An effective wellness program requires a strong communication strategy! You should message users before, during, and after challenges to share important information and boost participation. We also recommend communicating in between challenges to keep everyone engaged in wellness year-round.
Wellbeing+ makes communicating with your users easy! We provide ideas to help you communicate challenge updates, user stats, and more. Simply copy and paste from our communication templates linked at the bottom of this help article.
In this article, we'll share our best practices and tips for how often to reach out to your users, as well as advice on how to use our library of communication templates.
What methods can I use to communicate with users?
Most information can be shared within the Wellbeing+ app itself. You could also post in any company-wide communication channels, such as your SmartHub or internal messaging platforms. We recommend communicating wherever your users are most likely to check.
Here are the most common methods for communicating:
In the Wellbeing+ app
Announcements: Communicate important updates directly to your users throughout your program. Announcements will display on a recipient’s dashboard for 10 days.
Chat: Send messages and photos to all challenge participants. Prompt users to respond to messages using reactions or reply within a thread to continue a conversation.
Challenge content: Upload articles, videos, and other posts to the content module within your challenge. Users can react to pieces of content by "liking" or commenting on posts.
Content campaigns: Upload articles, videos, and other posts to the mobile app dashboard. Content shared via a content campaign will show to all users, whether they are in a challenge or not.
Note that as long as users have push notifications for Wellbeing+ enabled on their mobile device, they will receive push notifications for chat activity, content posts, announcements (if set up to send a push notification), and other challenge activity.
Outside of the app
SmartHub or other internal company portal
Email
Slack/Microsoft teams/other third party messaging platforms
Print resources
How often should I communicate with my users?
There is no perfect right answer for how frequently to communicate with your participants, but here are our recommendations based on what successful clients have done in the past:
During a challenge
Suggested range: 1x/week (minimum) - 4x/week (maximum)
We suggest communicating with your challenge participants between a minimum of 1x/week and a maximum of 4x/week (roughly every other day) while running a challenge.
Our most successful clients communicate 2-3x/week during a challenge.
An exception to this rule is habit-tracking or actionable content-based challenges. Daily reminders can help users remember to log their activity.
We suggest relying on in-app communication methods (chat, announcements, and/or content). This will encourage users to engage directly with your challenge. We have templates for communicating during a challenge linked below.
In between challenges
Suggested range: 1x/month (minimum) - 1x/week (maximum)
We suggest communicating with your users between a minimum of 1x/month and a maximum of 1x/week when you do not have a challenge running. Our most successful clients communicate 1-2x/month outside of a challenge, depending on what information they are sharing.
You can share benefits enrollment information, PSAs for flu shots, seasonal wellness tips, general wellness reminders, and educational content throughout the year. We have templates for what to share outside of challenges linked below.
We recommend using announcements and content campaigns to communicate in the app in between challenges.
What should I communicate to my users?
During a challenge
Think about what you want to communicate before, during, and after the challenge wraps up. Here are the most common ideas:
Kick off your challenge: Let your users know a new challenge is starting, ideally at least a week in advance. We recommend sharing the challenge theme, goals, and join link.
Share important information and updates: Before and during the challenge, share reminders to sync and call out any key dates (challenge join dates, dates to join teams, etc.). Make sure everyone knows how the challenge will run and how they can win any rewards or prizes you're offering.
Drive community engagement: Encourage fun and lighthearted banter in the chat, and provide prompts to foster social support. Acknowledge participants who engage often with the app and chat. This keeps things engaging for less competitive users who want to build community through challenges.
Call out stats and shout-out users: Shout out user stats and share updates on how the challenge is going. This keeps things engaging for more competitive users driven by seeing how they and everyone else are doing.
Schedule content in your challenge: Share educational or interactive material related to your challenge topic. This keeps things engaging for users who are motivated by learning and seeking tips for improving their health and wellness.
Announce winners and recap the challenge: Make sure you end the challenge strong by showing everyone how they did! Announce final scores and prize winners, plus any fun stats, such as how many steps were moved overall or how many miles your group moved during your challenge.
In between challenges
Consider how you can keep health and wellness at the forefront of your employee's minds year-round. Here are some of our ideas:
Plan for the year: Schedule specific times of year you want to encourage participants to engage with wellness topics or prompts. Check out our Workplace Health and Wellness Calendar for ideas for building a wellness calendar for your organization.
Share educational resources: You can share health-related materials, such as videos or articles related to topics that matter to your users. For example: February is American Heart Month, so you could share information and resources for keeping your heart healthy.
Run informational campaigns: Announce important reminders such as signing up for a flu shot, final dates to use funds set aside in an FSA, or signing up for insurance plans during open enrollment.
Call out user stats: Even if you don't have a challenge running, you can encourage users to continue moving and can recognize stats like personal bests and top steppers.
Communication templates
We put together a robust library of announcement & chat templates to help make communicating with your users easy! Simply copy and paste from these templates. Just remember to adjust any relevant information for your company or participants as needed.