Email Recruitment Best Practices
Email is an efficient and invaluable communication tool, which often facilitates recruitment of prospective participants into research. It is also a critical piece of the research infrastructure here at Utah State University. Thus, it is critical that email use in recruitment be thoughtfully designed and respectfully implemented. Misuse of email in recruitment plans can create feelings of invaded privacy, resentment, and ill-will toward the research community. This guidance document provides some technical assistance to guide researchers in making the most of email as a recruitment tool.
Email is a highly effective way to reach a large number of people with minimal effort on the part of the research team. Because it is such an effective communication tool, it can also be overutilized; even mass email approaches that are well-structured are rarely effective in garnering a response rate above 20% for studies at Utah State University. Researchers are well-advised to account for that their recruitment goals.
A poorly structured email approach can result in complaints, discouragement of prospective participants' willingness to engage with future research projects, ill-will toward the research community, and other issues. Exceptionally low response rates tend to follow. Here are some tips to avoid poorly structured email approaches:
- Share information about how and why that person is being reached if the email distribution is not via an established list that they signed up for.
- In creating your own distribution methods, ensure that the ability to reply to anyone other than the research team is disabled. Efforts to maximize privacy among prospective participants are strongly encouraged. Recipients should not be able to discover the identity of others on the same list because of your email distribution. It is a good idea to test your list structure with a small number of colleagues before sending out larger-scale communications.
- Make use of existing structures that are known to your prospective participants wherever possible. This builds trust among your prospective participant pool.
- Do not subvert existing procedures and mechanisms in order to reach a particular audience. Many institutions and organizations have policies governing bulk or mass emails specifically because they would like to minimize these kinds of outreach to their constituencies. Subverting those mechanisms does not respect the boundaries that prospective participants have come to expect in line with their roles with that institution or organization.
- Be available for responses to inquiries or concerns. It erodes trust when a recipient feels as though they cannot garner a response from someone on the research team. Do not send mass emails just before a weekend, holiday, or other structured time that does not permit you to be responsive to your prospective participants.
Here at Utah State University, several policies and procedures exist with regard to electronic communications. Reaching all students, staff, and faculty should only be done using existing approval mechanisms set forth in USU Policy and Procedures (See Policies 5203 and 5207, as well as their accompanying Procedures)
The USU Human Research Protections staff are available for consultation regarding recruitment methods that are generally more effective than mass emails. Request a consultation to discuss recruitment plans that respect privacy, build trust, and successfully enroll participants.