The key to having a successful open enrollment period all boils down to effective human resource communication. The traditional method of sharing open enrollment health insurance details is generally through emails, but these go unread a staggering 80% of the time. To allow your HR department to handle questions about benefits from employees companywide, utilize a bulk SMS service to streamline your communications.

Here are 7 tips on how to send bulk SMS messages to maximize the success of your next open enrollment period:

Increase Open Enrollment Awareness at a Lower Cost Via Keywords

Traditional techniques for sharing open enrollment dates and deadlines include sending emails, mailing postcards, printing infographics, and answering questions through call centers. Unfortunately, all of these methods have proven to be expensive and time consuming. A quick and cost-effective way to increase awareness of your company’s open enrollment period is to use mobile keywords, opting in your employees to receive text alerts that are read 98% of the time.

By advertising a keyword, such as “HEALTHCARE”, you can track which employees have received the essential information and are aware of the upcoming healthcare enrollment period. By creating multiple keywords, you can effectively sort your employees into specific distribution lists to send targeted enrollment information. By choosing to send these messages via bulk SMS instead of traditional methods, you will save valuable time and resources while maximizing employee awareness.

Send Bulk Texts as Periodic Mass Reminders of Open Enrollment

To guarantee your open enrollment in 2017 is a success, send a mass group text to all of your employees to remind them to enroll. By alerting them prior to enrollment season, you can give employees substantial time to determine if they need to change their plan. If employees have questions or concerns about their enrollment, they are able to contact you in the weeks prior to the open enrollment deadline.

Group Texts to Share Open Enrollment Benefits Through Mobile Links

Proactively sharing information about your various benefit plans can alleviate any questions needed to be answered by your HR department. By sending out mobile links to your employees in a mass group text, they can discover more about each plan to determine which one is best for them. It’s crucial that employees make the right decision when picking a plan, as employees that are satisfied with their benefits are 4x more likely to be satisfied with their work. This is extremely beneficial, as employees will be informed before making a decision and optimize the success of the 2017 open enrollment period.

While sending informational links to your various benefits plans through texting has a 98% read rate, some employees may prefer other channels. Through omni-channel communication, you’ll be able to share your benefit plans across all social channels including Facebook, Twitter, voice broadcast, and email simultaneously. And with omni-channel communication, you can send open enrollment videos, which employees are 75 percent more likely to watch to be seen.

Use Bulk Messages to Quickly Answer Open Enrollment FAQs

Utilizing texting to share the benefits of your open enrollment insurance plans should eliminate a majority of questions your employees have. However, there will occasionally be employees left with additional questions, such as “When does open enrollment start?” and “When does open enrollment end?”. An SMS service makes answering these questions a breeze, where you can create automated answers for all frequently asked questions. If an employee asks “When is open enrollment?”, the system will automatically respond with the start and end date.

Personalized Mass Messages to Motivate Employees To Enroll

Several employees may lack the drive to sign off on a new plan, even though they clearly need it. To give your hesitant employees an extra push. send personalized text messages to encourage them to fill out their paperwork. And because you’re communicating through a comfortable channel, like texting, your employees will be more willing to read your message.

Ultimately, sending your 2017 open enrollment details through a bulk text will produce higher enrollment rates than email will. Studies support this claim, as text messaging has a 45 percent response rate, but email only has a 6 percent response rate. As a result, the engagement in your open enrollment programs will be significantly higher through bulk text than it is through email.

Streamline HR Meeting Scheduling

A fact that should alarm most companies is that on average 336 hours are dedicated to open enrollment each year, but only one hour is spent actually selecting their benefits. This is a sign that HR departments need to adapt the way they schedule meetings to save time and effectively discuss insurance open enrollment plans. Bulk SMS can be used to help alleviate the troubles of scheduling meetings with HR by streamlining communications, and then with landline texting HR can reach out to employees to get scheduling sorted.

With a SMS bulk service provider, you’ll be able to establish personal two-way communication through your existing business number, also known as landline texting. You can then have a one-on-one conversation with your employees to schedule HR meetings at their prefered time and at their own pace. By using your existing business number to send bulk SMS, employees will be familiar with who to contact in order to schedule a meeting with HR.

Collect Feedback To Improve Future Open Enrollment Periods

Even if your open enrollment period went off without a hitch, there is still an opportunity to collect feedback from employees to improve the overall process. Through a bulk SMS survey, you can ask for suggestions from your employees on ways the open enrollment process can be improved. These bulk SMS surveys are much easier to conduct than conventional paper surveys, as the system will automatically record answers while your employees take their surveys on-the-go.

When deciding to upgrade your HR open enrollment process with texting, make sure you find the best bulk SMS service. Are you looking for a bulk messaging service provider that has a knowledgeable team of account managers to help you maximize your open enrollment period? Click here to learn more about how your HR department can benefit Trumpia's SMS service!