A life is a legacy... So is your year-end holiday memorial service! Learn how to make your funeral home's year-end memorial service a memorable event that honors the lives that have passed during the year, and reinforces the relationship your funeral home has with your community.
Find a Venue for your Funeral Home's Year-End Memorial Service
Choose a place most people would be comfortable visiting for a year-end service to remember and honor their loved ones who have passed during the year. If your funeral home has space to host such an event, that is fine, but also consider an auditorium in the community, a church, or even a park if you're located in a warm enough climate
Choose a Speaker to Present a Message of Remembrance
Find a speaker who represents all faiths of your clientele - the families your funeral home serves. A positive message is most important for the families to hear from the speaker, as the holidays are quite an emotional time when someone you love has recently passed. If your funeral home represents a specific faith, it is probably most important that the speaker shares that faith to relate best to the audience. For most funeral homes that represent all faiths, a non-denominational message of remembrance is probably most appropriate to avoid alienating audience members of various religious or non-religious backgrounds.
Select Music to be Played Before or During the Service
Choose a blend of soothing, positive music to put guests at ease before the service begins. You may also elect to have music performed live by select vocalists and/or musicians during the service. Music heals the heart and soothes the mind, so this is probably one of the most important elements of a remembrance service. Choose carefully.
Send Invitations to Families
Your invitation list should include all families your funeral home has served during the year, but it can also be a universal service of remembrance for the community at large. Inviting many people to participate in the honors of loved ones who have passed will generate much good will, and establish new relationships between your funeral service and members of the community who may be considering pre-planning needs. Invitations should be posted in churches and community centers, as well as on your funeral home's website and social media venues. Personal invitations should be sent by mail to each family you have served during the year several weeks in advance. A follow-up phone call or mailed invitation would be wise to remind families of the remembrance service and request their attendance if no response is received from the initial mailed invitation.
Design and Print Programs for the Service of Remembrance
Programs help put remembrance service guests at ease, because they list the order of activities in advance. A simple bi-fold or tri-fold format should allow enough space to feature an attractive cover image, such as a beautiful garden, or a piece of art that looks peaceful. A verse that can help comfort the audience can be featured below the cover art, and the order of events can be listed on another panel of the program. If music is part of the program, list the title of each song to help audience members appreciate the beauty of the music.
Presenting Memorial Gifts to Families in Attendance
There are a variety of memorial gifts that can be personalized in honor of loved ones who have passed, and given to their surviving family members at the memorial service. Engraved memorial ornaments are very effective gifts, as are memorial plaques, photo boxes, and other personalized items. The gifts can be presented by reading the names of the deceased one at a time, and having the attending family approach the podium to receive the gift in honor of their loved one. If memorial ornaments are being given during the service, a Christmas tree near the podium can be decorated with the personalized memorial ornaments for each family to retrieve to help honor their loved one.
Hosting a Reception After the Service
Reinforce your funeral home's relationship with each family in attendance by offering a light reception of food and beverages. Everyone should be able to relax, mingle, and enjoy foods provided by your funeral home. One of the most effective ways to allow people to mingle while enjoying the food and beverages is to arrange the reception around a central table that can be approached from all sides. This keeps traffic flow around the table, where most people will congregate while making conversation with new friends and other family members in attendance. This is a great time to have recorded music playing softly in the background also.
What does your funeral service do for a year-end remembrance service? Celebrating the lives of those we love who have passed on reinforces our positive memories of the deceased, and helps us put closure on the lives they led. It also helps us reflect on our purpose while we are living. For you as a funeral director, it helps your funeral home keep in touch with the community, expands your referral business, and establishes your company as a premier funeral service provider.
To learn more about promoting your funeral service, or providing memorial gifts, visit these links:
Promotional Products for Funeral Homes
Aftercare Programs and Memorial Gifts
Funeral Home Sympathy Cards
Flag Cases for Veterans' Memorials
Memorial Service Invitations
Memorial Plaques
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Calendars to Advertise Your Funeral Service
Most calendar options are simple: spiral bound versus stapled, themed photography features or custom photo calendars, wall calendars versus desk pad calendars. As a marketing tool for a funeral home, calendars provide custom imprint area on the bottom tab below the month date blocks that can be seen year round. How can these be effective advertising tools? By partnering with local churches, community organizations, or other types of organizations, your funeral home can sponsor free calendars for any of the above groups to give to members or the entire community.
How does this help grow your funeral service's business? Thousands of people then have your funeral home's name in front of them year-round, establishing your company as the preferred funeral provider in the community. Even more effective for business growth, the calendars can have an invitation printed next to your logo and contact information for a special discount on pre-planned services.
The marketing message could say something like "Plan ahead - Save over 20%". This would help those who are not quite thinking about their own funeral service or that of loved one to take advantage of making arrangements before the need arises, simply for the savings. Another marketing message to enhance your pre-planning sales could be related to saving the struggles of one's funeral being planned by family members during their immediate loss of their loved one. Either message would be effective for a calendar sponsored by your funeral service, and will lead to long-term sales growth thanks to your company's reputation being on display year-round for thousands of people in your community.
Choosing a calendar style for your funeral service allows your company to express a peaceful message, a religious message, something related to the beauty of nature, or a variety of other themes. From Jewish holiday calendars, Catholic calendars, to American calendars or nature-themed calendars, the possibilities to provide an attractive advertising calendar for your funeral home are endless.
How does this help grow your funeral service's business? Thousands of people then have your funeral home's name in front of them year-round, establishing your company as the preferred funeral provider in the community. Even more effective for business growth, the calendars can have an invitation printed next to your logo and contact information for a special discount on pre-planned services.
The marketing message could say something like "Plan ahead - Save over 20%". This would help those who are not quite thinking about their own funeral service or that of loved one to take advantage of making arrangements before the need arises, simply for the savings. Another marketing message to enhance your pre-planning sales could be related to saving the struggles of one's funeral being planned by family members during their immediate loss of their loved one. Either message would be effective for a calendar sponsored by your funeral service, and will lead to long-term sales growth thanks to your company's reputation being on display year-round for thousands of people in your community.
Choosing a calendar style for your funeral service allows your company to express a peaceful message, a religious message, something related to the beauty of nature, or a variety of other themes. From Jewish holiday calendars, Catholic calendars, to American calendars or nature-themed calendars, the possibilities to provide an attractive advertising calendar for your funeral home are endless.
Monday, May 2, 2011
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:
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!
- 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?
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!
Thursday, April 28, 2011
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.
Explore a Personalized Aftercare Program
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.
Explore a Personalized Aftercare Program
Monday, December 20, 2010
Why Aftercare is Important
When you've done all you're expected to do as a funeral director, the unexpected gestures of goodwill and concern are what the families you serve will remember the most. In growing your business long-term, relationship management through aftercare is key to your growth in a competitive funeral industry.
Those strong relationships can easily be forged with families by turning around the negative experiences and emotions they may be expressing with you into positive reflections of the loved one's legacy. For those directors who simply look at their business in a functional perspective, they may miss the value of this emotional connection with the families, and fail to gain as many referrals or pre-planned clients as a result of this omission.
The effort you exert to maintain a positive relationship with families you've served (without becoming bothersome) is essential to gain a flawless reputation in the industry that builds future referrals. One method of helping bridge this gap successfully and gaining the highest reputation is sending a thoughtful letter along with a personalized memorial gift. Sending the memorial gift does not encroach on the family's time, but expresses your sympathy and encouragement effectively.
Those strong relationships can easily be forged with families by turning around the negative experiences and emotions they may be expressing with you into positive reflections of the loved one's legacy. For those directors who simply look at their business in a functional perspective, they may miss the value of this emotional connection with the families, and fail to gain as many referrals or pre-planned clients as a result of this omission.
The effort you exert to maintain a positive relationship with families you've served (without becoming bothersome) is essential to gain a flawless reputation in the industry that builds future referrals. One method of helping bridge this gap successfully and gaining the highest reputation is sending a thoughtful letter along with a personalized memorial gift. Sending the memorial gift does not encroach on the family's time, but expresses your sympathy and encouragement effectively.
Friday, April 23, 2010
New Engaving Center
As promised, here is a new preview of what the new engraving center area will look like. This change over will take place in September. New features to include:
- the ability to order additional ornaments online
and pay by Check OR Credit Card - if you refer a new Funeral Home to us and they
join the program, we will pay you $50 referral fee. - a News section that will keep you up to
date on specials we are running on promotional
products to enhance your image even more!
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Creating a Lasting Memorial for the Families You Serve
After the funeral, memorial service, or life celebration, many families wish to have something permanent as a reminder of the person that they loved through life and recently lost. It may help you as a director to think about what was important to the person through the loved ones' eyes. What did they value? What made them smile? Perhaps by beginning there, the appropriate memorial gift will present itself. Consider these memorial gifts to help families you serve remember their loved ones:
- Give a personalized memorial ornament to the families. The holidays can be the hardest times to get through without a loved one, but a personalized memorial ornament will gladly be displayed in your clients' homes as a reminder of the loved one they miss during those special times.
- Give a tree in their memory. Tree seedlings can be labeled with your funeral home's name, message, or logo directly on the packaging at funeralhomepromos.com/funeral-home-supply.html. Simply type "trees" or "plants" as your search category in the category field, and you'll find over 100 options including potted plants, seedlings, and potted herb gardens or flowers. Each can be customized with your message of comfort, and the low prices allow these to be purchased for every family you've directed a service with for their loved one.
- Have your love one's photo placed on a custom-designed cremation urn. Cremation urns can be personalized through a photo imprint process called sublimation, where a full color photograph is permanently printed into the urn. Product options can be discussed with Keystone Specialties' representatives by calling 800-240-8639 Monday thru Friday from 8 AM to 5 PM Eastern Standard Time. See colorful cultured marble cremation urns to start your selection.
- Donate a memorial bench to a park. if they loved surfing, for example, a bench made in the shape of a wakeboard could be placed at a public beach with the loved one's story on a plaque mounted to the front. You may also consider purchasing a plaque or a brick in their name to help fund a community project. Discuss these options with Keystone Specialties' representatives by phone (800-240-8639 Monday thru Friday from 8 AM to 5 PM Eastern Standard Time) or email through our website.
- Give a stepping stone or rock with their name on it for displaying in a special section of their garden. Suggest that each year your clients share flowers from that section of the garden with their family and friends of the parted loved one. Contact Keystone Specialties for advice on affordable options. (800-240-8639 Monday thru Friday from 8 AM to 5 PM Eastern Standard Time) or email through our website.
- Give a personalized memorial ornament to the families. The holidays can be the hardest times to get through without a loved one, but a personalized memorial ornament will gladly be displayed in your clients' homes as a reminder of the loved one they miss during those special times.
- Give a tree in their memory. Tree seedlings can be labeled with your funeral home's name, message, or logo directly on the packaging at funeralhomepromos.com/funeral-home-supply.html. Simply type "trees" or "plants" as your search category in the category field, and you'll find over 100 options including potted plants, seedlings, and potted herb gardens or flowers. Each can be customized with your message of comfort, and the low prices allow these to be purchased for every family you've directed a service with for their loved one.
- Have your love one's photo placed on a custom-designed cremation urn. Cremation urns can be personalized through a photo imprint process called sublimation, where a full color photograph is permanently printed into the urn. Product options can be discussed with Keystone Specialties' representatives by calling 800-240-8639 Monday thru Friday from 8 AM to 5 PM Eastern Standard Time. See colorful cultured marble cremation urns to start your selection.
- Donate a memorial bench to a park. if they loved surfing, for example, a bench made in the shape of a wakeboard could be placed at a public beach with the loved one's story on a plaque mounted to the front. You may also consider purchasing a plaque or a brick in their name to help fund a community project. Discuss these options with Keystone Specialties' representatives by phone (800-240-8639 Monday thru Friday from 8 AM to 5 PM Eastern Standard Time) or email through our website.
- Give a stepping stone or rock with their name on it for displaying in a special section of their garden. Suggest that each year your clients share flowers from that section of the garden with their family and friends of the parted loved one. Contact Keystone Specialties for advice on affordable options. (800-240-8639 Monday thru Friday from 8 AM to 5 PM Eastern Standard Time) or email through our website.
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