Your customers expect – and want – a personalized shopping experience when they enter your ecommerce store. And they will reward you handsomely if you can nail it. These statistics are proof:

Personalization efforts can boost revenues by up to 15%. [Adweek]
Brand loyalty increases by 28% if customers receive personalized communication. [SmarterHQ]
Companies that exceed their revenue goals have a dedicated budget for personalization 83% of the time. [Monetate]
Consumers are 2.1x more likely to view personalized offers as important. [Salesforce]

Now, the only question is how? – how can one offer effective personalization? The answer: It all relies on the customer data you gather. If you have the right data, you can offer great personalization. Here’s a very basic example: Let’s say you know a customer is a man. In that case, you can highlight offers for men’s products on their homepage.

Another “how question” you might have now is, “How can one gather quality customer data?” One of the answers – and the best, non-intrusive way – is through ecommerce quizzes.

Ecommerce quizzes allow you to collect zero-party data effectively.

What are ecommerce quizzes? What is zero-party data? You’ll find answers to these questions and more in this article.

What is an eCommerce Quiz?

Quizzes are simply a series of questions that you ask customers to learn more about them.

Typically, customers answer the question (i.e., offer their information) in exchange for product recommendations, personal assessments, customized education, exclusive discounts, etc.

For brands, a quiz is critical because it helps gather key data points about the customers (their preferences, challenges, goals, etc.) and then recommend the most appropriate product based on their needs.

Here’s an example of a quiz by one of the most successful subscription ecommerce businesses, Dollar Shave Club:

Dollar Shave Club conducts quizzes to recommend the best subscription box to potential customers

Zero-Party Data – What Is It, and Why Does It Matter?

Zero-party data is information that is shared directly and willingly by customers.

Here’s how Salesforce defines it: “Zero-party data is that which a customer intentionally and proactively shares with a brand. It can include preference center data, purchase intentions, personal context, and how the individual wants the brand to recognize [them].”

Zero-party data is especially valuable to brands because it helps discover why customers behave how they behave and purchase what they purchase. And these psychographic hints that customers share can unlock a significant competitive advantage in 2022 and beyond when it comes to targeting, messaging, and positioning.

The Three Main Benefits of An eCommerce Quiz

There are three immediate benefits that quizzes offer that contribute directly to increasing sales:

1. Accelerated List Growth

Building a list is a critical ingredient to marketing success, especially because of the upcoming death of third-party cookies and increasing difficulties with ad targeting and reporting.

Many brands have started offering discounts and perks like free shipping in exchange for website visitors’ email or SMS numbers.

Example of bran providing discount to collect emails — An example of a brand offering a discount for visitor’s email

You can go a step further and quiz customers to get contact info along with other data. For example, Your asks for quiz-takers emails at the end of the quiz for them to be able to see quiz results:

Me entering my email address after completing a quiz

2. Improved Conversion Rate

The foundational premise of conversion rate optimization is to simplify the buying process. Reduce the number of decisions and clicks that a customer needs to make, and you are increasing the likelihood that they will purchase the products.

This is where quizzes come in. You can ask a few simple questions and recommend a product(s) based on those answers. It directly translates into a higher conversion rate.

At Prehook, we see the conversion rate of the segment of customers who take the quiz is 2x-3x that of customers who don’t take the quiz.

This is because buyers are guided to the most appropriate product, which in some cases can be personalized products. For example, The Farmer’s Dog recommends products based on quiz answers and likely gets more conversion than they would if they didn’t give recommendations:

3. More Customer Data

Learning about your customers’ needs, and creating marketing campaigns around those needs, is increasingly important in this post-iOS 14 world where ad campaigns have become more expensive and less targeted.

The data gathered in a quiz functionally translates into better segmentation to send more relevant, timely, and compelling offers via email, SMS, and paid ads. This extends to ongoing automation as well as one-off campaigns.

Here’s an example from kids clothing brand Rockets of Awesome, where they learn about basics, but also more nuanced information like style preferences:

What data should you gather in your quiz?

Now that we’ve learned the high-level benefits of a quiz, what are the specific data points you can gather in the quiz?

It always helps to know your customers’ challenges, goals, interests, and preferences.

This can include:

Basic personal information
Habits and preferences
Qualitative insights
Ideal end States and Goals

How To Use The Data

Your quiz acts as a sales associate for your brand. With just a few questions, you can set up your quiz to recommend the most appropriate product and create a compelling narrative around that product as to why your prospective customers should purchase it.

The data from the quiz impact the shopping experience in several ways, including:

Improving Website Experience

Immediately after completing the quiz, shoppers are presented with products that they can add directly to the cart. This makes it easier for shoppers to shop. See how Hawthrone does it:

Hawthrone's recommendations — The recommendations

Email marketing

A quiz can also help in email marketing. When creating segments around zero-party data, understanding the customer perspective can greatly improve the relevance of the email content and offers.

You can even send a quiz to your existing email list to learn more about them to improve your existing segmentation. Here’s an example from trestique:

And then send follow up email campaigns after the quiz to drive further conversions, as Poo-Pourri does:

A quiz is a great hook for a paid advertisement because it plays the human curiosity about ourselves.

We love to learn more about our own personalities and needs, and taking a quiz can help us learn more about ourselves.

Here’s an example from Trade Coffee, where they use the quiz to capture more leads and drive customers to their store:

In Closing

Standing out with a personalized marketing strategy is a competitive advantage that translates directly into revenue growth.

And personalization is built upon the customer data that you own.

This all becomes more possible with the data gathered in a quiz.

Shopify has found that in 2022, 42% of brands plan to offer their customers personalized product recommendations through tools like quizzes.

Figuring out how to capture customer data, and use it to improve the customer experience, is an increasingly important marketing initiative. Are you ready to take that step into the future of digital marketing?

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