Client Retention: Back to the Future

September 29, 2022/Business/

The Tuesday article of Funeral Director Daily entitled “We Live in a Different World” and dealing with the idea that much of death care, including how we acquire and retain our customers through marketing had barely published when I saw a presentation about some “old school” ideas that are trending back in the hopes of holding on to existing customers.

Now, I know that in death care businesses such as funeral homes, crematories, and cemeteries our client customers only come to us once each. . . however, we do tend to hold on to and nurture for future business client families from generation to generation. These “heritage families” can be a solid foundation to base a business on while you move into new territories or seek new client families.

Tuesday’s article talked about marketing and about making sure that you have access to the new products such as alkaline hydrolysis, green funerals, and natural organic reduction available to those client families that may ask about them. Even if the product is not yet legal in your state you should know where to point a potential client family who inquires about such. I reasoned that if you don’t, your competitor probably will.

The article also touched on the new wave of marketing as we let you know that over 50% of Americans now “prefer” to receive their news via a digital format. We touched on the idea that you should be able to meet them where they are. . . . and that is no longer just listening to AM radio and your local printed newspaper.

Ironically, the same day that article published, Tuesday, I received my morning issue of The Hustle newsletter which had an article entitled “Seven data-backed predictions for the future of marketing“. Interestingly enough, a couple of the ideas for the future brought me back to my past, but I believe certainly should be looked at in the future as well. You can see the article and presentation of the ideas here.

One of the ideas was that of “Giving” corporate gifts to clients. This idea brings into focus the idea that “Loyalty based plans” are not working all that well for companies anymore. According to the presentation, “It’s no longer enough to rely on points-based schemes to keep customers engaged and happy. Gifting offers an alternative to poorly performing loyalty programs”.

Or, from my point of view, gifting offers an alternative for those businesses who find it difficult to initiate a loyalty-based program, such as funeral homes and cemeteries. In death care it just is difficult to “reward” continuous purchases over time because the purchases are so infrequent.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

However, thoughtful gifting can be graciously accepted and appreciated by those who receive the gift. Just the other day, a friend of mine who contributes to the University of Minnesota football program was ecstatic because out of the blue he received two Minnesota Gopher branded hats, two tee-shirts, and two quarter-zips from the athletic department for, apparently, no reason at all. The gift was a great surprise and has really endeared him more to the program.

According to the presentation I have provided the link to, gifting will bring a return on “lapsed customers”, bring back returning customers quicker, and, most importantly to the death care profession, “foster a 36% increase in referral rates”. I believe that “referral rates” are the big catch for death care businesses in this equation because the first two results are difficult to produce in the death care business because of its “at need” base. But, referral rates. . . and referrals in general, have been a life-blood of customer acquisition in death care since its inception.

Now, gifting in the death care business is tricky. What gift?. . . and to whom?

Especially when, according to the linked article, 80% of corporate executives believe that there is a positive return on investment (ROI). However, they also believe that the average spend of that corporate gift to a client will average about $125 per gift. In other words, it has to be substantial.

I’ll leave it up to you to decide to whom and what that gift should be, but I’ll tell you what our funeral home started doing years ago that brought tremendous positive response. I always liked to build positive public relations and still believe that the best public relations is better let be told by someone else than promoting it yourself. We never advertised it, but on the anniversary of a death of a spouse, we had a blossoming plant delivered to the surviving spouse with an appropriate card.

Survivors were blown away that one year after the death, and a long time after the bill was paid, that we were still thinking of them. The cost back in my day was probably about $40 per gift and we never advertised that we did this. It was a total surprise on a day that many of their best-friends and even family members had forgot. . . and yet we remembered them on a day which was very tough for them.

It wasn’t hard to do. . .on the first day of the month we went back to that same month from a year ago and placed an order with the local florist (who by the way became a big advocate for our funeral home also). We never told anybody about this program, but we heard a lot about it from the community.

So, it just goes to show. . . even though we told you about making sure you are where your potential customers are on a social media scale, don’t forget about the one-on-one marketing that can be done also. I guess you could say it’s a back to the future trend. . . or what the master of malapropisms, Yogi Berra might have said, “It’s deja vu all over again“.

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