Wellness Incentives : Keeping Your Audience Engaged Longterm

Nudge is here to help make wellness easy, fun, and effective for your organization. In our continuing series of articles to help you roll out an effective wellness initiative, we've covered 5 important topics including:

1. Identifying Your Wellness Goals
2. Knowing Your Wellness Audience
3. Getting Your Wellness Audience Engaged
4. Ideas For Wellness Incentives
5. Identifying Your Wellness Influencers

All of these topics are essential for crafting a successful program that keeps your audience engaged longterm. That doesn't mean, however, that you won't need to adjust your program based on it's success or weakness over time. By revisiting these topics after the first couple of months after your rollout, you will be much more educated on what your audience is responding to and how it needs to change.

The Importance Of Wellness Incentives

Wellness incentives are key to getting your audience enrolled AND keeping them engaged. A 2009 survey conducted by MasterCard found 61 percent of employees participate in an incentivised wellness program versus only 26 percent when there is no incentive. That same survey found 25 percent of employees said the incentive was the main reason they participated in a wellness program.

While incentives are important, it's also helpful to realize how they affect your audience. Most companies tend to be broken down into 3 groups that respond to incentives differently:

1. Already lives healthy (20 to 30%) - they are going to enroll and participate no matter what the incentive as they won't have to make any major changes.

2. Wants to live healthier (usually around 60%) - wants to participate and needs a nudge to get healthier. This group is the most responsive to incentives.

3. Not having it (10% to 20%) - no matter how amazing or all inclusive your wellness initiative is, there will usually always be a small group who won't change their lifestyle.

Of course, all companies are different but it's worth understanding these three groups as you analyze how your incentives are doing.

Wellness Incentive Rollout Strategy

Having an incentive rollout strategy is a great idea for longterm audience engagement. Start with a modest reward to begin with so you have room to adjust the offering. Don't wait for a large fallout, monitor your engagement closely and revise your offering as soon as you start to see a drop in participation. Adjust the type, level, variety, and timing of your incentives so it will keep things interesting.

Being prepared for longterm engagement and planning your use of incentives wisely is vital part of what we've been talking about in this series. Take the time to read all the articles linked above and feel free to comment or contact us with ideas we may have missed.

Nudge measures how healthy you're living with a single health score, the Nudge Factor. Now syncing with your favorite health apps, Nudge is your healthy lifestyle in one place, with one health score. If you'd like to learn more about how to engage your audience and get more brand advocates, contact Nudge.