How Ellen uses a live quiz that turns 80-90% of attendees into subscribers.
Welcome to Day 18 of the 30 Days of Growth.
This is a pop-up newsletter put together by the team at Growth In Reverse. We’ve pulled 30 creators together to help give one short, actionable way you can either grow or improve your email list.
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You’ve probably seen the QR code on the last slide of a talk. “Subscribe to my newsletter!” with a code nobody scans because they’re already packing up.
Ellen Yin from Cubicle to CEO figured out a way better version of this.
She puts a quiz QR code on an early slide, has the entire room take it in real time, and ties the results directly into the rest of her presentation. If you don’t take the quiz, you can’t really follow along.
She’s done this at big conferences with hundreds of people, at a coffee social, at a co-working space mixer, and at a private workshop with 8 people. The format scales in both directions.
The result: 80-90% opt-in rates in every room, and 2,300+ subscribers from this 1 method alone.
How Ellen Does It
1. Ellen shares the quiz QR code in the middle of her talk. She has the entire room scan a QR code on an early slide. Her quiz is 10 questions, multiple choice, and she walks through each question out loud so everyone is answering in real time.
2. Ellen engages the audience after the quiz wraps. People get their result sent to them. Then she asks who’s a “change maker,” who’s a “whip-smart achiever,” and so on. Hands go up. People actually engage.
3. She reveals the behind-the-scenes halfway through. Here’s where it gets good. Ellen tells the room: “Each of these leadership types also represents a distinct buyer persona.” Then she walks through how to market to each one. The audience gets to see their own buying behavior explained in real time, and they can apply it to their own business immediately.
4. She fits the whole thing into a 10-15 minute slot. That short runtime keeps the audience engaged without risking distraction. It’s also easy to land a sponsored segment at events she isn’t already booked to speak at (Ellen slipped into a sponsored slot at a recent event and ran this exact playbook).
5. She pitches herself into events, too. Ellen planned to attend a women’s conference in Nashville. She emailed the event host asking for a 15-minute sponsored segment. They said yes and Ellen walked out with a room full of new subscribers from a conference she technically wasn’t even speaking at.
Why It Works
People are naturally curious about themselves. A personality quiz is pretty low-friction and gets way more buy-in, especially when the reward is immediate and specific to them.
The opt-in is the spine of the talk. Once people are committed to participating, they need their result to stay in the room with you. This is so much different than passively tossing a QR code on a slide during a talk.
The behind-the-scenes reveal (each quiz result is also a buyer persona) gives the audience something they can apply to their own business right away. That payoff is what makes the whole exchange feel fair and valuable.
Results
- 2,300+ subscribers added from this 1 quiz and presentation method
- 80-90% opt-in rate on every room, from small workshops to conferences with 200+ people
- Speaking opportunities at events she wasn’t scheduled to speak at (which resulted in new subscribers)
- Every subscriber comes pre-sorted into 1 of 4 buyer personas, so segmented follow-up is basically free
How You Can Implement It
Even if you don’t do in-person speaking, you could totally steal this strategy for a virtual summit, a Zoom workshop, or webinar.
Step 1: Pick a quiz topic your audience is already curious about. Make it relevant to your newsletter content and engineered to extract subscriber data you can use.
Step 2: Keep it short, 10 questions or fewer and multiple choice. Any longer and you risk people drifting off on their phones.
Step 3: Build the quiz on software that captures emails and sorts people into a small number of result types.
Step 4: Put the QR code on an early slide. Have the room scan, take the quiz, and see their result before you go deeper into the talk.
Step 5: Tie each quiz result to the rest of your presentation. Give the audience a reason to need theie result to follow along.
Tools
- Interact or Typeform to build and host the quiz
- A QR code generator (Canva or your email platform)
- Your slide deck with the QR on an early slide
- Your ESP (like Kit or Beehiiv – one that supports tagging or list segmentation)
Stage time can grow your list just as hard as it grows your brand. Ellen proves that creators getting the most out of speaking are the ones who build the opt-in directly into the show.
See you tomorrow,
Chenell
P.S. You can follow Ellen on Instagram, and subscribe to her podcast and newsletter at cubicletoceo.co.
If you want to read more about Ellen’s story, check out the deep dive I put together on her growth.
