Do personalised e-mail invitations increase the response rates of breast cancer survivors invited to participate in a web-based behaviour change intervention? A quasi-randomised 2-arm controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Previous research has shown that the personalisation of study invitations improves response rates in survey-based research. To examine if this finding extends to experimental studies, we examined the impact of personalised study invitation e-mails on the response rates of potentially eligible breast cancer survivors for participation in a 6 month randomised controlled trial testing the efficacy of a physical activity intervention. METHODS: Potential participants (n = 344) were sent either a personalised email or a generic email. RESULTS: Those sent the personalised email were 1.5 times (95 % CI = 1.18–1.93) more likely to respond than those sent the generic email. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that personalisation may be a useful and potentially powerful tool that can be utilised when recruiting participants into experimental studies in order to boost response rates. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12874-015-0063-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.