Enrollment campaigns featuring a decision-support tool (similar to tools found on retail sites such as Amazon) tended to show a higher engagement rate. (Photo: Shutterstock)
A new study by Flimp Communications has revealed some interesting insights into open enrollment campaigns—finding that employees respond best to online approaches such as videos; decision-support tools; and short, tailored messages.
The findings come in the company's "Open Enrollment 2020 Case Study and Trends Report." Flimp officials looked at nearly 200 open enrollment campaigns and found high rates of engagement for companies they worked with—a 72% rate of engagement across all companies, and a 76% engagement rate when companies offered decision-support tools.
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Engagement driven by online tools
Overall, the study looked at 196 total campaigns reaching nearly 750,000 employees across a range of industries. It found that nearly 690,00 actions were taken by employees accessing online videos as part of the campaign, with an average of 1.86 actions taken per view and an average "time on content" of 3 minutes and 16 seconds.
The Flimp approach emphasized tools such as "Digital Postcards," which are branded video sites with built-in viewer tracking and reporting.
"Creating compelling employee communications for virtual open enrollment during a pandemic proved to be critical for most employers," said Wayne Wall, CEO and founder of Flimp Communications. "Implementing on-demand solutions like Digital Postcards, mobile-responsive portals, benefits explainer videos, and decision-support tools with multi-channel distribution options and activity tracking helped our clients achieve near-record-high open enrollment engagement results."
Trends and takeaways
The study recommended a range of strategies for improving employee engagement during open enrollment. It noted that campaigns featuring a decision-support tool (similar to tools found on retail sites such as Amazon) tended to show a higher engagement rate. It also noted a jump in QR code requests from employees who preferred a more mobile-device-friendly approach.
In addition, the study recommendations included:
- Push messages frequently: "The best campaign results were those that regularly pushed benefits and enrollment information to employees via internal email or texting. Key information, like enrollment deadlines and how to access the enrollment portal, was consistent across all versions of the message."
- Personalize messages: "Customization of employee benefits has become part of improving the employee experience. Digital enrollment campaigns were particularly effective, as they could be adjusted and customized for a variety of audiences in multiple languages across a dispersed workforce."
- Compelling visuals and more content: "Compelling visuals and more frequent distribution of content was another overarching theme. The increase in voluntary benefit offerings combined with the need to transition to digital solutions during the pandemic meant an expanded communications effort and an emphasis on self-guided education."
- Active enrollment prevails: "Campaigns that specified it was an active-enrollment period saw an engagement rate almost 30% higher than those that were explicitly passive or where active/passive wasn't specified at all (92% compared to 63%)."
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