[CASE STUDY] How Schoedinger Funeral Home Transformed Their Business

Operating a funeral home that has been a prominent part of your community for more than 150 years is a tough job to live up to.

In order to be successful, you’ve got to connect with – and remain relevant to – your families, even during times of change. So what do you do when you find yourself struggling to connect with the families of today? Four years ago, Schoedinger Funeral Service & Cremation faced this challenge.

The challenge

In 2008, Schoedinger Funeral Service, located in Columbus Ohio, decided that the way they’d been marketing to families for the past 150 years wasn’t working anymore.

They found that it was difficult to educate non-traditional families on the value of the services they offer. Add that to the fact that their website was outdated, difficult to use and was not generating the amount of traffic they’d hoped for.

So how did they tackle it?

Below,  Mike Schoedinger of Schoedinger Funeral Service & Cremation tells his story on how he was able to adapt to the families of today!


Don’t have time to watch? Read Schoedinger’s story below!

Below is a transcribed version of Mike Schoedinger telling his story

When Joe Joachim and I first sat down to talk about what we wanted for our website, I had in my mind an idea of what I wanted, and it was much more than just pictures of our buildings or staff and the usual things many funeral homes had. I wanted a viral website that got people online, sharing it with others.

“How do you create that raving fan that had such a meaningful profound experience,  they had to share it with others?”

funeralOne helped us do just that. They truly created a viral website for us. One of the really amazing statistics that I remember seeing when our website first came out was the length of time that a family spent while on our website.

“I want to say the average user spent less than 7 seconds on our website before. Now, the average user spends over 4 minutes on our site.”

Part of that is because of the videos (which are really great, by the way), part of it is because the helpful content, and the biggest part was offering families the opportunity to participate in a person’s tribute while leaving condolences and shopping on our Sympathy Store.

I had a pretty profound experience just last Thursday, I was speaking to 30 elderly women at a professional dinner, and one of the women came up to me and said,

“I didn’t use your funeral home when my husband died… it was one year ago this week, but I want you to know that I get your 365 days of healing messages online, and I have printed every one out. I am on about day 250, so I didn’t start right after he died, but I learned about it and I have been a subscriber, and when my subscription runs out after 365 days, I will probably start back over again. Those emails have been so helpful to me in my healing.”

I think we have the best website in all of funeral service. I have been told that by a lot of my peers and a lot of my colleagues around the country.  I think all funeral homes should consider funeralOne as a trusted partner; they truly have the best interest of their customers in mind.

 

The results

In the end, Schoedinger Funeral Service & Cremation got way more than just a website with f1Connect. They got the opportunity to offer an experience that families have found to be incredibly valuable. Not only have they been able to adapt to the families of today, but their success is also pretty obvious in the numbers:

–  Schoedinger now has 10x more traffic on their website, averaging up to 30,000 unique visitors every month.

– They experienced a 2000% increase in website pre-need leads.

– Their Sympathy Store eCommerce sales have increased their revenue, averaging nearly $2,000 per month, without any effort on their part.

– Families are actively using social memorial websites and sharing them with others through social networking sites. In fact, 47% of new site visitors are now coming from Facebook.

– Families are now more receptive to discussing funeral service ideas, in addition to conversations about price.

 

See Schoedinger’s website in action

Click on the image of Schoedinger’s website to see it live!

Click on the image of Schoedinger’s website to see it live!

Want to transform your business like Schoedinger did?

Get a free demo of the all-in-one f1Connect website platform by clicking here or calling us at 800-798-2575, ext. 5.

 

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