Via e-mail marketing the other day I received an invitation from our friends at the Cremation Association of North America (CANA) to take in a free webinar partially titled, “Families prefer experience over extravagance“. The topic hit home with me and I think points out a very important detail about what the consumer public is willing to spend money on. . . . and why that may have an effect on how we offer our death care services to them. […]
I think there is a lot to be said about “businesses serving their community” in appropriate ways. And, I think in funeral service as we move forward to more niche businesses that will become more and more evident. You can read in this article from the Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber, how a funeral home and the island’s Zen Center have teamed up on an arrangement to co-habitate within a 1966 building that until recently served exclusively as a funeral home. The […]
Wilbert Funeral Services, Inc. announced last week that they had acquired certain assets of the Continental Casket Company of Watseka, Illinois. According to a press release received by Funeral Director Daily, “Continental is a regional distributor of metal and wood caskets with three warehouses serving funeral professionals in Illinois and areas of Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, and Missouri.” According to Don Robinson, President of Wilbert’s Casket Division, “Continental is a great brand in the mid-west with a history of top quality […]
The City of Sheffield is located north of London and not too far from both Manchester and Nottingham in Great Britain. Sheffield’s City Cemetery was built in 1836 in response to the overcrowding and poor conditions in Sheffield’s churches. Today, 87,000 souls rest eternally in the cemetery, but you can also spend a night there. Cemeteries, in the age of cremation, are having trouble raising revenue and there have been all kinds of options including movie nights, historical tours, and […]
It’s an age old debate that is carried on even in MBA classes at major colleges. . . . . .Where are your advertising dollars spent best — on Customer Acquisition or on Customer Retention? A local issue in a concern outside of the death care industry had my friends and I debating it over coffee this weekend. You hear a lot in the public markets about companies adding customers. However, very seldom do we hear about “Net New Customers”. […]
I’ve been around the death care business for a long time and I’m certain that I didn’t always make the correct decision in the many hundreds of decisions that I had to make every month. However, I can tell you that I always wanted to “Do the Right Thing.” And, the times when I realized that it turned out that I didn’t do the right thing. . . always bothered me. Doing the right thing isn’t just tied to the […]
Last weekend people in Charlotte, North Carolina, had the opportunity to see a truck drive around the area with this message on the sides and rear, “Don’t get vaccinated: Wilmore Funeral Home“. According to this article from CNet, the truck sparked a viral buzz. Turns out that there is no Wilmore Funeral Home and if you hit the advertised web-site, www.wilmorefuneralhome.com, here’s where you would land. It’s actually a web-site promoting getting a Covid-19 vaccination. . . . the exact […]
I read this recent article from Yahoo Finance where the COO of Salesforce, Bret Taylor, states that if he was starting a company in today’s world he would first start with the company’s “Digital Headquarters” rather than an operational physical headquarters. That statement alone shows the “mega shift” in business, workforce, and consumer acquisition thought over a period of less than five years. Taylor states in the article, “Consumer goods companies are going direct-to-consumer, supply chains are going digital and […]
Editor’s Note: For as yet unknown technical reasons, our daily article was not sent out earlier this morning. Sorry. . here it is. All things are created equal. . . . until they’re not. In the death care business I’m not so sure all of the calls we get at our funeral homes are created equal. A death call that ends up being a full traditional funeral with casket and vault sale is probably more than equal to a direct […]
I recently read this article where Bank of America has profiled 14 future “moonshot” technologies that they believe could offer vast wealth to those who are lucky enough to invest in them. In reading that article, I realized that, to a certain extent we have, maybe not moonshot technologies, but at least planetary technologies in the death care business finding funding almost every day. In essence, there is a lot of interest in the “new technology” of Death Care. Bank […]
