Text messaging in radio commercials drives recruits to clinical drug trials
2009-07-07 13:04
Opt-in nature of mobile campaign satisfies industry privacy concerns
One of the world’s largest drug-development services companies uses text messaging in radio commercials to successfully recruit subjects for clinical-research studies. Covance Inc., which performs drug-development studies for the largest pharmaceutical firms, found immediate success in recruiting subjects through the mobile campaign – devised and executed by Cielo Mobile. Radio spots, which currently run in cities across the country, ask interested listeners to text “study” to a short code – a five-digit cell-phone number – to obtain information on their mobile phones for joining a drug trial.
The campaign is significant at several levels:
A radio listener who texts in “study” receives, in response, a text message with a link to a mobile internet site dedicated to a study test center in a particular market. The mobile site provides detailed information on drug-trial studies, a map, address and phone number of the test center.
Once participants have been selected for drug trials, Covance uses the self-serve text-messaging platform, CieloMessageä, to create and send participants text alerts. Alerts remind participants of the time and place of their next appointments. Reminders are critical to ROI, since successful drug trials depend on participants keeping their appointments.
Building an opt-in database for recruiting
As part of its recruiting, Covance, through Cielo Mobile, captures cell-phone numbers of respondents in a mobile opt-in database. Covance then uses this database to contact, via SMS, subjects for subsequent trials. The mobile opt-in database becomes a valuable marketing asset; respondents who may or may not qualify for one study may qualify for future studies. For Covance, text-message campaigns have broad reach across the country and globally, since virtually all cell phones support texting and radio ads reach a wide audience. For users who click through to a Covance mobile landing site, Cielo uses handset detection to serve mobile pages optimized for the screen size and characteristics of each and every cell phone.
Drug development companies have found that sending text-message reminders is less intrusive, yet as effective as actual phone calls, and far easier to execute. With one click of the CieloMessage “send” button, these firms can contact every person in a study.
About Cielo Mobile
Cielo Mobile offers ad agencies, consumer brands, mobile publishers and other firms a unified mobile-marketing platform, including: Text messaging, branded downloadable applications, mobile internet sites, rich-media ad units, and made-for-mobile analytics. As a single source for mobile marketing and advertising, Cielo eliminates the burden and additional costs incurred from working with multiple mobile vendors. The company focuses on building for clients ongoing consumer relationships and measuring campaign effectiveness and impact on consumer behavior.
The campaign is significant at several levels:
- Cielo continues to open up new, complex categories for mobile marketing beyond Consumer Product Goods. “We are executing several very effective mobile campaigns for pharmaceutical research and prescription-drug firms that demonstrates this,” explained Cielo Mobile President Dean Macri.
- Covance’s nationwide campaign shows how well radio integrates with mobile, serving as the direct-response mechanism for this mass-market media.
- “Getting people to participate in a clinical trial is a very personal matter,” said Macri. ”So a person’s cell phone – and, especially, the controlled, opt-in nature of texting-in through radio ads – helps Covance meet privacy concerns.”
A radio listener who texts in “study” receives, in response, a text message with a link to a mobile internet site dedicated to a study test center in a particular market. The mobile site provides detailed information on drug-trial studies, a map, address and phone number of the test center.
Once participants have been selected for drug trials, Covance uses the self-serve text-messaging platform, CieloMessageä, to create and send participants text alerts. Alerts remind participants of the time and place of their next appointments. Reminders are critical to ROI, since successful drug trials depend on participants keeping their appointments.
Building an opt-in database for recruiting
As part of its recruiting, Covance, through Cielo Mobile, captures cell-phone numbers of respondents in a mobile opt-in database. Covance then uses this database to contact, via SMS, subjects for subsequent trials. The mobile opt-in database becomes a valuable marketing asset; respondents who may or may not qualify for one study may qualify for future studies. For Covance, text-message campaigns have broad reach across the country and globally, since virtually all cell phones support texting and radio ads reach a wide audience. For users who click through to a Covance mobile landing site, Cielo uses handset detection to serve mobile pages optimized for the screen size and characteristics of each and every cell phone.
Drug development companies have found that sending text-message reminders is less intrusive, yet as effective as actual phone calls, and far easier to execute. With one click of the CieloMessage “send” button, these firms can contact every person in a study.
About Cielo Mobile
Cielo Mobile offers ad agencies, consumer brands, mobile publishers and other firms a unified mobile-marketing platform, including: Text messaging, branded downloadable applications, mobile internet sites, rich-media ad units, and made-for-mobile analytics. As a single source for mobile marketing and advertising, Cielo eliminates the burden and additional costs incurred from working with multiple mobile vendors. The company focuses on building for clients ongoing consumer relationships and measuring campaign effectiveness and impact on consumer behavior.
