(P-BB-4) A Comparison of Warm verses Cold Market Prospecting for Recruiting Participants to Special Collections and Clinical Research at Community Blood Banks

Background/Case Studies: Blood banks strive to increase the number of volunteers for cell therapy or clinical research projects. While marketing campaigns are used to increase public awareness of these projects, the blood donation community debates the merits of warm verses cold market prospecting. A cold market prospecting strategy pushes a message to a large, wide audience through methods such as social media. In contrast, warm market prospecting engages familiar customers by influencing the right people, at the right time, with the right message, in the right place. In this study, we sought to compare warm verses cold prospecting strategies to evaluate the efficacy of each strategy to recruit subjects for clinical research projects occurring at community blood banks.

Study

Design/Methods: A comparison of warm verses cold market prospecting strategies was performed for several clinical research recruitment projects carried out by BioLinked and its community blood bank partners. Recruitment occurred via two methods: 1) cold market prospecting using broad, nationwide, paid advertisements across popular social media outlets, and 2) warm market prospecting by reaching out to established community blood bank donor networks via calls, texts, emails, and fliers. Analytics were collected for each project and included the number of pre-screening questionnaires completed by potential subjects, the number of study eligible participants identified, and the number of study enrollments. The chi square test was employed to establish statistical significance of the data.

Results/Findings: Referral of qualified participants to a clinical trial was significantly improved using warm market prospecting in every research project tested, with warm market prospecting resulting in 33% +/- 17.3 (SEM) of potential participants who completed a pre-screening questionnaire identified as eligible for the study, while cold market prospecting resulted in 2.1% +/- 2.0 (SEM) eligibility. Similar results were observed when evaluating study enrollment success, with 5.5% +/- 2.8 (SEM) of participants who completed the pre-screening questionnaire enrolling in the study after being recruited through warm market prospecting, while none of the participants who were recruited through cold market prospecting enrolled.

Conclusions: While cold market prospecting is used as an effective strategy across many industries, the data presented in this study suggests that successful recruitment of potential clinical research participants by community blood banks is significantly improved through warm market prospecting.

Importance of research: Blood centers are advancing their product offerings beyond blood products to include clinical trial recruiting, clinical research, and advanced collections for cell therapy, bone marrow, and other products. To recruit participants to these projects, blood centers must use effective marketing strategies. This data suggests special project recruiting is most effective using existing donor networks verses attempting to gain new participants through cold prospect marketing.