Raise your hand if you have recently thought to yourself:

Wouldn’t this be a great time to really dedicate time to creating a strong virtual experience for our funeral home?

And then did nothing about it.

Hand raised? 

Good. This guide is for you. The busy, stressed funeral professional who’s looking for solutions to really show up for your families during COVID-19, but don’t have unlimited time to scour the internet for the tools you need. 

We’ve got you covered. 

Check out these 18 resources and tips for creating a share-worthy virtual funeral home experience for your client families:

1. Become a safe haven in times of chaos

Many of the families you serve are probably feeling the most isolated they’ve ever felt, in the midst of their grief. Instead of primarily focusing on bringing in new customers with your social channels, try deeply serving the ones you’ve got instead. Post grief research, videos with words of encouragement, grief rituals to try, and other helpful resources to help your families deal with their loss in the age of isolation.

Resources to try:

• Get started with creating content for your funeral home on Youtube with this guide.
• Try using Instagram to share quotes and leverage stories with this step-by-step guide, made just for funeral businesses.
• Use this incredibly easy-to-learn tool, Canva, to create graphics, guides, and other marketing materials to share on your social channels.
• Bring e-Aftercare tools like daily email affirmations, and interactive grief counseling into your toolbox to support families effortlessly through their grief.

2. Make it even easier to reach you

As if your phone isn’t already on 24/7, if someone wants to be in touch with you and isn’t necessarily at the stage of a death call, how can your potential client families reach you? With a scheduling tool, you can create different kinds of appointments that client families can schedule with you, without you needing to lift a finger. You can even embed the different appointment types into your funeral home website, like the example from a pet shop below.

Resource to try: Acuity Scheduling, which offers the most resources for businesses. They have a free version, but we recommend the $15/month version!

3. Partner up with trusted businesses to extend your support 

A lot of times, younger folks like me want to get involved with a funeral home before the need for one comes. We want to be able to look to our local funeral directors for all things death. So why not try expanding your business to support folks before the death, instead of just after the fact? 

I know you’ve got a lot on your plate, but I recommend getting involved with your local hospice centers in deeper ways, coming up with a more complete bridge between the end of life, and the death. Another idea is to hook up with a virtual Death Doula, who can provide a range of services to support your client families and the loved one as the death approaches.

Resource to try: Virtual Death Doula Network looks like an awesome choice, with a range of services that offers some serious support to folks during an otherwise stressful and confusing time of their life.

4. Encourage family members to collaborate to celebrate

We’ve also been huge believers in putting your families in the driver’s seat of their funeral planning experience, but now that the world has gone virtual, this is even more important. Check out the resources below to see how you can start inviting more collaboration into your services.

Resources to try:

• Use Survey Monkey to create a survey or quiz which helps your families decide what kind of funeral service is desired.
• Use Zoom for virtual arrangement meetings with family members who are out-of-town, and encourage a “muted microphone” policy to give everyone a chance to speak without interruption.

5. Don’t forget that we’re still here to celebrate

Sure, we might be in the middle of a global pandemic, but that doesn’t take away from the life lost. Let’s still offer up our families the level of support we can, by encouraging an authentic virtual life celebration with the following resources:

Resources to try:

• Offer “breakout memory sharing sessions” via Zoom to encourage different family members to discuss memories and connect over the loss of the loved one
• Don’t forget about the value of Life Tributes – you can create a memorialization package to send out to all funeral attendees, and a special one for the family facing the loss
• Try Zoom’s “screen sharing” option to connect family members with a tribute video, that you can upload to the loved one’s social memorial website after.
• Start a “virtual pot” for those supporting your families, so they can get together and send flowers to the home of your client families with The Sympathy Store.

What other ideas has your funeral home turned into reality to create a virtual funeral home experience? Tell us in the comments below!

Rochelle Rietow

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