What consumers want from health loyalty and rewards programs

Americans are eager to make their health a priority, with nearly 60% of adults surveyed by McKinsey in 2024 saying they’re prioritizing wellness more now than they did a year ago.¹ They’re also twice as likely to want support reaching their health goals from the health care system, as opposed to other sources.² In a separate survey, more than half of consumers expressed interest in using data to manage chronic conditions, receive personalized health and well-being insights, or receive personalized recommendations.³

Still, employers won’t be able to channel that consumer interest and urgency into results — namely, better health outcomes and curbed health care costs — unless they’re able to meaningfully and sustainably engage their members. And in an era of fast-evolving consumer expectations, old-school approaches simply aren’t up to the task.

Consider the static, stilted definition of member engagement still routinely used by many in the industry, by which completing a lone annual survey or logging into a health app just once is enough to count the person as engaged. That’s a far cry from what members are now craving: an enduring, trust-based relationship in which they feel seen and supported.

Leading companies in consumer industries have managed to deliver just that, through loyalty and rewards programs powered by enhanced personalization, gamification and analytics. From coffee shops to clothing retailers, fitness brands to airlines, organizations have seized on the power of tech-fueled loyalty programs to cultivate deeper and richer consumer connections than an analog punch card ever could. It’s clear, too, that the popularity and proliferation of such programs raises the bar for other organizations — regardless of industry.

Of course, loyalty and rewards programs in consumer industries are largely aimed at increasing visits and ultimately sales. In health care, future-ready loyalty programs are instead aimed at empowering members to more proactively manage their health and encouraging them to seek appropriate care at the appropriate time. Even modest wins in those arenas carry serious upsides.

For instance, roughly one-third of insured U.S. adults have reported deferring care.⁴ Research shows individuals who defer care tend to receive less routine preventive care, such as annual wellness visits and flu vaccines, and they’re more likely than non-deferrers to visit an emergency room and to use urgent care.⁵

A future-ready loyalty program might take aim at that care-deferral behavior in a variety of ways, from using analytics to identify higher-risk members for tailored outreach to offering incentives for completing annual wellness visits to delivering personalized information about the cost of their care and how to lessen financial anxieties. By proactively engaging such members — and then sustaining that engagement with ongoing touchpoints and personalized support — it’s far more likely that they will seek care before health issues and associated costs escalate.

Research demonstrates that the most engaged members have the lowest costs, as they’re more likely to establish health-boosting habits that correlate with better outcomes and lower long-term costs.⁶ By engaging members, payers and employers can significantly improve the chances that they will take medications as prescribed, comply with treatment recommendations and participate in preventive behaviors. This, in turn, results in an improved sense of self-efficacy, which creates a virtuous cycle: Patients who take control of their health see better outcomes and lower costs, and thus feel even more motivated to continue their healthy habits.⁷

An effective loyalty program can also help bolster member retention, bettering the ROI of investments in preventive care and the costs of early treatment. Millennials are 3 to 5 times more likely to value experience factors (such as convenience, trust and strong digital tools) than older adults when considering their health plan, Accenture found.⁸ And, across generations, strong digital engagement has swiftly become a strong predictor of loyalty.

As they rethink loyalty and rewards, health care organizations are looking to retail, tech, and other consumer-centric businesses for inspiration. Here are 3 ways the health care industry can tap best practices to ensure their programs make a meaningful difference.

1. Use data to supercharge personalization

Health care stakeholders need to drive multi-modal, recurring and personalized relationships with patients, which demands lots of data about individuals’ highly specific health needs, desires and concerns. This level of understanding comes from advanced analytics, which combs through huge reams of data — sourced from health care claims, individual demographic and geographical information, personal history of activity within a wellness platform, fitness trackers and more.

Armed with this information, wellness programs can successfully optimize their offerings and rewards, creating personalized dashboards for every member, filled with customized recommendations, education and continuous support.

2. Infuse elements of fun and competition

To stand out from ubiquitous points-based loyalty programs, many programs now use tactics such as completing missions, signing up for multi-step challenges, or playing games to better engage consumers while also learning more about them. A gamified experience like Rally works particularly well in a wellness program, in which participants can be encouraged to complete a mission of trying a new workout class or play a game that educates them on a relevant health condition.

Gamification paired with a mobile app is a particularly potent duo that has been shown to improve patient self-management,⁹ while tactics such as points, leader boards, levels and challenges work well to prompt behavior change related to physical fitness, medication and chronic disease management, and physical therapy.¹⁰

3. Make it easy and rewarding to maintain engagement over time

Fun is one critical element — and ease is another. Leading loyalty programs have demonstrated that an intuitive program design with a user-friendly interface and easily understandable rewards dramatically increases the likelihood of high engagement.¹¹

The takeaway for health care? Even as the back-end systems required to analyze data and personalize experiences grow ever more powerful and complex, the front-end needs to remain simple. Wellness programs that prioritize simplicity and automation can eliminate much of the friction that prevents users from jump starting their health journey.

Similarly, rewards for participation or achievements should be clear and valuable. Fragmented perks that vary in their redemption rules and are not tracked over time won’t motivate wellness program participants.  The most successful wellness programs use an integrated “earn and burn” approach that assigns points for completed wellness activities (just as the shopping world assigns points for money spent).

Clear financial rewards have been shown to increase participation in health activities by up to 73%.¹² Ideally, the activities that lead to points can also be personalized based on individual preferences and health goals.

For those in health care, implementing a modern, impactful loyalty program may require looking beyond industry boundaries to the features and best practices that are proven to move the needle on how people engage with all sorts of brands. Executed the right way, these programs will motivate and incentivize users to continue to interact with the program — and ultimately see real improvements in their overall health and wellness.

Picking the right partner can help to ensure success. By engaging a vendor that uses advanced multi-tenant technology, offers engagement strategies backed by behavior science and incorporates a simple and modern user interface, payers and employers can accelerate their journey to improved engagement, satisfaction and health outcomes.