Choosing a Personalized Memorial Gift to Give as a Funeral Director

     Memorial gifts come in all shapes and sizes, some personalized, and some not so personal.  As a funeral director, aftercare director, or a grief counselor, the choice of a funeral gift for each family you serve should be carefully thought out.  Consider the following questions when selecting a memorial gift for each family to receive after the funeral service is over:

• Does the memorial gift appear truly personal?
• Does it look like a memorial gift, or an everyday item?
• Is the cost of the gift affordable for every family I serve to receive one?  (Don't discriminate which families will receive a gift and which ones will not.  Word will get around!)
• How can I present the memorial gift so it means more to the recipient?

     When planning ways to present these personalized memorial gifts to each family, you may elect to do so in an aftercare visit to their home, a follow up sympathy card with the gift safely packaged, a year-end memorial service or holiday memorial service, or even hosting a monthly memorial service if you perform enough funeral services are all ways to reinforce the relationship your funeral home has with the families you serve and within the immediate community.  When it comes to the choice funeral home in a tight market or a small town, the one with the best service wins the available business. 

     There are a variety of quality memorial gifts to choose from that allow personalization.  Online systems allow names to be entered for gifts to be personalized and shipped as needed anytime of day or night.  Shipping can be selected to go to any number of funeral home locations for a personal delivery of the gift, or for a year-end holiday memorial service where the gifts can be presented in person to each family.  For the families living far away, it's easy to mail the gift directly to them as a thoughtful courtesy.  

     To plan a year-end memorial service, consider the number of families that will be invited to come.  This can easily be calculated by the number of funeral services performed during the year so far, and estimating that at least half the families invited will show.  Obviously scheduling conflicts or distance will prevent some families from attending a memorial service, so this is a safe way to estimate attendance.

     Once the number of families is estimated to attend, think of the size of your funeral facility.  Can it host that number of visitors at once for the service?  If not, consider holding the year-end memorial service at a church, auditorium, civic center, or even a park if weather permits.  This should alleviate any overcrowding if your funeral home doesn't allow as many visitors to fit comfortably at one time.

    After deciding where the service will be held, consider the format for the memorial service.  How can it be made more personal where each family gets to contribute a memory of their loved one?  What kind of music will be played?  It shouldn't be a morbid music selection, as the main idea is to provide a sense of closure to each family attending.  Choose peaceful, but not depressing music.

    Choose a speaker to address the families in attendance.  What faiths does your funeral home clientele represent?  Try to match a speaker that can best represent the whole, not a selection of the audience.  Non-denominational speakers can simply talk about the sense of loss, healing, and closure with peace for everyone in attendance.  Whether the speaker represents a specific faith should not be a factor in their presentation, unless your funeral home specifically serves one faith.

    Following the memorial service, consider hosting a reception with light refreshments and time to mingle.  Families from the same communities will be attending, as they live locally, so this gives people a positive finish to what should be a beautiful evening event.  Your refreshments can be catered as a buffet style, or homemade snacks and beverages.  Either choice will be well appreciated by everyone attending.

    When you're looking for other promotional ideas for your funeral home, always visit our website, or return to this blog for more tips.  Business growth for the funeral industry is about thinking outside the box.  Feel free to share ideas in the comments for other funeral directors! 

Being the Funeral Home of Choice

     There are a lot of choices we make every day in life based on intuition, more commonly known as our "gut-feeling".  People choose a funeral home for pre-planning needs based on impressions they have of your funeral service, whether they are valid or not.  Because of this, every promotional product and contact point from your funeral company should encourage people to contact you for their pre-planning needs, or at least in the case of a loved one's passing.  The way your company's logo makes them feel, the attractiveness of your website, the experience their friends or family members had working with your directors in the past - its all about making people feel good about your company before they attempt to contact you for a funeral arrangement.
     
     Getting referrals for pre-planning options, a  great way to secure growth for your funeral home's future, is best accomplished through providing the best possible service to those families you are already working with.  The best service requires more than performing the basic funeral rituals, such as the service planning appointments with families to all the legal documentation required after the graveside closing.  The best level of service also calls for expressing sympathy to the family with a card, a memorial gift, or even an aftercare visit. 

     Some funeral homes, often with the greatest reputations in the industry, provide year-end memorial services where families can share a sense of closure to their loss of loved ones during the year.  It is these memorial services where funeral directors can show a level of hospitality and empathy that may be missed by the family during the original funeral service thanks to rushed schedules and wild emotions of family members they are consulting with.  A year-end memorial service where all families can get together allows everyone to celebrate the memories of those who passed during the year. 

     As part of these year-end celebrations, personalized memorial gifts can be given to each family in honor of their loved one's legacy.  These memorial items should be something that holds up to many years of use, and cannot easily break.  From personalized memorial ornaments to military veterans' flag cases, the value of a one-of-a-kind memorial gift spreads not only good-will, but sows the seeds of future business for the funeral home.

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