Midnight Hour turns in-email quizzes into zero-party data it actually uses

Midnight Hour is a goth apparel brand with a real point of view, its lookbook split across distinct styles — Corporate Goth, Witchy Goth, Whimsy Goth, Romantic Goth, Casual Goth, and Punk Goth. The email program is run by Miranda Mattson at ATTN Agency, who is, in her own words, “really big on zero-party data.” Midnight Hour had the audience and the aesthetic. What it needed was a way to learn what each subscriber actually liked, and to do something real with that.

Initial Problem

Most brands already know quizzes are one way to gather zero-party data. The gap is what happens after. As Miranda describes the pattern she sees again and again: brands “have a quiz on their site, or a quiz in Zaymo, and they’re not actually activating the zero-party data that they’re collecting. They’re just getting the information, and it’s good data to have, sure. But how can we turn that data into a more valuable experience for the subscribers?”

The old default made that gap worse:

• Collecting the data was never the hard part. Quizzes gather zero-party data easily — activating it is where most programs stop.
• The email just redirected to an on-site quiz. Before Zaymo, activation came down to a single question: does the brand have an on-site quiz or not?
• On-site quizzes carry heavier drop-off. Plenty of people click through, but the submission rate falls off. When you can’t see how long a quiz is, you assume the worst and bail — so the data you most want ends up being the data you’re least likely to get.

Zaymo’s Solution

Midnight Hour built its quiz directly inside the email and kept it there on purpose. In the inbox the quiz reads as short and skimmable, so far more people finish it, and the drop-off that kills on-site completion mostly disappears. But collecting answers was only ever half the goal. The other half was activation:

• The quiz asks style questions, not survey questions. Which outfit would you wear here, which model is wearing your favorite look, what accessories you reach for.
• Answers become a style match. Zaymo averages the answers — three punk-goth answers and two casual-goth answers pairs the subscriber to the Punk Goth collection, which immediately triggers a matching flow: a Punk Goth email led by a hero and the newest releases in that style. Routing lands on the collection page rather than specific products, a deliberate call given how fast Midnight Hour moves through stock.
• The data keeps working after the quiz. The same style profile feeds product selection in Klaviyo across abandonment and post-purchase flows. Because each pairing comes with a curated Spotify playlist, the footer of the abandonment flow invites subscribers to “listen while you browse,” putting their playlist back in front of them.
• Reviews came later, as a bonus. The account started with the quiz; adding in-email review collection turned out to be an easy second unlock on top of the same setup.

Setup

Two quizzes do two different jobs, at two moments in the lifecycle:

• Welcome-series quiz. Greets new subscribers, capturing preferences in the first few interactions with the brand — people at their most curious.
• Winback quiz. Targets customers who have gone quiet, specifically subscribers who haven’t taken the latest version of the quiz. Midnight Hour updates the products and questions over time, and anyone who missed the current version gets another chance to engage with it.

One quiz learns from people at their most curious. The other reopens a conversation with people who had gone quiet.

Results

Miranda reads the numbers as two separate stories. On the welcome side: “Seeing that high of engagement for people who just entered and got familiar with your brand is a massive win, and it lets us personalize those first few touchpoints.” The winback numbers tell the other half — real engagement from an audience most programs have written off.

Takeaways

The Midnight Hour program works because it closes the gap most brands leave open. Collecting zero-party data is the easy part; the value is in activation. By moving the quiz into the email, Midnight Hour removed the friction that suppresses on-site completion, then wired every answer into something the subscriber actually sees: the right collection, the right follow-up flow, the right product recommendations, even the right playlist.

The two-quiz structure is the other lesson. A welcome quiz captures intent while a subscriber is at their most engaged. A winback quiz proves that intent is still recoverable from a segment most programs treat as dead weight. Same mechanism, two moments in the lifecycle, both measurable. For a brand whose entire identity is built on style, that’s the difference between knowing a subscriber’s email address and knowing their taste.