When we started building the Octane AI quiz platform in 2019, one of our inspirations for doing so was Bambu Earth.
They had an amazing quiz on their website that they funneled all of their traffic to. 100% of their ad traffic gets sent directly to their quiz.
And at the time, the only way to have a product finder quiz on your store was to either build it yourself (super hard, for many reasons) or use Typeform.
Bambu Earth was using Typeform.
Now, Typeform is a fantastic product, but it is not designed specifically for ecommerce brands. This is exactly why we built Octane AI - The quiz platform designed and built specifically for ecommerce brands. We now work with thousands of the top ecommerce brands (Jones Road Beauty, Ilia, Hexclad, Proctor & Gamble, etc) and integrate with the top email and SMS platforms. Octane AI exists so that you can build the quiz of your dreams.
This is why it was so exciting that Bambu Earth decided to switch their quiz over from Typeform to Octane AI. They even ran an A/B test between the two platforms and Octane AI performed better.
"But, how important is Bambu Earth's quiz to their business? Is it really a big deal?" you might be wondering. Great question.
It's a huge deal.
Right now Bambu Earth is making over $10,000,000 a year by spending $300,000 to $350,000 a month on ads that go right to their Octane AI quiz. 100% of their ads go to their quiz.
They are a completely quiz based business, and they are doing 8-figure sales with it.
And they love Octane AI, it has completely transformed the way they work with quizzes, including a 3x efficiency increase in their ability to edit and improve their quiz.
So why are quizzes so important to the skin care industry (or any industry), what is Bambu Earth's quiz strategy, what do they use the quiz data for, where do they promote their quiz, and why did they switch from Typeform to Octane AI?
I’m going to walk you through it right now.
Let’s do this.
p.s. If you prefer video, you can watch the full interview here.
Why Are Quizzes So Important To The Skin Care Industry
Shopping for skin care is hard. What type of skin do you have? Which products are you supposed to get? Do you just get one product? Do you get multiple? Is there a specific order you need to use them?
For everyone who isn't an expert, this is super overwhelming. You want to buy skin care, you have the money, but you are completely lost as to what to get.
Dave Rekuc, COO of Bambu Earth, says there are two reasons every skin care brand needs to have a quiz (and that this is true for many other types of industries as well):
1. Quizzes Take A Lot Of The Guesswork Out On The Consumer Side, And Helps Be That Guide In An Industry With A High Degree Of Uncertainty
"Skincare overall is a generally confusing thing to buy. Very often a lot of the companies take for granted that their customer base might know what a cleanser is, they might know what a toner is, they might know what a moisturizer is, but that they know the ideal combination of those to create a routine for their skin is actually a huge leap. We very often find that customers are looking at individual products, like 'Oh, should I use this, should I use this?' and kind of considering it in a bubble and not really considering a full routine end to end. Each product in a routine really does something specific and does something for your skin type, and that's why our quiz works really well as it is able to take their hand and guide them to the right products for them overall."
2. Quizzes Are A Huge Confidence Boost That You Are Buying The Right Thing
"If you have bought into our overall ethos and positioning, that natural whole ingredients are what you want, and that you want to nourish your skin rather than try to fix it with toxic ingredients, now you just want to be confident that this is addressing your skin concerns and you want to be comfortable with the price."
If you can help your customers understand which combination of products is right for them, and give them the confidence that this is a real personalized recommendation, you will see an increase in sales and happy customers.
So, how does Bambu Earth do this? Let's get into it.
Bambu Earth's Quiz Strategy
Bambu Earth makes over $10,000,000 a year from their quiz strategy.
Here's what they do:
1. Bambu Earth Sends 100% Of Ad Traffic To Their Octane AI Quiz
Bambu Earth spends $300,000 to $350,000 a month on ads, and 100% of them are driving traffic directly to their quiz.
Your brand can be spending more than this, or less, the strategy remains the same.
Each of their ads features testimonials or info on the products and clicking them takes you directly to the quiz page.
You can view all of Bambu Earth's quiz ads on their Facebook page here.
2. The Quiz Is Featured Prominently On The Bambu Earth Home Page And Nav
When you visit the Bambu Earth website you will not miss the quiz. So if you perhaps first came because of an ad and were dropped right on the quiz page, and then you left and came back later, you would be right back where you started with a strong call to action to take the quiz.
3. The Bambu Earth Quiz Makes You A Personalized Skin Care Routine
In order to guide their customers not just to one product, but to a complimentary set of products personalized to their skin type, Bambu Earth created a skin care routine builder with Octane AI.
Right up front they communicate the price of the routine and included offers such as a free Cactus Concentrate with every routine, free shipping, and a money back guarantee for 30 days.
Notably they also hide their nav bar once you have entered into the quiz, this reduces distractions (where people may leave the quiz) and increasing the number of people who complete the quiz.
Next the ask for your name, they will use this on the results page later to give it a personal touch.
Now they start to understand more about your skin. Is it oily? Dry?
I selected "Oily" and now the quiz is giving me a personalized follow up question, diving deeper into my experience with having oily skin.
With Octane AI different quiz answers can lead to different questions, meaning that different customers will get different experiences depending on what you learn about them.
The quiz gets even more granular data.
All of this is stored in Octane AI and synced to Bambu Earth's email marketing platform (Klaviyo).
Towards the end of the quiz Bambu Earth collects your email address so that they can send you a follow up email with your skin care routine. That way if you don't complete a purchase right away because you need time to think about it, you can easily open your email and have your routine easily accessible.
All of the quiz data and the email address gets synced to their Klaviyo account.
The phone number gets synced to their Recart account.
Once all the questions are answered you are taken to a stunning results page with your personalized skin report.
Your Bambu Earth skin report includes the top ingredients recommended for your skin, a full routine with an explanation of why each product is right for you, reviews from customers just like you, examples of real results from customers just like you, a strong call to action to purchase the full routine, and an FAQ for those who still have a few questions they need answered before feeling confident enough to complete their purchase.
4. Bambu Earth Sends You Your Skin Care Routine In a Personalized Follow Up Email After You Take The Quiz
Right after you finish the quiz your data is synced from Octane AI to Klaviyo (Bambu Earth's email platform) and you are sent an email with a link to your personalized skin care routine.
Why Bambu Earth Switched Their Quiz From Typeform to Octane AI
Typeform was setup before Dave joined Bambu Earth, and it helped them prove that a quiz was a viable strategy for them, but the issue was that it was a very generalist solution.
"With Typeform you are essentially trying to cobble it into a specialized solution for an ecommerce quiz, vs Octane AI which is built as a specialized solution for ecommerce quizzes, and is connected to the tools we use, like Shopify, Klaviyo, etc. out of the box."
They decided to move off of Typeform because they wanted something that was much more technically robust so that they could reduce the cycle time on improving the quiz.
"Cycle time, or feedback loop time, in business, is a super underrated metric. If my cycle time on being able to iterate on my quiz, and drive better and better personalized recommendations, and better handle that quiz output. I think of it as pre quiz, quiz, and after quiz, those three parts, the faster we can go through those loops of optimizations, I'm going to outrun competitors in terms of what I'm able to do and ultimately I'm going to be able to scale my business better."
Dave sat down and made a list of the issues he had with Typeform and his wishlist for a perfect solution. Octane AI hit everything he wanted.
Here was Dave's wishlist for his ideal quiz platform, and why he moved to Octane AI:
- Integrations out of the box. They were using Zapier to bridge Typeform and Klaviyo. Octane AI has a direct integration with Klaviyo that is constantly improving.
- Robust and easy management of quiz results pages. With Typeform Bambu Earth was managing 16 different completely custom coded results pages that made it very difficult to update, especially for A/B tests. With Octane AI they are able to create robust logic in the Octane AI quiz editor and then output dynamic data that can be then implemented into one results page. With Octane AI all of their quiz logic was centralized and easy to manage. Before Octane AI they were scared to touch their quiz infrastructure because it was so complicated, they thought they were going to break it.
Dave says that after switching to Octane AI they are able to do things that previously weren't even possible, such as being much more dynamic in their quiz results, and estimates that they are able to update their quiz 2-3X faster than before.
By using Octane AI's robust quiz editor, Bambu Earth is able to set rules for every aspect of the quiz, so that depending on how a customer answers questions every part of the quiz may be different, from the other questions they are shown, to the answers in those questions, to the text and content on the page, to the products they are shown.
Octane AI Enabled Bambu Earth To Create The Quiz Of Their Dreams
Out of the box any brand can use Octane AI to fully customize the design and logic of their quiz questions, results pages, and product recommendations. But, if you want to have even more control Octane AI offers the ability to use custom CSS and an API that lets you custom code your entire results page.
"We're going to push the Octane AI API even further."
How To Setup Your Own Quiz
If you're looking to add a product recommendation quiz to your store, we are here to help.
You can get started yourself right away or schedule a time and we'd love to walk you through the product ourselves and learn more about your brand.
