Preneed

When is the right age to establish a preneed account? . . . Maybe on your wedding day

By Funeral Director Daily / February 16, 2023 /

  We’ve touched on the subject in this forum before — when is the proper age, as a consumer, to look into getting a preneed funeral/cremation account?  I’ve opined that our funeral home used to look at Social Security age and then lowered that to age 55 and over.  Lately, according to all that I…

Treating customers honestly and ethically is essential to build your brand

By Funeral Director Daily / February 6, 2023 /

    It’s probably happened to all of us at one time or another.  You thought the answer you received in a buying decision was the final answer, but, at the end of the day, it turned out to be a partial answer and you became a disappointed purchaser of that good or service.  …

How’s your “Focus”?

By Funeral Director Daily / January 31, 2023 /

    “Focus” is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “the center of interest or activity”.  We hear the word a lot.  For instance if you want to improve your golf game you might be told, depending on your present strengths, to “focus” on your weakness. . . and improve it, whether that is driving…

How do consumers come up with the money to pay for funerals?

By Funeral Director Daily / January 27, 2023 /

    Yesterday we took a look at how funeral merchants should expect their clients to pay for the services that they select.  Our article took a look at crowdfunding, credit cards, savings, and, of course, preneed funding.  And, we concluded that as good as it is to get payment done and out of the…

Paying for a funeral

By Funeral Director Daily / January 26, 2023 /

  I ran across this article the other day that is entitled, “Financing a Funeral:  Crowdfunding, insurance, credit cards, loans, and payment plans”.  The article comes from a publication called “The Enlightened Mindset” and appears directed towards the consumer.   I don’t think it is a “bad” article, but you can also tell it is not…

There’s opportunity out there. . . go get the business

By Funeral Director Daily / December 28, 2022 /

  Last week was a great week to be inside in Minnesota.  While many people were trying to get home for the holidays we had temperatures of 15 below zero with winds gusting into the 30 mph zone.  That made it a good time for me to hunker down and get a little reading and…

Funeral Directors Life announces “Growth Rate” increase

By Funeral Director Daily / December 14, 2022 /

I happened to look at the cash sitting in my Money Market account the other day and noticed I was receiving more interest than I had been recently.  I took out my calculator and realized that my John Hancock Money Market account was paying me 3% interest.  For savers, that’s the upside of the Federal…

Is it time for a Preneed registry?

By Funeral Director Daily / December 8, 2022 /

I recently read this story in the Buffalo (NY) News that is entitled, “Two men planned what would happen after their deaths.  Why did they end up in unmarked graves?”  The story documents the plights of two men who, by most death care experts opinion, did everything that they should have done about their future deaths…

Want to build your brand? Try sponsoring a Death Cafe

By Funeral Director Daily / October 31, 2022 /

I visited Baltimore and attended the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) convention earlier this month.  In earlier blog posts I’ve told you some overriding impressions that I had from that experience. . . and I told you I would be bringing you, in greater detail, some of my thoughts and observations. One of the phenomena…

The move to “Pre-Emptive” marketing

By Funeral Director Daily / October 20, 2022 /

When you look to the past of funeral home marketing it is pretty accurate to say that many funeral homes “Got their names out there” and then waited for deaths to happen.  When I started in the business, our industry was as far from “Pre-Emptive” marketing as any industry. . . it’s just the way…