A mix of high-tech and old-tech

Editor’s note: Lynn Welsh is vice president of the Olson Research Group, Inc., Ewing, N.J.

Conducting marketing research among physicians can be a daunting task. An online data collection methodology for survey research is ideal, allowing a busy group of respondents to participate at their convenience. However, it is the premise of this article that the Internet or e-mail is often not the best way to recruit physicians. The most effective recruitment method is a frequently overlooked communication tool — the fax machine.

Simply because you’re using the Internet as your data collection medium does not necessarily mean you need to restrict your sample-contacting activities to the Internet. While there are both sound reasons and appropriate studies that justify recruitment via the Internet or an opt-in targeted sample list, we have found that these methods do not work well with the physician respondent.

Physicians are a unique breed of respondent, with their own set of preferences and values when it comes to marketing research. Not only are they busy professionals, they are virtually unrivaled in the sheer number of separate interests vying for their attention in a given day. Start with a full schedule of patient visits, often booked two or three at a time at 15-minute intervals, add in nurses, phone calls, emergencies, peer requests, the ever-present sales rep visits, and it’s easy to see that a request for a survey will not even register a blip on the radar screen.

Recruiting methods

Recruitment techniques can take the form of either traditional or online. Traditional recruiting refers to recruitment via postal mail, the telephone or fax, while online recruiting encompasses e-mail, online banner ads, targeted pop-up windows, or other Internet-related methods. How do these methods stack up in physician research? Beginning with traditional recruiting, we can eliminate the mail recruit for obvious reasons. Phone calls to a doctor’s office do not get past the gatekeeper. Anyone who has attempted to speak with a doctor about his or her own health over the phone can attest to this. Imagine the futility of calling Dr. X’s office asking to speak with him to discuss a survey. Even an attempt to “sell” Dr. X’s receptionist on the merits of your survey research effort will not make you worthy of the doctor’s time. Our executive interviewers/recruiters, we think, are among the best at their jobs. Even in our lofty estimation, we would not put money on the odds of getting past the receptionist in attempting to win Dr. X’s participation.

E-mail recruiting generally refers to contacting sample via an opt-in list. Though we have an in-house broadcast e-mail capability that allows us to customize and send e-mails to prospective respondents, we rarely employ it for that purpose. In fact, even in cases where a client has provided an opt-in list of e-mail addresses for physicians, we will match this list against our physician database to obtain fax numbers, and recruit in this manner. The reality is that a list is only opt-in if the individual remembers opting-in. And, as is the case with other groups of busy people, physicians often don’t remember opting in. Further, Internet banner ads and other forms of pop-up invitations will only reach those physicians that happen to be online at a particular time.

So how do you reach Dr. X? The fax is the answer. After nearly a decade of conducting marketing research with physicians, we have found a faxed invitation is, hands down, the most efficient way to reach a doctor.

Well-intentioned office personnel patrol both the doctor’s mail and phone with as much vigor as drug-sniffing hounds in an airport. Remarkably, and we know this from experience, the fax has been immune to their vigilance. The same receptionist who will politely tell you that “the doctor does not participate in research surveys” over the phone, will promptly escort your faxed recruitment letter into the doctor’s office and place it on top of his desk for his review. Why? The fax is a “soft sell,” requiring neither a decision nor further action on the part of the often over-worked receptionist.

Through the use of broadcast fax technology, coupled with our in-house physician database, we are able to target and recruit physicians for an online study in just a few hours. Of course, once the study is underway, e-mail is an ideal vehicle for recontacting individuals, reminding them of their agreement to participate, or as fieldwork ensues, of an incomplete survey, or other study-related information. In the case of our panel research, while we employ a fax recruit when setting up the panel, we then utilize e-mail as the method of contact for the remainder of the panel’s duration.

Internet user vs. Internet access

We place an important distinction between “Internet user” and “Internet access.” We define an Internet user as a person who regularly uses the Internet to correspond, find information, shop and perform any other of the myriad tasks the Internet makes it easy to do. However, Internet access refers to having the ability to go online, whether that ability is manifested through a computer network connection in the physician’s office or via a family computer at home. To successfully participate in an online research study, the physician need only have Internet access. The doctor does not have to be a frequent Internet user: regularly communicating via e-mail, or adept at search engine usage. He simply must be able to, once notified, connect to the Internet and click on the study link provided. A fax recruit simply levels the playing field between these two groups.

Every word counts

We have become experts, admittedly largely through trial and error, in crafting the ideal doctor recruitment fax. Not too long to waste time, but not too short to not appear legitimate. The ideal fax recruitment letter should allow the physician to read and decide whether or not to participate in less than 20 seconds. Mention enough of the subject matter to arouse interest, but not too much as to compromise the methodological soundness of the study. List the three most important facts succinctly: subject matter, time commitment, and incentive amount, though usually in the reverse order. Eliminate any unnecessary color and graphics; these tend to align your research effort with a sales or marketing piece.

If the study dictates that respondents must be screened over the phone first, give them a specific name to call, and a toll-free number. Mark the fax with a sense of urgency so that it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle of paperwork — state that the study will close when quotas are reached. If screening will be conducted online, list the Web address and include username and password information if necessary.

Panel vs. custom study

Clients often ask us if we have standing panels in place consisting of particular specialties of physicians. While we regularly create and maintain custom online physician panels for clients, we do not set up the panel in anticipation of the research. Our panels are created for a particular client’s use, at the time of the research. We do not set up a panel, and then wait for a need to implement it. This, in the realm of physician research, would be to put the cart before the horse.

For custom studies, it is far more efficient to recruit a group of doctors for a client than maintain a panel of a particular specialty of physician for a period of time until a client has a need for it. The reason? The capacity of even the most well-intentioned physician to remember signing up to participate in periodic research at some as yet undetermined date is, understandably, quite small.

Thus, for us to expend the energy and manpower required to recruit and set-up a panel of, say, 200 cardiologists for a one-time study, is largely a futile effort. If three weeks or more passes between the time the physicians have been recruited and the survey being ready for fieldwork, most will have either forgotten their commitment to participate or simply do not check their e-mail regularly enough to receive the request in a timely fashion. As a result, an e-mail to the group announcing there is now a survey for them to complete falls largely on deaf ears. A substantial amount will either delete or simply ignore the e-mail, and a certain percentage (depending on the duration of time between the two events) will reply inquiring as to how we obtained their e-mail address (even though they called our offices and happily gave it to us a few weeks earlier), further requesting that we promptly take them off our list. Some even mention the industry’s four-letter word: spam.

It is a much smoother process for us, and for the physician, to traditionally recruit from our physician database via fax when an appropriate study is available. Study parameters dictate the number and type of physician needed for the research. A study database is derived from our master physician database. A one-page fax invitation is broadcast to enough physicians to fulfill the study requirements, generally allowing for a 10 percent over-recruit for any dropout participants. Interested physicians call us to be screened and added to the research effort. They are informed that an e-mail will follow shortly including all the pertinent study information and an active link to the survey. Less than 24 hours later, the e-mail is sent. Participation rates are high. Physicians are satisfied; our fax contact is fresh in their minds, and we have already fulfilled what we promised in sending the study e-mail promptly. And satisfied respondents come back, potentially giving us a head start on the client’s next custom research project.

Eliminating bias, real or perceived

Despite the proliferation of the Internet, there still exists some bias to, and uncertainty in, reaching people solely through an e-mail address. In this regard, the physician respondent is no different than any other. This bias, in some cases, will be real. In others, it will be your client’s perceived threat. Traditional recruiting ensures that any bias, real or perceived, is largely eliminated.

By utilizing a fax as our method of contact, we are not limiting our recruitment to those physicians that connect to the Internet on a regular basis. Considering the speed at which online studies, particularly those with sample requirements of just a few hundred, are fielded, they may be in and out of the field in a few days. Should we opt for an e-mail recruiting strategy for a study such as this, we are, in effect, biasing our sample by the very nature of our recruiting method. Those doctors that check their e-mail two to three times a week or more will be the ones that participate in this research. Those that check for e-mail less frequently, and it can be argued that these are the busiest, highest-profile, or “opinion leader” physicians, will be excluded. Bias by recruitment method, in many cases, is unavoidable and a fact of life in conducting marketing research. However, this is one example of where it is not only avoidable, but also the better option, to rely on traditional recruiting methods.

The best of both worlds

In physician marketing research, when you use traditional recruiting methods and couple them with the speed and efficiency of an online survey, you are truly getting the best of both worlds. You are capitalizing on all of the merits of the online survey that we know so well: speed, convenience and low cost, while employing a much more efficient recruiting technique. By casting our recruiting net beyond the group of Internet users to those with Internet access, we are bolstering the validity of our sample, and virtually eliminating the bias that may exist with the Internet medium.

This article relates our experience conducting physician research over the Internet. While its premise may not hold true for consumer research, one could argue that the best practices discussed here would translate well when surveying other professional or executive-level respondents, whether in the pharmaceutical, financial or technology fields.