Batesville Launches its ObitLink Service

Funeral Industry News January 20, 2010
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Batesville Launches its ObitLink Service

imageBatesville Launches its ObitLink Service

Batesville Casket Company, the leader in the funeral service industry, launched its ObitLink online obituary offering today giving funeral homes access to the largest nationally networked obituary system.

Batesville?s ObitLink was developed through a partnership with Legacy.com, whose

network of 900-plus newspaper obituary sites is the most popular online

destination for obituary information. With more than 14 million visitors each

month and obituaries for 70 percent of the people who die in the United States

each day, Legacy.com is among the 100 most visited Web sites on the Internet.

By establishing an interactive connection between the funeral home website and

this national obituary network, ObitLink increases the visibility and impact of

the funeral home?s online presence. ObitLink helps generate increased online

obituary traffic to the funeral home websites and puts funeral homes more front

and center in the obituary process. ?With nearly 60 percent of all consumers

consulting the Internet when they make a major life decision nowadays, we want

Internet consumers to form relationships directly with funeral homes through

theirwebsites,? notes Troy Brake, general manager for Batesville Interactive.

ObitLink offers families better access to obituary information on the Internet,

and provides opportunities to use the robust multimedia features of the web to

enhance the way that they memorialize their loved ones. With the Internet,

families have a greater opportunity create vivid, meaningful memorials for their

loved ones and to share those online tributes with others living around the

world.

In addition to offering online obituaries with national exposure, ObitLink

provides funeral homes with opportunities to create additional revenue. Two

additional online memorialization packages are available for funeral homes to

offer to families. These packages offer advanced memorialization options that

take full advantage of the latest Web technology, including a memorial website

with the ability for visitors to interact through posted comments, pictures,

video and music. Families even get a professionally printed and bound book as a

keepsake of all of the information shared on their memorial site.

ObitLink is a part of Batesville?s new ConnectivitySuite, a group of modular,

web-enabled products aimed at connecting funeral homes to the families and

communities they serve in new and innovative ways. Other ConnectivitySuite

offerings include WebLink funeral home websites and TributeLink(TM) online video

tributes. Each of these affordable products utilizes web technologies that can

be easily implemented into the funeral home?s operations with minimal

infrastructure and training. To learn more about ObitLink or any of Batesville?s

Connectivity Suite, funeral homes can visit www.batesville.com/connectivity or

call Batesville at 877.287.8661.

ABOUT BATESVILLE

Batesville Casket Company (www.Batesville.com), a wholly owned subsidiary of

Hillenbrand, Inc. (NYSE: HI) is a leader in the North American death care

industry through the sale of funeral services products, including burial

caskets, cremation caskets, containers and urns, selection room display

fixturing, technology solutions, and other personalization and memorialization

products. For more than 125 years, Batesville has been dedicated to helping

families honor the lives of those they love. Our history of manufacturing

excellence, product innovation, superior customer service and reliable delivery

has helped us become ? and remain ? a market leader.

ABOUT LEGACY.COM

Founded in 1998, Legacy.com (www.legacy.com) is the world?s most timely and

comprehensive resource for online obituaries and the undisputed leader in

Web-based memorialization. The Legacy.com domain is among the 100 most visited

on the Internet, according to comScore, and includes a network of more than 900

newspapers in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland and

Australia. By making interactive memorial content accessible directly via the

websites of newspapers and funeral homes, Legacy.com helps a fast-growing number

of people expand the ways in which they can express condolences and share

remembrances of loved ones. A privately held company, Legacy.com is

headquartered in Evanston, Ill.

SOURCE: Batesville Casket Company