Editor's note: This is the ninth of an ongoing series profiling the 2018 SIPAward winners. See links to the others below.

Reading the comments for some of Education Week's sponsored weekly quizzes, you start to get an idea why quizzes are such effective lead-generation tools.

People take them very seriously. Two people explain why they missed one question—they can't know rules in every state. Others talk about the relevant issues brought up in the questions, starting substantive conversations.

"We set goals for our first year that included number of sponsorships, percentage of quiz completions, percentage of people completing the quiz filling out the registration form and becoming a lead, and overall leads generated," wrote Dave Rosenzweig, product manager, Education Week Press. "In each of these areas, we exceeded our goals including nearly 90% quiz completions and around 60% of people completing the quiz filling out the registration form."

For these excellent numbers—and the engagement generated—Education Week, the flagship publication of Editorial Projects in Education, won second place for Best Success Story in the 2018 SIPAwards. Here are some reasons for their success:

A new sponsorship vehicle. They launched the quizzes in spring of 2017 using a 3-month sponsorship model with 8-10 questions per quiz. The product's success moved them to a 1-month sponsorship model as they were able to hit their "lead targets more quickly than anticipated." Sponsors such as Voyager Sopris Learning get their logo on the start page, branding opportunities on the quiz pages and a big "Find Out More" button after the quiz has been completed.

A recognizable Education Week Quizzes logo. It's not super fancy, but it's a nice graphic and is instantly recognizable.

They offer a place for comments. Any time you can encourage engagement and get feedback from your audience—good and bad—you get to know a little more about them and what they want.

The content is relevant to their business. The quizzes are coordinated by the Knowledge Services team, which focuses on curating and aggregating content to support editorial business objectives. A couple recent topics: How Much Do You Know About Math Instruction? (I got 5 out of 7!) And How Much Do You Know About Response to Intervention?

Taking the quiz is slick, fun and informational. Quizzes are fun to do. Once readers complete a quiz, they receive their results, detailed answers and additional resources on the topic after filling out a registration form and becoming a lead. Education Week uses SIIA member CredSpark's platform. My 5 correct answers out of 7 got me this: "Nice job, you passed! See answers and learn more below." Not only do you see the correct answers but you see the percentages that each answer received.

Thorough promotion. Education Week promotes the quizzes through targeted e-blasts to their audience based on topical interest, e-newsletter promotions (as leaderboard ads, within article lineups, and inline text ads), social media promotions (on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook), homepage and topics page text promotions on their site, web ads and more. They often give a sample question, showing that this is information the audience needs to know

Collaboration is strong. While the Knowledge Services team coordinates the quizzes, other departments must work with them to promote their relevance and visibility. The quizzes began because Education Week's Advertising and Marketing Solutions team was hearing from clients that there was a demand for additional offerings to drive highly quality leads. Thus they came up with a new product that would "generate additional lead generation, become a new revenue stream, satisfy clients, and engage our audience in new ways."

The content remains unaffected by the sponsorships. Clearly written is, "Education Week has full editorial control of content."

Previous 2018 SIPAward winner profiles:
January Spring – Best Editorial and Marketing Collaboration
EB Medicine – Best Use of Video
AAA Northeast – Best Product Launch
Access Intelligence - Best Conference Marketing
Behr's Verlag – Best Video Product
Cynopsis – Best Awards Program Marketing
Simplify Compliance - Best Lead Generation/Nurturing Campaign
OPIS – Social Media Marketing Campaign

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Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 and SIIA in 2013 as editorial director…