Ep 556 · 11 min · Fri 19 Sep 2025

The Secret Power of Product Quizzes for Acquisition

Jennifer Gilbert reveals how Nutra Organics' product quiz is driving conversions, building trust and setting the tone for long-term customer relationships.

Play episode 556
0:00 11 min

In this episode

Jennifer Gilbert, Head of Global E-commerce at Nutra Organics, knows a thing or two about creating genuine customer connections. At Nutra Organics, the mission has always been simple: make wholefood nutrition easy, accessible and delicious. But what really sets them apart is the way they guide customers to the right products: without gimmicks or diet fads.

Why Quizzes Deserve a Second Look

In a world of AI chatbots and endless recommendation engines, product quizzes might feel a little retro. But they’re far from irrelevant. A good quiz doesn’t just sell product: it helps customers cut through the noise and find what actually fits them. For brands, it’s one of the most underrated ways to spark engagement, gather data, and start building a relationship on the right foot.

Start With Solving Problems

Jennifer says it best: “If you have recognised that, hey, my gut health is just not doing well, you’re going to need something for that. And that’s where we meet you. That’s the essence of a good quiz. It starts with the customer’s problem, not the brand’s product list. When you frame questions around needs, lifestyle, or challenges, customers feel understood, not sold to.

The Work Behind the Curtain

Here’s the reality: building a great quiz isn’t as simple as picking a few filters. It takes testing, debating, and fine-tuning to make sure the recommendations are both accurate and useful. Nutra Organics invested in a benefit-led approach that narrowed choices without overwhelming the customer. The lesson is simple: a sloppy quiz does more harm than good. Get the details right and the conversion lift is worth the effort.

Proof From Coffee to Clothing

It’s not just health brands seeing results. Take Nespresso’s “coffee finder” quiz. It helps customers fine-tune their pod choices by flavour profile. In a category where one bad first cup can lose a customer forever, that tool has been a powerful conversion engine. Similarly, fashion retailer Birdsnest built their “style finder” to help customers discover clothes that fit not just their size, but their personality. These examples show that quizzes aren’t limited to niche markets. Instead, they can lift conversion in categories as broad as coffee and clothing.

Conversions Aren’t Always Instant

Quizzes are rarely about the quick win. Customers often take results away, think about them, and return later. Smart brands build on that by following up. Nutra Organics sends quiz results via email so they’re sitting in the inbox when the customer’s ready to buy. This small step turns a one-time interaction into an ongoing touchpoint, making the quiz more of a personalised resource than a sales tool.

From Funnel to Service

At its best, a quiz isn’t a marketing trick, it’s customer service. As Jennifer puts it, “We don’t just want to sell a product to anybody. We want you to have the right product that’s going to help you, not just be a product that gets stored in your pantry and you never use”. That mindset shifts the quiz from being a funnel to being a genuine way to add value. For ecommerce leaders, that’s the real takeaway: quizzes aren’t about transactions, they’re about trust. And trust drives growth.

In this Playbook:

  • How Nutra Organics built a high-converting quiz that meets customers at their health needs
  • Why syncing quiz results with CRM and email flows drives stronger engagement
  • The difference between product quizzes and AI finders (and how they can coexist)
  • How leaders like YC Eu (Nespresso) and Jane Cay (Birdsnest) use quizzes as acquisition and service tools

🎧 Listen to the full Playbook with Jennifer Gilbert from Nutra Organics now on Add To Cart.


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Nathan Bush: I've been doing a lot of thinking about product quizzes recently, and I know it's a bit of a weird thing to say, weird thing to think about, but it's coming up a lot. I recently had a conversation with a client around do they actually go down the path of creating a product quiz for their new customers, or do they just skip the whole product quiz and go straight to an AI chatbot or an AI finder where a customer can ask anything they want and that the machine is smart enough to spit them out the perfect answer? And I actually think now they're totally different scenarios. It's not that do you skip the quiz to go to the chatbot. I think they're two totally different experiences. While a chatbot is great and I think it's limitless and it can bring some really great information to the forefront that we might not ever program into a quiz, it also has a fundamental flaw in that we're asking customers to know the question that they want to ask. And that's the inherent beauty I think of of a product quiz is that we set the question that we think is most important to them and all they need to do is click a few buttons to actually get a really strong recommendation. So I don't think the product quiz is dead yet. I think there's a lot more life in this and this came to life in my conversation with Jennifer Gilbert from Nutra Organics. We dove deep into product quizzes and I want to play this clip from our conversation because she sheds light onto what what a good product quiz looks like, but also how it set the tone for the relationship that they have with that customer after they do that first quiz from an acquisition standpoint.

Nathan Bush: Then as you're looking to find new customers, are there certain triggers or behaviors that you're looking for that, you know, are kind of those launching points into that. They're now ready to explore what you've got available at Nutra Organics.

Jennifer Gilbert: Yeah, I think it comes from we solve a problem. We're going to meet you where you have that problem. We're not fads, we're not into diet culture or anything like that. But if you have recognized that, hey, my gut health is just not doing well, you're going to need something for that. And that's where we meet you. So if you come onto our site, we've got an amazing product finder quiz that kind of helps you narrow down based off on your benefits and your lifestyle needs or allergies or anything like that. Helps you then narrow down what's going to be best for you. Because we don't just want to sell a product to anybody. We want you to have the right product that's going to help you not just be a product that gets stored in your pantry and you never use.

Nathan Bush: How did you build that quiz? Because I could imagine that that would have been a lot of debate going into that quiz in what are the triggers? What are the filters? What are the outcomes that you want to deliver, especially for new customers? Because this could be the first piece of information that they get about you and your products and how it relates to their lifestyle.

Nathan Bush: What was the process to create something

Nathan Bush: that you're all really proud of?

Jennifer Gilbert: It was huge. Do you know what? Like most things, especially for people who are just getting into any new industry, you're like, this seems simple enough. We'll do it like abc. And then you start doing it and you go, we've just opened Pandora's box. This is not easy at all. So it was a real struggle. And we. I have a really amazing, amazing team. Billy, who's our E Comm campaign manager, she led this project really, really well and collaborated with our R and D team. But you're right, we went through so many different approaches to make sure that it was spitting out the right information for the customer and that it was helpful for them as well. And so we chose to go with the benefit LED approach first and then how we narrowed that down. And the setup was extraordinary. But the conversion on that quiz is astronomical. It is so fantastic. And that I think leads back to when you're doing something and you do it right, it's going to help the customer.

Nathan Bush: Yeah. And from a conversion perspective, I'm not going to ask you to give us the exact numbers, but yeah, I would never tell. We will find out from a conversion perspective, are you finding that conversion happens immediately post the quiz or is it kind of starting as a lead generation that you then have to take them on a full further journey before getting that conversion?

Jennifer Gilbert: Exactly right. I don't think we are as linear as what it used to be 10 years ago where someone would see something, click, buy done. Now you know, they okay, it has given me these products. I'm going to go away and think about it. I've got this ad, I've come back. I'm curious again. Yes. So it's definitely a journey. And we added in flow in Klaviyo. That was once they had done that quiz. A certain time later we would send them all their quiz results. That a game changer that was really good because it's then sitting in their email. So when they think about it, they go back what was the results that I was given? They go back to that email, they can refresh and that's.

Nathan Bush: So it becomes a personalized health resource for them rather than just a marketing campaign.

Jennifer Gilbert: Yeah, absolutely.

Nathan Bush: And what was the tool that you

Nathan Bush: used for your quiz?

Jennifer Gilbert: Yeah, we used Optane. I know there's other ones as well like Preezy and Prezi are now doing some really exciting things with their AI tool. We're going to try that on the pdp, hopefully soon, see how that goes. But of course, like anything AI man, you've got to really check it, right? Especially for us because we are ingestibles, so we can't just go, oh, turn AI on and see what it recommends to people. We've got to be really, really careful. And that's one of our goals that we have for this next financial year, is how we can introduce an element of AI that can help us meet the customers more where they are. I've got more about that but I reckon we might talk about it later.

Nathan Bush: Well, I think it's really interesting to

Nathan Bush: bring up because even as you're talking about that process of creating a quiz, right, we're doing that manually now. And you're not alone. There's a lot of people who have quizzes on their website, but it is a pretty manual process. In two years time we won't be able to dictate that journey. It all will be the machine serving up the content and obviously with the guardrails in place. But I think it's going to look very different around that world of quizzes.

Jennifer Gilbert: Which also means your product data has got to be so correct. Your schema's. Everything has Just got to be immaculate.

Nathan Bush: So, yeah, we couldn't help but fall into the trap of talking about AI and comparing product quizzes to AI. But I think it became pretty clear that it's not a one or the other, that they can both live in the same world and they can do different jobs. But what I loved about Jen's there is that she covered so many points around what you need to consider with product quizzes. So yes, there a brilliant acquisition tool. So if you think about having a landing page that customers can go to after clicking through on a social ad, or maybe it's that they've signed up for email for the first time, getting them to go to a quiz is actually a really great way to get them engaged and to learn more about the product and for you to get a little bit of data around that. YCU from Nespresso actually talked about this on a previous episode where she talked about all the different flavors of coffee pods that they have. And one of the strongest conversion tools that they have is their coffee finder. And it allows people to go through and adjust their personal taste to find the pods that are right for them. Which in the coffee world's a big deal, right? Cause if you have a bad cup of coffee, especially that first one, you might never come back. So that's a really strong acquisition tool from them and you heard there from Jen how well they convert. But I think even if it doesn't get you sales straight away, the amount of data that that brings through is phenomenal. The trick is if you set up a quiz and you just do it through a tool and you actually don't link it to your CRM or your marketing platform, you're losing half the battle. That is where the gold is. How often will we get a new customer that tells us everything that they're interested in? Especially when it comes to lifestyle or usage factors, you need to be able to bring that into your CRM straight away and get the relationship off to a really strong start with some personalized communication. The other thing that Jen talked to there that I think is hugely important and is product quizzes, not just as acquisition, but as service features. So Jen talked about, you know, this is actually a really great thing that if you do this product selector that you can then have that stored in your email. So even if you don't convert straight away, it's always there, available for you. Jane K. From Bird's Nest talked about this in a previous episode and she said that they use their style finder to help their customers find the perfect style for them to and this isn't just for new customers. This is for all their customers because a big part of what they do is about helping people find their style. So they see their product quiz not just as an acquisition tool but as a service tool. So think about it through both lenses, not just one. I think there's no doubt that AI is going to become more prevalent in helping customers find what they want on websites. I think the old search and merch is actually in a little bit of trouble here but but it doesn't necessarily mean the end for the old product quiz. There is plenty of life still left in the product quiz. Think about how you're going to use it to add value to your customers, how you're going to use it to actually kick off that relationship on the right note with personalized communication, and how you might actually extend it to not just be a marketing or acquisition tool but actually be of service to your customers as well.

Tagged

  • Marketing and Acquisition
  • AI and Automation
  • Customer Experience and Retention
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