SRS BLOG

It’s 2022. If you haven’t realized it already, it’s time to understand the importance of your funeral home website for your firm and community. From making funeral plans and paying the expenses to expressing condolences and learning about coping with grief, your website can do it all and so much more. Want to learn how? See how you can take your funeral home website to the next level in 2022 with these 22 must-have features. Create the Ultimate Interactive Obituary Experience . Give your families a space to grieve their loss, show their support, and honor their loved one with interactive memorial walls. With features for expressing condolences, posting photos, and sharing memories, everyone can heal and remember their loved one. Make Ordering Funeral and Sympathy Flowers Easy with an Online Store. By having an online store built directly onto your website, families can conveniently order funeral and sympathy flowers while visiting their loved one’s memorial page. Spread the Word About a Loved One’s Passing Through Social Sharing. With easy social sharing, you can let your families share their loved one’s obituary and condolences on social media to spread the word about their passing. Support Families Through Crowdfunding Campaigns. Another way to let families show their support is to have the option to donate to a funeral crowdfunding campaign directly on their loved one’s memorial wall. Include Your General Price List (GPL) on Your Funeral Home Website. Along with a breakdown of your products and services, you should include your GPL to be transparent with your families and build trusting relationships with them. Let Families Pay Directly on Your Website with an Online Payment Center. Many families want the convenience of online payments, so you can give them this with an online payment center for credit card payments and more . Give Your Families an Easy-to-Navigate Design on Any Device. No one wants to waste time finding what information they need, especially while at-need planning, so make sure your website is easy to navigate of any device. Have Forms for Families to Easily Enter Their Information. Instead of families calling your firm for everything they need, have forms that families can submit for preplanning, downloading resources, and more. Put Your Contact Information in an Easy-to-Locate Spot. If families want to call or visit your firm, don’t make it difficult for them to locate this information. Along with a Contact Us page, you should also include this information on your homepage. Provide Your Community with Grief and Funeral Planning Resources. Your website can be like an online library for families to learn about funeral planning and grief. For example, create a Resources page for your content and link to any other educational resources. Help Families Grieve and Stay Informed Through Email Subscriptions. Without any work required from your employees, let your families sign up for email subscriptions directly on your website, such as for grief support and obituary notifications. Share Frequently Asked Questions with Your Community. Many times, your employees repeatedly answer the same questions from families. To eliminate some of these repetitive questions, have a FAQ section on your website. Post Useful Information on Your Website’s Blog. Your firm’s website should have a blog for regularly sharing content about preplanning, at-need planning, personalizing a funeral, grieving, memorialization, and more. Secure Your Website with a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate. Giving your families a secure connection when entering sensitive information on your website is a must-have. To do this, your website should have an SSL Certificate. Eliminate Spam Through Sophisticated Spam Filters. Eliminate spam comments and messages with sophisticated spam filters. This way, grieving families don’t have the added pain of rude comments. Develop an SEO Strategy to Get Found by More Families Online. Make sure your website gets found by more families online by including things like meta descriptions for your webpages and keywords. Design a Logo that Represents Your Firm’s Brand. Your logo should be visually appealing and reflect your firm’s brand. If it’s been a while since you’ve revisited your logo design, it’s probably time to explore some new ideas. Tell Your Families About Your Firm’s History, Employees, and Mission. Your families want to know the people behind your firm and what you stand for , so make sure to include things like your firm’s mission to serve families, history in your community, and employee bios to help them better understand your goals. Take Professional Pictures of Your Firm and Merchandise. If your website photos are low quality, this can reflect negatively on your business. To prevent this, draw families to your firm by taking professional photos of your facility and merchandise. Showcase Testimonials from Your Firm’s Client Families. Give your community real-life examples of positive experiences families had working with your firm, whether they’re text or video-based testimonials. Route Families to the Funeral Location Through Text Directions. One way to make things easier for families is to have a tool directly on your website for sending directions to the funeral or graveside service right to their phones. Integrate with Your Other Favorite Funeral Technology Solutions. Lastly, your funeral home website should integrate with your other funeral technology solutions to save you time, such as your case management software and marketing automation software. Take your firm to the next level in 2022 by upgrading to an SRS Website. Click h ere to book a free demo .

2021 was a revolutionary year for the funeral industry, but in 2022, it’s time to take it to the NEXT LEVEL. If you haven’t already, now is the time more than ever to embrace the mobile revolution . With a little help from your technology solutions, you can meet your families’ needs anytime, anywhere while creating a faster and simpler process for your firm. For the sake of time, we’ll focus on three important aspects of your firm: Funeral Options Business Management Aftercare 2022 is already here , so there’s no time to waste. Let’s start with funeral options. Take Your Funeral Options to the Next Level: Give Families Online Choices Families want online options. It’s as simple as that. They’re used to it now, so they won’t settle for anything less. The pandemic showed them that a lot of their in-person tasks can be accomplished online in less time, such as: Using an app to place your grocery order ahead of time instead of wandering the store. Scanning your check with your mobile device and depositing it without ever leaving your couch. Or simply entering your credit card number online and pressing submit. Having virtual appointments with your doctor, accountant, and other professionals instead of meeting in person. You can apply these same concepts to the funeral industry. Instead of meeting with families in person for every task, some things can be done virtually, such as selecting their funeral options on your website through a pre-planning form, signing forms, collecting files, making the payment virtually , and meeting through video chat. Of course, this doesn’t replace in-person meetings. The purpose of these features is to take tedious tasks like filling out paperwork and swiping credit cards to a virtual environment. This way, you can save in-person meetings for building more meaningful connections with your families. So going back to the question, how can you take your funeral options to the next level in 2022? Give families more online choices. Instead of driving to your firm to pay for the expenses, sign a form, or give you documents, let them do it virtually in a matter of seconds. Not to mention that this is more secure than documenting things on paper. Take Your Business Management to the Next Level: Say Hello to Case Management Software Do you want to way to offer your families everything we’ve just covered and more all in one place? Say hello to funeral home case management software. As the popular saying goes, behind every successful funeral director is a turnkey case management system. Okay, maybe people don’t go around saying that, but they should because it’s true. Without an organized and easy-to-access system, your firm couldn’t function. But you can’t use just any system. Meet 9Online , the funeral industry’s elite management software. Instead of using third-party integrations that cost you more time and money, it has built-in features for signing forms electronically, collecting the payment virtually, communicating with families in a safe, virtual environment, and so much more . Take Your Aftercare to the Next Level: Focus on Your Marketing and Website Lastly, we can’t forget about aftercare. As you know, a family’s journey with grief is long from over once the funeral takes place. It’s something that they’ll carry with them for the rest of their lives. Though this may sound daunting, you can make things much easier for them by focusing on how your website and marketing efforts can help them. By building up your aftercare resources, it could even be the reason someone chooses to work with your firm over another one. For example, these are a few ways your website and marketing can improve your aftercare efforts in 2022 and beyond: Share blog posts, guides, and other resources on your firm’s website . Engage with families on social media through posts and ads. Use email nurturing to further engage with them and provide them with grief resources.  We know this sounds like a lot, so that’s why we partnered with Growth Engine. It’s the first marketing automation software designed specifically for the funeral industry and you and your families’ needs. How cool is that? Click here to learn more about this platform. Book a free SRS demo to learn even more ways to boost your business performance and better serve your families.

We want to give a shout out to our incredible clients and their brand-new SRS Websites! Thank you for trusting SRS with your funeral home's website . We’re proud of every design and make sure they accurately represent your firm and provide you with the tools you need for success. Below are just a few of our favorite SRS Website designs from this fall. Lighthouse Funeral & Cremation Owner and Manager Tate C. Goodwin opened Lighthouse Funeral & Cremation in 2013. Today, they have several Michigan locations. On their new SRS Website, families can use E-Pay to make an online payment for their loved one’s funeral service expenses.

Senior Account Executive Alyssa Bouvy was a part of the marketing and funeral technology panel forum at this year’s Thrive Conference . For those who attended, we hope you left feeling inspired about what your marketing and technology can do for your firm in 2022. If you couldn’t make it to the Thrive Conference, we want to share with you our top marketing and funeral technology tips going into the new year. Let’s start with technology. Our Top Funeral Technology Tips Going Into the New Year By investing in turnkey tools and updating your current ones, you can set your firm up for success in 2022. 1. Regularly Update Your Funeral Technology Solutions. In case you missed our preview blog post of the Thrive Conference, Alyssa answered why it’s important to regularly update your technology. Her main point was that it’s easier to update your solutions as the upgrades come out versus updating multiple solutions at once and becoming overwhelmed. By making it a habit to regularly update your solutions, you’ll be less overwhelmed and have more time to learn the little changes along the way. 2. Invest in a Website If You Don’t Have One or Update Your Current One. If you don’t have a website , we can’t stress enough the importance of it. It isn’t just for families to find you online. It also gives them ways to pay and sign forms virtually with third-party or – even better – built-in solutions, find grief resources, pay tribute to loved ones in an online environment, and so much more. If you already have a website, ask yourself if it can do all the things we just listed without needing third-party solutions. If not, it’s time for an upgrade. 3. Make Sure Your Website is Secure. Speaking of websites, did you know more than 50% of users would leave an unsecured website? Comodo found that 51% of users would leave a website IMMEDIATELY if it isn’t secure. Don’t let this happen to your firm. Make sure your website is secure by having an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate. This encrypts the data sent between your web server and browser so hackers can’t steal it. Along with having an SSL certificate, you should brush up on cybersecurity best practices, like creating strong, unique passwords. Our Top Marketing Tips Going Into the New Year Your products and services aren’t going to sell themselves to your families. That’s why you need a marketing plan to back you up. 1. Create a 2022 Marketing Plan. The first step to finding new clients for your firm is to create a marketing plan for the new year. As Alyssa mentioned in our Thrive Conference preview blog post , creating a plan helps you decide which areas you need to focus on the most. Do you want to drive more traffic to your website? Do you want to expand your aftercare efforts? Once you know your focus, creating your marketing plan will be much easier. 2. Don’t Forget About the Value of Email Nurturing. Social media is a powerful tool for finding potential clients, but don’t stop there. You need to continue to nurture them outside of social media, too. One way to do this is through email nurturing. For instance, after the funeral, you can send families follow-up emails to check in, send grief resources, and get positive feedback about their experience to use in your marketing. 3. Consider Using Marketing Automation Software. Have you heard of marketing automation software? If you want to save time and find new clients, it’s worth checking into. In its simplest form, it lets you schedule your content in advance instead of publishing or sending it yourself. But there are more advanced solutions that gather leads for you. There’s even one specifically for the funeral industry called Growth Engine , which we partner with to make things even easier for your firm. It even integrates with your SRS Website so you can send families aftercare messages. Meet the most elite funeral technology system in the industry. Book a free demo here .

It's no secret that cremation rates are rising. The National Funeral Directors Association predicts that the 2021 cremation rate will be 57.5% compared to burial at 36.6%. If that doesn’t seem like a big difference, by 2040 they predict cremation will be 78.4% and burial at just 16.0%. But when we say that cremation rates are rising, we’re not just talking about human funerals. The pet cremation business is also on the rise for many reasons, with two being: More families own pets than ever before. People consider their pets as part of the family, so they want to honor and give them the respect that they deserve. This gives your firm an opportunity to reach out to a whole other market: pet owners. Like with human funerals, you can offer pre-need and at-need pet funeral planning, memorial products, and grief resources to help pet owners honor their pets while expanding your service offerings. Many firms are already doing this. The Foresight Companies found that there are about 1.5 million pet cremations per year and about 1,000 pet crematories in the U.S. Still on the fence about offering pet cremation services? Let’s look at some more numbers. More Families Own Pets Than Ever Before Many people from all age groups own pets, and those numbers continue to grow, especially since the pandemic. The Foresight Companies found that 85 million U.S. families own at least one pet , which is about two out of every three families. To break it down by pet type, the American Veterinary Medical Association stated in their 2017-2018 U.S. Pet Ownership & Demographics Sourcebook that: 38.4% of households own dogs 25.4% own cats 2.8% own birds 0.7% own horses The Foresight Companies also found that 65% of all pet owners are Generation X or older . Gen X is between the ages of 41 and 56, so that means 65% of pet owners are at least 41-56, if not older. This means that your primary audience for preplanning is also pet owners, which is the perfect opportunity to increase preplans by encouraging them to prearrange for their pets at the same time. As you know, preplanning can be an uncomfortable topic. To help you show your families the value of preplanning for themselves and their pets at the same time, you can share these key benefits with them: It’s easier to make prearrangements for you and your pet at the same time while you’re already in the mindset of it, instead of doing it separately. They can gain some peace of mind that their pet’s funeral arrangements are taken care of if they were to pass away before their pet. They can give their pet the proper sendoff that they deserve. People Consider Their Pets as Part of the Family A whopping 95% of pet owners consider their pets as members of the family , according to The Foresight Companies . But are we really surprised? Just Google “pet as member of the family,” and you’ll find pages of articles supporting this. The Foresight Companies also found that 45% of American pet owners buy their pet’s birthday presents , which further supports them as being part of the family. Again, just Google “pet birthday,” and you’ll find everything from pet birthday party supplies to how-to guides for showing your furry best friend how special they are to your family. (If your firm has an event center, you could even open this space up for pet birthday parties, too.) They Want to Honor and Give Them the Respect That They Deserve If families are willing to have birthday celebrations for their pets, then they’re also likely to want to have a funeral to honor them when they pass away. Rather than just having a cremation, you can provide services for having a funeral or memorial service. And don’t forget about aftercare. By having a collection of pet memorial products and grief resources, you can get your pet cremation business up and running. Not sure how to make your pet cremation business stand out from the rest? Here are a few ideas. Like with any type of funeral, find ways to personalize it. For pet funerals, you could surround the urn with their pet’s favorite toys, leash, and food bowl. Offer personalized memorial products, such as a lock of fur or clay or ink paw prints. Provide grief resources by compiling helpful articles and books related to the loss of a pet. Even better? Write your own articles and publish them to your blog. Want even more ideas? We have an entire blog post about it . Create Powerful Pet Funerals with a Little Help from Phoenix Pet Software If you’re going to get into the pet cremation business, you need the right tools in your toolbelt to back you up. Say hello to Phoenix Pet — your elite crematory management software. This ever-evolving tool starts with our core SRS software. Then, it’s made even more powerful with cutting-edge features that let you: Conveniently manage your pet and human cases in one system. Quickly communicate with vet clinics through VetLink and strengthen those relationships. Easily share data between your SRS Website and your SRS software to create one elite system. Turn your pet cremation business into a reality with Phoenix Pet. Book a free demo to meet this powerful software.