The Web Quiz

One of the most innovative and practical methods of customer profiling through Web response is the Web quiz. People are encouraged to go to a Web site to take a quiz. In most cases, the quiz concerns your product. When they take the quiz, they get a score that tells them whether they need your product and which of your products meets their needs.

Iomega, the maker of Zip storage disks, turned to Bob McKim of msdbm of Los Angeles to design a Web quiz that would attract business customers. Msdbm has perfected this technique. The company used direct mail and email to prompt IT directors to come to Iomega’s Web site to take a quiz (see Figure 14-9). The quiz asked the easy questions about data storage given in the following list. As you look through these questions and think about your answers, you will see that you are easily drawn into the Iomega way of thinking. Each question has a yes or no answer.

Figure 14-9: Web Quiz

1. At least once a quarter we make copies of all our data and store them off site.

2. My organization keeps at least three copies of our data and always backs up to the oldest version.

3. My end users travel safely by carrying a disk copy of all their important data.

4. My end users always carry a disk copy with them when they’re on the road so that they can share large amounts of data.

5. My end users back up all their data at least once a week.

6. My end users all have a continuous backup product to protect data between backups.

7. My end users employ a file version retention program to track file changes.

8. My end users have actually practiced restoring data from backup disks—just in case.

9. We use disk passwords to keep private data secure.

10. All our data disks are accurately labeled so we know what’s on them and when they were created.

When the last yes or no has been checked, the user hits the Submit button and sees the score (see Figure 14-10). Clicking on the Needs button brings up a further analysis of the user’s needs for Iomega products, as shown in Figure 14-11. After a series of questions, another screen provides a “Here’s What I’m Struggling With” button that brings the user to a customized list of solutions that involve Iomega products.

Figure 14-10: Results of the Quiz

Figure 14-11: The Fix for Your Problems

Getting Users to Register

So far, the users are having fun on your Web site. You have their name and their email name, which is wonderful because you can use them to follow up. To get complete information on the users, however, Iomega wanted their company data. It gave people an incentive to provide this by making an offer. Bob McKim advised Iomega to offer respondents a drawing for an Iomega HipDip Digital Audio Player. To enter the drawing, users had to provide their address, their position in their company, information about the number of PCs in the organization, and their authority over purchases.

Results

This kind of Web response can be very profitable. Overall, the direct mail produced a response rate of 1.42 percent and a registration rate of 1.01 percent. These registrants provided their names and company information and took the survey. The email promotion produced a response rate of 3.49 percent with a registration rate of 1.95 percent. It is significant that the email promotion was so much more productive. Figuring in the cost of the mailing, the results are shown in Table 14-5.

Table 14-5 : Cost of a Survey

	Direct mail	Email
Unit cost	$0.71	$0.12
Cost for 50,000	$35,500	$6,000
Response rate	1.42%	3.49%
Number of responses	710	1,745
Registration rate	1.01%	1.95%
Number registered	505	975
Cost per lead	$70.30	$6.15

Email promotion proved to be 11 times as cost-effective as direct mail. Why would that be? There seem to be several reasons:

• The product was a computer product, so potential users all had computers.

• The audience was IT directors, who were used to email and were on the Web every day.

• The click-through process from an email takes only a second. Trying to enter a URL from a direct-mail piece takes at least a minute—60 times as long. Compare these two sentences:

To take the 1-minute Iomega Quiz and enter to win a prize, click here.

To take the 1-minute Iomega Quiz, go on the Web and enter www.msdbmdata/iomega/.

Which is easier?

What Works

• Appending data to your customer file to learn your customers’ demographics and create a profile

• Using the profile to find prospects that match the profile of your best customers

• Asking customers to complete their own profile

• Using a customer’s profile to customize and personalize that customer’s Web experience

• Using a quiz on the Web to find out about what customers want, and then offering it to them

• Comparing your customer profiles to the national average

• Using a model to improve your response rate on promotions

What Doesn’t Work

• Getting people to fill out long, boring profile forms

• Assuming that the head of the household is the customer