Client engagement and retention is fundamental for any successful health and wellness business. The creation of online wellness programs and challenges enables private practices, clinics, and organizations alike to bolster client communication, offer a new revenue stream, and save time when working with clients. Digital programs are an increasingly popular way to add to service offerings, for both prospective and existing clients.  If you’re truly looking to grow your wellness business, Healthie’s practice management software can help through client retention strategies, facilitating partnerships and more. Get started for free today!

Hosting a virtual wellness challenge or program enables healthcare practitioners to deliver content and support in a way that is engaging for participants. Client engagement tools allow practitioners to set goals for clients, track client progress, and connect during the program for an added layer of accountability. Studies show that goal-setting interventions that included support from a wellness provider were much more effective than those in which patients set goals and worked on them individually.

In this article, we’ll review how to structure and run a wellness challenge or automated online program, curated for your client-base. Understand the benefits of offering these value-added services to your wellness business, and find free downloadable templates to help you start building your online wellness challenge or program.

About Virtual Wellness Challenges

Benefits of hosting a wellness challenge

Wellness challenges allow you to support a group of participants as they work towards goals by engaging with them continuously throughout the challenge. Typically run seasonally, short-term wellness challenges are a great way to jump-start working together, by automating content while still motivating them through the early stages of changes. As such, wellness challenges serve as a great marketing tool to help drive new prospective clients to your business. With high levels of engagement, support (from both their wellness provider and peers), and accountability, wellness challenges can be effective in helping participants start seeing progress towards their wellness goals.

While “weight loss” challenges may come to mind, wellness challenges have been utilized by health practitioners across all facets of wellness extending into practice areas of mindfulness, intuitive eating, and beyond.  Because you can drip content out over a few weeks for clients to work on individually, you can expand the topics beyond what you might work on together during sessions.  

Choose a time and audience for your challenge

If your goal is to drive new business, then you may want to consider running your challenge at strategic times. January is a common time to launch challenges as many people are looking for ways to change their habits in the New Year. In contrast, summer typically is regarded as a “slow-season” for health prevention services like nutrition and fitness — but a wellness challenge can provide an added layer of accountability, while simultaneously boosting business for your practice during slower months.

Choosing the best time for your challenge also depends on your target client. If you have a specialty or niche for your practice, then consider times of year that may work best for your audience. Most often, practitioners will run multiple challenges strategically throughout the year. However you decide to reach out to potential clients, Healthie’s free starter plan can help you build out your calendar and manage client scheduling. Click here to get started today.

Wellness Challenge Template

A short-term challenge towards specific health and wellness goals can be incredibly motivating for clients. While making larger, long-term lifestyle changes can be overwhelming, most people find that they can commit to making changes for a few weeks. While real health change takes time, a challenge can be a great starting-off point. Running a challenge with a group also invites an additional level of support and motivation provided by fellow participants.

Use this template as a guide to building your first wellness challenge. You can find a downloadable version of this template here.

Step 1: Set Up Your Participants for Success

Send clients a welcome email

Introduce yourself and your practice, and then describe what the goal of the program is.  You can give clients an outline of what the goal of each week within the challenge will be so that they have an idea of what they will be working on.  Or, you could create an introduction video to include, so that participants who have never met you can put a face to the provider they will be working with.

Outline goals and metrics to track progress

With a wellness challenge, it is extremely important that clients set goals and track metrics so that they can see their progress throughout your time working together. Also, goals and metrics help hold clients accountable.  

Clients know you can now see progress and will be increasingly motivated to demonstrate positive outcomes and upward trends. They want to prove to not only you but themselves also, that they are capable of making changes in their health and fitness.  Encourage clients to set goals that correspond with the program each week, and collect baseline metrics that clients can track and use to measure their progress throughout the challenge.

Wellness goal suggestions:

• Water intake
• Movement or exercise
• Daily steps
• Food logging
• Nutritional goals

Health Metric suggestions:

• Weight
• Daily steps
• Exercise hours
• Blood sugar levels
• Waist circumference

Tip: Within Healthie, clients can set goals, check them off as they go, and update you on their progress throughout their program.  They can also track metrics that will populate into graphs for a physical view of client progress.  

Step 2: Build in a level of community support  

Additionally, part of the appeal of a wellness challenge is the support clients will get not only from you but from the other participants as well.  Invite clients to join a group chat or a Facebook group, so that they can ask each other questions, send motivational messages, and overall feel supported by their community.

Tip: In Healthie, you can create a group message thread with your challenge participants.  Healthie Chat is accessible from either the web platform or your mobile device, so clients will always have access to their support.

Step 3: Pre-Create your content

As challenges typically consist of shorter, motivational content, it may be tempting to create content as you go. However, taking the time to outline and create your content will likely save you significant time, and ensure your challenge is cohesive. For a 30-day (approx. 4 weeks) wellness challenge, you should set a smaller goal each week that will lead clients to achieve the overall objective of the wellness program.  

Here’s a quick outline of how to structure a week’s worth of content, with some example content. You can utilize this outline to build additional weeks, to complete your wellness challenge content.

Day 1: Connect  

Send out a chat reminder to your participants to remind them what the focus of the challenge is for this week, and remind them they can always reach out if they have any questions.  Ask clients to update their goals and metrics for the upcoming week so you can review the progress from the previous weeks.

Day 2: Challenge

As the week kicks off, this is a great opportunity to outline goals for the week. Set an activity, nutrition, mindfulness, or self-care goal that participants can work on achieving during the week.

Day 3: Educate

Challenges offer a great way to drip out small amounts of education and health information. Include an educational video or handout designed to educate your client on a relevant health topic.

Day 4: Motivate

A little bit of motivation goes a long way — whether it’s a quote, uplifting story, or an inspirational image, participants benefit from the message. Motivational messages helps participants stay positive about making a change and improving their health.

Day 5: Empower

Here’s a great place to provide some information that will empower your client to make a change. Whether it’s providing them with a grocery list, a new recipe, or a how-to workout video, help participants know what step is next for them to take.

Day 6: Support

Message support allows you to add another layer of accountability for clients through simple check-in messages.  Ask clients how they are feeling after a session, or if they have completed their “goals” for the day yet.  Letting clients know that their coach is there to support them and make sure they are working towards their goals will increase their motivation.

Day 7: Reflect  

Resting and reflecting can be a healthy part of your challenge. Have participants fill out a weekly progress survey or assessment, or ask them to share their reflections on their progress. You can even hold a virtual group check-in session as a support session.  Participants can share their wins from the week, as well as what they feel like they need to work on.  This is a great opportunity to engage clients in a discussion, allowing for a deeper understanding of their wellness journey.

Tip: Healthie’s integration with Zoom allows you to hold group sessions with your challenge participants.  Schedule sessions through the Healthie platform, giving clients easy access to the Zoom link within their Healthie calendar.

Discover Automated Online Wellness Programs

Benefits of creating an online wellness program

Incorporating a wellness program into your practice is a great way to automate educational materials for current and prospective clients.  Participants in your program have the opportunity to work through modules, videos, and goals on their own, and then come back to you with additional goals to work on together.  Additionally, an online program for clients helps you generate passive income by automating beneficial content for clients to use individually.  

Leverage an online wellness program to expand your practice reach to prospective clients.  Before committing to working one-on-one with you, participating in an online wellness program under your supervision is an easy and productive way for clients to get to know you, your counseling style, and your services.  Use your program as a marketing tool to increase your online presence and drive up sales. Creating timely and relevant wellness programs will help drive traffic through your social media and online accounts, to your website and business.

Additionally, adding a wellness challenge to your offerings is a great way to generate extra income from current clients as well, as you’ll be able to continue to market it over time.

Choose a duration and topic for your program  

In contrast to wellness challenges, programs tend to be longer and can vary on topics. Some practitioners create a “Signature Program,” which is designed specifically for their client niche. When selecting topics to include in your program, think of information that you typically review in-session with clients — perhaps topics that are frequently discussed and can be reinforced within your program. A program can be a great complement for your existing clients that are working individually with you. For example, if you typically work with diabetic patients, you may consider creating a 6-week program on healthy eating with diabetes.

While building your program will initially take time, but once you have it created you have a package service that you can keep on selling over time. With automated content distribution, your program can run independently, or with minimal oversight. This generates another stream of income for your business and allows you to focus on other important ways to build and grow your practice.

Online Wellness Program Template

As online wellness programs tend to be educational, you may want to think about structuring your program into modules, with a new module/topic each week. Within the week, you can drip out content that will help educate and motivate your clients, allowing them to adopt the suggested health or lifestyle changes.

Use this template as a guide to building your first online wellness program, leveraging it to create a multi-week series of content. You can find the downloadable version of this template here.

Module 1: [TOPIC]

Here’s a quick outline of how to structure a week’s worth of content, with some example content. You can utilize this outline to build additional weeks, to complete your wellness challenge content.

Content  1: Educate

Start off your program with a video or educational handout introducing the topic. It can be a resource that you often share with clients in-session. Videos can be a particularly effective way to connect with participants and share educational content in a client-friendly way. You may want to consider keeping videos shorter: 15-20 minutes to ensure participants are able to focus and digest the content. However, this is only a suggestion. You know your clients best, so tailor your format and length of comment to best meet their needs.

Content 2: Motivate

Participants are likely enrolled in your program because they are hoping to achieve improved health outcomes, lifestyle changes, or manage a health condition. Motivation is key to helping them understand why these health changes are important and propelling them towards change. Motivation can come in the form of inspirational messages and even as goals or challenges for the week.

Content 3: Support

Support can come in different forms during your program. It can look like additional content to help your client implement changes (such as a grocery list, meal plan, or another client resource). Support can also be touch-points from you as a wellness provider, or from peers. You may want to send a chat message to check-in with participants, or even host a weekly virtual support group.

Tip: In Healthie, you can create a group message thread with your challenge participants.  Healthie Chat is accessible from either the web platform or your mobile device, so clients will always have access to their support.

Content 4: Assess

Include a survey or quiz within your program so clients can reflect on the last week of the program. Client reflections are a crucial part of making progress both when working with a provider and individually working on a program.  This allows them to identify the challenges they encountered on their own so that you can work through them together during a one-on-one appointment.  

How to leverage Healthie for your online wellness challenge or program

Healthie’s Programs feature enables providers to create courses online, automate distribution, seamlessly enroll and track client activity, and connect to packages to charge for courses. Clients can complete enrolled programs through their HIPAA-compliant Healthie Client Portal, on their computer or mobile device when logged into the Healthie app — and will have access to other features like Chat and Journaling through their account. Content can be pre-built, including emails, forms, surveys, quizzes, documents, and videos, to create a comprehensive online program and participant experience. To learn how you can try out all of these features with none of the risk to your practice, click here.

Working with a healthcare provider via Healthie gives clients access to the Programs feature as well as a host of additional features — allowing them to track their progress and engage with their provider throughout the program for added support.

Utilize the Healthie platform and Programs feature to:

• Organize all participants within a group, and share specific forms and educational materials with the group
• Pre-build your content and add it to your program to automatically distribute to participants, including emails, forms, documents, and/or videos.
• Add your wellness challenge program to a package to bill participants (customize your billing terms: one-time payment, or multiple recurring payments)
• Securely store participant information, including credit card details, within their client profile
• Keep track of each participant’s progress, and see valuable statistics about your challenge by creating goals and custom metrics.
• Sync wearable fitness trackers like Fitbit, Apple Health, or Google Fit to automatically log participant metrics.
• Send individual, group, or blast chat messages to participants for ongoing support

Through wellness challenges and programs, healthcare practitioners are able to offer value-added services that benefit both their practice and clients. With online client engagement and telehealth tools, hosting programs online provide a convenient way to deliver content and support participants. Practitioners can save time by automating content to be delivered to participants at scheduled time frames.

Carefully curated online programs, while designed to extend practice reach and drive new business, can also feel personalized and relevant to participants. With added layers of support built-in through chat or video support groups, practitioners can help clients find the accountability needed to make positive health changes.