An 18% reply rate from clinical research teams

The situation

This company recruits participants for UK clinical research through social media advertising, helping studies that are behind target, over budget, or short of a diverse enough sample. Its buyers are study teams and principal investigators: specialist, busy, and very quick to ignore anything generic.

There were two audiences to reach: research teams the company had worked with before, and teams it had never spoken to.

What I did

• Split the outreach into two campaigns with the same offer: one for past contacts, one for new relationships
• Researched every contact’s live study and wrote it into their email, so each message referenced the specific project that person was running
• Kept subject lines short and about their study, not about the company
• Opened with a genuine question about how recruitment was going, naming the usual pressure points: falling behind target, a rising cost per participant, a sample that isn’t diverse enough
• Offered a low-commitment first step: a short test period that gives the team a real cost per participant to plan around
• Followed up with the closest relevant example from the client’s past work, and a second angle on reaching underserved groups
• Finished with a right-person check, plus something genuinely useful for teams already fully recruited

The result

From 2,128 research teams contacted, the campaigns produced 384 replies, an 18% reply rate, and 88 interested teams.

The split is the part worth noticing. The new-relationship list replied at 14.6%. The past-contacts list replied at 21.4%. Same offer, same depth of personalisation, but an existing relationship made people around one and a half times as likely to reply.

Two lessons carry straight into other campaigns: research per contact beats volume every time, and a back catalogue of past clients is often the warmest list a business owns.

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