Research Panel  •  Crowley Webb / Praxis  •  2020–2022

Building a Research Panel Regulated Clients Could Trust

I designed and built a 1,000-person research panel from opt-ins and referrals so the agency could stop paying recruitment vendors. External recruitment spend went to $0, and study recruitment time was reduced by more than two weeks.

TL;DR

What was at stake
The agency needed to win and keep regulated pharma and banking clients, and to run studies faster and for less.
What changed
Studies drew from the agency’s own panel instead of third-party vendors.
My role
Researcher and panel architect. I designed the panel solo and built it primarily on my own.
Timeline
About a year
Measurable outcome
$0

External recruitment spend, down from vendor rates on every study that needed screened participants.

2+ weeks

Less recruitment time per study, because participants were already on hand.

Built

About 1,000 opted-in participants, each with a traceable source and consent record, used for studies for Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Merck, J&J, AbbVie, M&T Bank, and others.

Recommendation
Build our own panel for client studies
Recruited only through opt-in and referral, because regulated clients need to know where every participant came from and that each one agreed to be contacted.
Before
Third-party vendors
Paying vendor rates on every study and waiting on their recruiting, with no way to verify where participants came from
After
Our own panel
Participants already on hand, each with a traceable source and a consent record
Crowley Webb / PraxisAdapted for this portfolio
Read the full case study
What I built

An opt-in, a referral program, and compliance from day one

An opt-in at the end of every study

Built in Qualtrics. People who finished a study got a clear invitation to join the panel, kept separate from the study itself. Joining was never a condition of finishing.

A referral program with traceable codes

Each member got a unique code, and attribution logic I designed tied every new participant to their source. Rewards ran through Amazon at first, then Giftbit.

Compliance built in from the start, with legal

It shaped every data handling decision from the first plan on. Participant data lived in Azure SQL.

How the panel worked
Every participant came in through a channel that could be audited
Sources
End-of-survey opt-in
Built in Qualtrics and offered after each study.
Referral program
Unique codes with custom attribution. Rewards through Amazon, then Giftbit.
× Rejected
Purchased email lists
Checks
Compliance stack, built with legal
Informed consent and a traceable source for every participant. Aligned with GDPR, ISO 27001, and HIPAA practices, plus FDIC requirements for banking clients.
Panel
~1,000
Participants, built from zero in about a year
Used for
Client research
Studies for Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, AbbVie, M&T Bank, and others.
The decision

Buy a list, or build from opt-ins

The shortcut

Buy email lists.

What it meant

Volume sooner. A purchased list doesn’t show where anyone came from or whether they agreed to be contacted.

What I chose

Build it from people who chose to join.

What it meant

Slower to start, with proof of where every participant came from.

My manager was adamant from the start that we would buy email lists and had a hard time letting that go. I knew during the research phase I wouldn’t, and I raised it once the intake survey was built and we were close to fielding, so I had a working alternative to show. My manager came around.

The challenge

Regulated clients and no panel of our own

Crowley Webb is an advertising agency that also owns Praxis, a clinical trial recruitment firm, and I worked for both. Praxis brought the pharma relationships, and the agency had banking clients too. Every study that needed screened participants went to a third-party vendor, which meant paying vendor rates on top of the research and accepting whatever panel quality they offered.

Approach

Research and compliance came first

Approach and time allocation · about a year
Research and conversations · about 2 months
How panels get built, from people who had built them.
Plan and leadership approval · about 1 month
Recruitment, consent, and storage, approved before any build.
Compliance processes and the intake survey · about 2 months
Built with legal and compliance. The survey carried heavy branching logic.
Opt-in and referral programs · about 2 months
Growth and client studies · about 5 months
Reached ~1,000 participants.

Research, planning, approval, and compliance took almost half the year before anyone could join, which is why growth started slow.

Reflection

Impact

Building the panel from scratch convinced me that consent and compliance have to be designed in from the start. For the agency, studies could move at the pace pharma and banking clients expected, with participants we could vouch for.

Hindsight

1
Turn my process into a playbook sooner

I documented as I went, but around my own workflow. A playbook someone else could run would have made the panel easier to hand off and extend without me.The panel could have kept growing after I left for Isobar.

2
Plan the participant lifecycle up front

Recruitment got the attention because that’s where the pressure was. Re-engagement for inactive members and a refresh plan were handled as they came up. Designing them in from the start would have cut attrition and kept the panel’s makeup cleaner.

Next steps

With two more weeks

1
Compare quality by source

Check response rates, completion, and screener pass rates for opt-in members against referrals.

2
Test the panel against a vendor

Run the same screener on both and compare quality and cost directly.

3
Put a number on the savings

Turn $0 in external recruitment spend into a dollar figure based on past vendor rates.