Automate Clinical Trial Recruitment with Text Message Storylines and Surveys

Recruiting and retaining participants is one of the most time-consuming aspects of clinical research. Mosio's Storylines and Surveys modules let research teams automate recruitment outreach using scheduled text message sequences — reducing manual effort while keeping potential participants engaged. This video walks through how to set up automated SMS recruitment campaigns, best practices for message content to avoid spam filters, and how to use Mosio's tools to move participants through your recruitment pipeline efficiently.

VIDEO

(Transcript is below)

Recruitment Messaging Content

There's a good and a bad way to send recruitment messages. You need subject/participant permission to begin texting them. The mobile carriers make determinations around what they deem as spam, so you should consider the following:

1. Avoid using $ in the message if you can. If it looks anything like a "Win a $50 Walmart Gift Card, just click this link." spam message, then your messages could be blocked, even though you have been given permission by the subject to text them.

2. Warm up your new texting number. Send other messages and show some interaction before sending out "message blasts" to hundreds of people at a time. A new texting number with spammy phrasing isn't a good idea.

3. Send out recruitment messages in small batches. 

4. Change content from time to time so it's not the same message over and over.

5. Read our blog post on How To Avoid Spam Filters For Text Messaging

Video Transcript:

Okay. So we're seeing a new interest. We've had clients that are using Mosio to for recruitment for their studies for a long time, but we are seeing this new interesting use case that I wanna share. So I'll I'll just talk about a a client that we spoke with a couple weeks ago.

Their study design says that they can reach out to subjects, participants, patients, whatever you call them, three times when they've expressed interest in, participating in their studies. It is important to note that you need people's permission to text them. Do not send unsolicited texts. It's a it's a horrible idea.

People will not sign up for your projects, and your number and your messages could get blocked by the mobile carriers. So I've heard a number of different ways that people, you know, are doing this even before they come to Mosseo. But I'm gonna show you today a way that you can use our storylines to do that outreach. So the client that was talking to me, they were using Google Voice.

We get a lot of Google Voice expats. And it they were allowed to reach out to them three times. So it was someone's job every day when they came in to see who had been contacted. And it was very ad hoc, like, whenever they were able to do it.

And they were copying the the recruitment message from a Word doc, pasting it into Google Voice and sending manual messages to these individuals and then going to a spreadsheet and saying, okay. I've contacted them the first time, the second time, the third time. I said, well, how about this? You actually don't need to do any of that.

What you can do is you can make a recruitment storyline. And, again, these people are you know, they've given their permission. And then you enroll them into a recruitment storyline that sends automated messages. What do I mean by that?

There's an example here, in this. So let's say that you're let's say that you wanna contact them three times, but you want it to be on day one, you know, after you enroll them or when you enroll them, and then three days later and then five days later, whatever it is that you have. So you can make day one, day three, day five, and your message can there's a couple of things. This message says, Research University has a new paid nutrition study. Reply with the word study for more information and to take a prescreener survey. I'm gonna get to that in just a second and how this can be useful.

However, one of the things about storylines that's interesting is that, especially in a recruitment sense, is that they said, oh, this is great. We wanna reach out to people. The call to action can also be it depends on the size of your study and the size of the database that you're sending out to. The call to action could also be, and I spoke with someone yesterday that was wanting to do this, reply to this message.

And so then they would wanna engage in a two way text chat. So any reply to a storyline is going to open up text chat. You don't have to use it. You can set up auto responders that says that you're, you know, you're not communicating that way, but you could have the call to action be to reply.

The thing about it is when I say day one, day three, day five, what's interesting there is that, that, okay, so let's say they respond after the first day. How do you make them stop getting the day three and day five messages? Well, there's two ways to do this. One is in the enroll and monitor window.

You could for that particular person, you could then stop them from getting additional storyline messages. That's a manual process. And Atmosio, manual processes are nice, but they're not gonna cut it. So what I'm gonna show you is how you can use storylines for recruitment messaging, but also our surveys function to, to stop the storyline from actually sending additional messages when someone shows that they are interested.

So what in what you're gonna actually do for this is you're going to create a survey. And in the storyline, rather than sending an alert like I showed you in that last tab, you're actually going to send a recruitment survey. So what you're gonna do is you're going to have and there's a couple of different things that you can do. One is in that last in that last, message or last tab that I showed you, the call to action was reply with the word study.

So our text message surveys can be initiated via keyword. So in that case, if the person replied with the word study, they would then be sent this survey. So that's the call to action. What I'm suggesting here for the follow ups is that what you can actually do is start by sending them the survey.

And, you could start by sending them the survey. And then instead of having day three, day five, you're gonna actually use nudges or unresponsive participant actions to, to to send those reminders. What I mean by that is, let's say that the content of the survey actually has is is actually a prescreener survey. Whatever your prescreener questions are, whatever qualifications you need them to to meet initially, you're you could ask those via text message. The reason I say could is that some clients like this, others need to do their prescreener on the phone. The content that you put in the survey is up to you and whatever it is that you have. But but with our surveys, you can have any text based survey survey question can be designed and deployed in the Mosto system, whether that's yes or no, a through e, skip logic, branching.

We could send images, all all the normal things that are associated with our surveys. But in this particular case, you could either send the prescreener survey, or what you could do is you could send the survey, and the survey question says, hello.

It says exactly what I had in the last in in the last field. In fact, why don't we just copy that so I have an example of it, here today?

So I'm gonna go back to surveys, and I'm gonna have this new survey question says this.

Instead of reply with the word study, I'll say, reply to this message for more information, and to let us know you are interested.

So I'm it's showing as a free response. So anything that they send is acceptable.

And I'm gonna click update.

So that's gonna save this question. And, again, I have it at number six, but we just have a bunch of different questions here, a bunch of different questions here. Now there's a couple of other things that we can do here.

We have these things called question actions. So what you can say is you can add a question action.

You can add a question action for oh, sorry. It's right here. You can add a question action for an individual question itself.

And the question action is this. Think of them as if if then responses.

So you can say, if someone responds to this question, send us an email.

So you can have the email sent to your team. You can have the subject line. The subject line could say new interest, you know, new interest in x y z study, and then the body of the message would say, you know, whatever it is that you want to say. We we we would not do not send PHI.

Do not send any patient subject information, the phone number, anything into that email. But it's just a note to anyone on your team. Hey. Someone responded to this, and we should contact them.

So they're gonna have to come back to the Moseo website and log in to get that additional information. So that is asking them to to to send this. That's asking them to respond if they're interested. Now the way that this can be repeated is, in this case, this is even though it says six here, forget the other five that are on there as examples.

This is a one question survey, that's asking that's asking them to respond. If they don't respond, then you can have unresponsive participant actions. So let's say that you want to send it the first day and that you wanted to send it the first day, and then you wanted to send it three days later. We do this in hours, so you're gonna have to calculate the number of hours.

So three, you know, three days is seventy two hours. So you would say in seventy two hours. Now with our with our nudges, you have the ability to email staff to send an alert to send an alert and resend the question resend the question or mark them as complete. What I would recommend is use alert and resend question because what it's going to do is it's going to resend this question that was already sent.

The alert can then contain something like, actually, we have it here.

Hello.

Just checking in. You can have a say whatever you want. I'm just going on the fly here. Just checking in to see, if there's interest in participation.

Now, again, you use our character counters so that you know, because what it's gonna do is it's going to send the alert, and it's going to resend the question. Because what I will also note is it will resend the question. What you can also do is you can just have it say an alert. So your alert could say the same. Hello. Just checking in to see if there's interest in participation.

That when they're still siloed into the survey, so it's still looking for that response. And because you have free response set up, anything that they respond with, is going to then, you know, kick off, this question action that emails your staff to let you know that they're interested. So my my hesitation saying you need to use the character counter would be only if you're using alert and resend the question because you're not only you not only have the characters for the alert message, but it's going to add the question as well, which also adds characters. So alert might be better. It's entirely up to you. And, again, this is content specific to however it is that you have this, set up.

So I have it at seventy two hours. And then I I you're gonna take your same now it's not the next it's it's not the hours from this one. So if you wanted a day if you wanted five days, you're gonna take five times twenty four hours, and you're gonna say a hundred and twenty. So your next nudge is going to say is gonna be at a hundred and twenty hours.

So you're gonna you could send this thing again. The the beauty of that is that you could have a separate alert. Hey. This is the last time we're checking in for this particular study.

We appreciate having you in our database, etcetera, etcetera. So in this case, you have a one question survey with two unresponsive participant actions that you are then adding to a storyline message. And then you don't have to do this manual sending of anything. You don't have to send an alert to your list and then send an alert to your list and send an alert to your list.

You can enroll them into a recruitment storyline, let Mosio take over on autopilot in the days that you all determine that is the proper sequence and the proper timing of the messages that you wanna send out. I hope that you found this useful. Again, make sure that you get permission.

Anyone who who responds stop, we will stop sending the messages. That's a mobile carrier requirement. You wanna you want, obviously, as few of those as possible.

And the main way to do that is to make sure that that the people have opted in and it isn't actually it it's actually an engaged list of people that would be interested in participating.

The other thing to note here before we go is that you can have a recruitment storyline, and then and that that's there. That that's that's its own storyline. But then you can have your other storylines for people that are actually, that are actually engaged and enrolled into your study. So you could you could do this all the way.

You can use storylines for everything. You could use a recruitment storyline. You could have a prescreener, or even a a econsent forms, storyline that's sending the econsent form link. And then you could have a storyline all encompassed into one under one texting number, under one project for that particular study.

This is Noel signing off. As I say all the time, there's additional information in our knowledge base. You can use a search. And if you're not finding what you're looking for, just submit a ticket, and we'll find someone that can help you.

Thanks, and talk to you soon.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How can text messaging help with clinical trial recruitment?

A: Mosio Storylines let you set up automated text message sequences that reach potential participants on a schedule. Combined with Surveys, you can screen respondents, collect interest, and move qualified contacts into your study pipeline — all via SMS.

Q: How do I avoid having my recruitment texts flagged as spam?

A: Best practices include avoiding dollar signs ($) in messages, warming up new texting numbers with interactive messages before sending blasts, sending recruitment messages in small batches, and varying your message content over time so it does not look repetitive.

Q: Can I automate the entire recruitment outreach workflow?

A: Yes. Mosio Storylines allow you to create multi-step, scheduled text message sequences that automatically send to participants over days or weeks. You can combine alerts and surveys within a single Storyline to both inform and screen potential participants.

Q: What types of messages can I include in a recruitment Storyline?

A: A Storyline can include alert messages (one-way informational texts) and survey questions (interactive texts that collect participant responses). This flexibility lets you build a complete recruitment funnel using text messaging alone.

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Want to automate your study recruitment with text messaging? Visit our plans page to learn more or join our virtual office hours to see how Storylines and Surveys can streamline your recruitment workflow.