all the time. And in the olden days, like, what, 10 years ago, it was like people need to see things seven times before they’ll take you up on it people see so Many things now that they need to see your offer 100 times maybe before they take you up on it, and they might need to see your quiz a whole bunch of times. And they might need to like see that, while their best friend’s dog took your quiz and got something from it. And now that’s the time they want to take it. So don’t be afraid to share. If your business is your passion and your quizzes based on that and how you help people, don’t be afraid to share it. You’re not annoying people. And if you are, they should stop following you. I think Erin Ollila 45:25 that’s like the most perfect way to end those because it’s motivational and it’s also like practical. Dawn Petrin 45:29 And I’ll take that as motivational speech for myself as well. Thanks so much for having me on. This is really fun. Erin Ollila 45:36 Don, you’ve been wonderful. I sincerely appreciate all of your help. I will add all of your stuff to the show notes so you can get her welcome sequences and the slides that she was talking about and really just get started to make your quiz and then the follow up emails be the best that they can be your business