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Focus on Integrating & Promoting Wellness Programs
Most large employers and health plans offer a variety of wellness programs from multiple vendors, but many struggle to promote all of them effectively. We talked to Dawna Peterson, WebMD consumer marketing manager, about best practices in integrating and promoting these resources using the WebMD portal. She offered advice on using the portal’s built-in capabilities to make all wellness programs more visible and accessible to your population.
Describe the challenges employers and health plans face in promoting a variety of wellness programs.
Organizations typically do a great job of providing a wide range of health and wellness resources that are appropriate for their employees and members. The tricky part can be making sure that the right individuals know about those resources when they need them, and that they know how to access them. Our clients who are succeeding at this are using their WebMD portal as the integration point for all of their health and wellness resources. And they’re using the portal’s built-in resources to customize the site so individuals are guided to the right services when they’re actively looking for them.
What types of resources does the portal offer to promote integrated programs?
We’re seeing great success with “weblets.” Weblets are small, easily customizable areas built into WebMD portal pages in hundreds of different sections, including the home page and within most product areas. Clients can add almost any content they want within these areas. They can easily customize weblets by themselves without any programming background, or they can use our technical communication services to do it for them.
Here’s an example of how weblets work: A company might offer health coaching for employees who have diabetes or are at risk for diabetes. The company can create a weblet on the WebMD Diabetes Health Topic page to highlight the additional services that are available. The weblet could include a description of the program and contact information, and a link that leads directly to that resource. The weblet can also include information about incentives that are available for people who make use of the resource.
 Using weblets, individuals learn about related resources when they’re actively looking for information on that topic.
What are the best ways for organizations to use weblets?
Ideally, weblets are promotional components to be employed within your strategic marketing and communications campaign. Whenever you run a campaign on a specific health or wellness issue, you can add weblets to the pages within your WebMD portal that relate to an area of focus or relevant portal resources. Those might be Health Topics, Lifestyle Centers, or even benefits management areas. For instance, within the WebMD Medication Center you could include a weblet promoting your pharmacy benefits management resource.
For clients who use our Advisory Services, we analyze all of their health and wellness programs and recommend where to include appropriate weblets as part of their annual communication plan.
Don’t people already get referrals to those additional resources?
When people complete the health risk assessment they do get referrals to any programs for which they qualify. However, they may be receiving a lot of information at that point. When they’re ready to act, they may not remember everything.
Weblets let you continue to provide relevant information to people over time, when they’re already using the portal and thinking about their health. We let you take advantage of those “teachable moments” to give them specific information in the right context and timing, which increases their likelihood to act upon it.
What’s the business case for promoting third-party programs on the WebMD portal?
Clients sometimes forget how robust their programs really are! And it’s hard to communicate the full breadth of resources you offer. But when people can’t remember everything that’s available to them, companies end up paying for programs that are underutilized. For example, employee assistance programs (EAPs) are underutilized in almost all of our client organizations, but depression is one of their most costly conditions.
Weblets are built into the portal, so there’s no incremental cost to use them. They’re easy to create, and they remind people of health resources when they’re actively looking for information on that health topic. They really can be a best practice in promoting all of your health and wellness programs, including EAP programs.
Are there other promotion tools you recommend?
Targeted messaging is another great way to provide highly relevant information to specific audiences. We run many effective targeted messaging campaigns for clients and the response is typically considerably higher than non-targeted campaigns.
The WebMD portal provides targeted messaging capabilities within Site Manager. It allows you to send secure messages to individuals with specific risks or conditions. And targeted messaging works great in conjunction with weblets. You can send a message with information about a relevant health risk and a link to the appropriate area of the WebMD portal. When people click to that page, they’ll also see the weblet with more information and links to keep them engaged and give them more opportunities to act.
For more information contact your account manager.
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