A Surprising Way to Easily Amplify Your Funeral Home’s Revenue, Referrals, and Reputation
Year after year, respondents to the Connecting Directors Deathcare Survey unfailingly cite “word of mouth or referrals” as their number one driver of business. Every funeral home wants the families they serve to recommend them to others, and you probably do everything you can to provide exceptional, referral-worthy service. However, there’s one thing you may not be doing that we can absolutely guarantee will spark surprising conversations about your services, send new business your way, and even drive profitability.
And it’s something you’d actually give to your families … for free.
An unexpected gesture
That special something is a personalized memorial blanket from Funeral Home Gifts. Surprising the families you serve with an incredibly high-quality, meticulously individualized, and completely unexpected blanket featuring images of their loved one will inevitably produce an overwhelmingly positive reaction — and create an unforgettable memory of your kind gesture.
“It’s a very emotional experience,” explains Karl Weisenbeck, President of Funeral Home Gifts. “They cry, they hug the funeral director, and then other family members want to purchase one. A funeral home gets known for this, even though it’s a surprise. They get the reputation of being the funeral home that gives the blanket.”
Here’s what actual family members have said after receiving a Funeral Home Gifts blanket at their loved one’s service:
- “Oh, it was so emotional, so beautiful. It was almost as if he was there.”
- “Wow. Just to see his face.”
- “It’s something that you can keep forever.”
- “When you lose a loved one, you want to be close to them. And this is such a touching way to do that, because it’s a blanket that you can drape yourself with and feel close to them.”
- “Amazing and wonderful. It was unbelievable. When we walked in, the first thing we looked at was the blanket. Everybody wanted one. I had so many family and friends come up to me and ask me where we got that blanket from.”
- “So many people have asked, ‘Where did you get that? That is so beautiful. That is amazing.’ And I told him it was a gift from the mortuary. They couldn’t believe it.”
- “The moment I saw it, I immediately started thinking, ‘I’ve got to send my son who’s in the Army in Germany. And my granddaughter, who was just so attached to her grandparents. The list went on and on and on. They are priceless gifts.”
Still a welcome comfort after 17 years
When Weisenbeck joined Funeral Home Gifts in 2011, the company had only been producing woven blankets for funeral services for a few years. The inspiration for this division came after its parent company, the family-owned, North Carolina-based Pure Country Weavers, which had built a worldwide reputation for producing superb American-made upscale fine art tapestries, college stadium blankets, and other finely crafted textiles, received a request from a funeral director for a personalized woven blanket for a high-profile memorial service — and he needed it the next day.
“Understanding the historical significance of it,” Weisenbeck says, “we actually met the funeral director halfway on the interstate between here and Atlanta, and passed it off to him. It was very well received, very much a comfort to the family.”
While Funeral Home Gifts’ selection of blankets and other personalized memorial products has grown exponentially since that first request, the next-day delivery, grateful reception from funeral directors, and the comfort the blankets provide to families has not changed.
A word from a fan and funeral director
At this year’s International Cemetery, Cremation & Funeral Association (ICCFA) Convention & Expo in Tampa, Florida, Connecting Directors’ Ryan Thogmartin caught up with Antonio Green, who was admiring the selection of products on display at the Funeral Home Gifts booth. Green, a fourth-generation funeral director at James H. Cole Home for Funerals in Detroit, Michigan, is a long-time customer and admirer of Funeral Home Gifts, and he shared three reasons a funeral home should join him as a partner of the company.
“Number one: families,” Green says. “You’re going to offer another level of service, of satisfaction to your families. Providing the gift from Funeral Home Gifts gives them a permanent memorial that they can keep at home or wherever they choose. Number two: revenue. The cost is very minimal for the funeral home. The increased satisfaction offered to your families will increase your revenue with additional sales and also additional business. They’re going to tell everybody else where they got that blanket from or where they got that product from. Number three: just in general, customer satisfaction. When surveyed, funeral homes do better when they’ve offered a gift from funeral home gifts to their family.”
Blankets are just the start
Hands down, the blankets created by Funeral Home Gifts are the products most gifted by the company’s funeral home partners. Today, in addition to the signature heirloom-quality woven throw, the company offers blankets in multiple styles and sizes, including colorful printed versions in woven or Sherpa materials. All three are simply stunning in look, feel, craftsmanship, and detail.
“The printed blanket is woven, but the image is printed on it through a dye sublimation printing process, and looks almost like a photograph,” explains Weisenbeck. “It features greater definition, brighter colors, and higher clarity. The Sherpa fleece blanket is cozy, soft, lovely, and nice, and is printed as well. And you can think of the original woven blanket like a tapestry, or an oil painting. It’s woven out of six colors of cotton thread. We really have something for everyone.”
The same quality and attention to detail is featured in Funeral Home Gifts’ other highly-personalized products, which include neckties, pillows, plaques, keepsake boxes, cap panels, and urns.
“The beautiful custom cap panels are printed on poly-satin material and hand-assembled on a foam-core base,” says Weisenbeck. “They are sized to press-fit perfectly into any casket brand or size. Most of the time, families will take the cap panels out of the casket and take them home, and not bury them with the individual.”
The two Funeral Home Gifts urn options were on display at ICCFA — and Connecting Directors caught Antonio Green’s first impression of the 946A aerospace-grade aluminum urn, which offers 360 degrees of personalization.
“I’ve used funeral gifts for over 15 years,” Green says, “And my mistake, I didn’t know they offered such an awesome urn. I mean, look at this thing. Customization. Personalization on all four sides. Pretty much indestructible design. Hey, from now on, this is going to be my number one go to urn.”
How it all works
Weisenbeck knows that giving away products and services doesn’t sound like a practice that leads to profitability. However, his idea to surprise families with a Funeral Home Gifts blanket that they didn’t expect to receive does make financial sense.
“While it’s a comfort to grieving families, it’s also something that’s a business builder for our funeral home customers,” Weisenbeck explains “both through reorders, and because you will grow your call volume. Most of our customers will build the cost of the first blanket into their GPL.”
Funeral Home Gifts items are only available to deathcare professionals at wholesale pricing. Families who reach out to the company for retail items are directed back to the funeral home, which helps to build both familiarity and loyalty. Also, all items are available for next-day delivery if ordered by the daily deadlines, which are always available on the Funeral Home Gifts online ordering portal.
Ordering a beautifully-designed gift like a blanket or urn through the Funeral Home Gifts portal is quick and easy, and doesn’t require any creative expertise. The personalization possibilities are endless, as customers can upload up to five images and then choose from hundreds of backgrounds, colors, fonts, and graphics from the portal’s searchable catalog. New options are added each month, and popular choices are showcased in a special “Editor’s Choice” section. The vast selection lets customers highlight a person’s hobbies, military service, profession, favorite colors or flowers, pets, and more.
Each new customer receives step-by-step training on how to use the portal, and help is always just a phone call or email away. Additionally, once a design is finalized and approved by the customer, the Funeral Home Gifts art department experts will review it and make minor revisions, if necessary, to produce the highest-quality results.
“We’ve developed an online ordering process where we can take an order, have it edited by an artist, get it batched, go to a loom, get it woven, get it washed, get it dried, and then ship it out to the funeral home for next-day delivery,” Weisenbeck adds. “That’s unheard of.”
Individualization is expected
Weisenbeck recalls days when funerals were basically all the same, and included little to no personalization. Today, even cremation families expect — and deserve — a unique service that celebrates their loved one as an individual.
“It’s a healing and satisfying experience for the family,” he explains. “A good funeral director is going to share with a family that they can still have a viewing. They can still have a gathering. They can still have a service. And maybe they suggest that the family bring in dad’s fishing rod, and they display it next to the blanket. That’s personalization. The blankets are a representation of that individual, and a funeral director can take great pride that they’ve created this work of art.”
The families you serve deserve this level of service, personalization, and thoughtfulness. To get started surprising your families with stunningly special Funeral Home Gifts blankets, reach out to Karl Weisenbeck’s team at www.funeralhomegifts.com/contact-us/.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Karl Weisenbeck and Funeral Home Gifts graciously allowed me to submit some photos of a loved one for a complimentary memorial blanket. I chose some photos of my father, Henry Ford “Pat” Bryant, who died in 1974 when I was four years old; he and my mother had only been married for six years when he passed away, and she never remarried. My mother is now 91 and has suffered from dementia for over a decade; sometimes she doesn’t recognize my sister or me.
When my sister and I visited her in the nursing home to give her this blanket, her face lit up with one of the biggest smiles I’ve seen in years. We asked her if she recognized the face on the blanket, and she said, “That’s my husband, Pat!” We covered her with the blanket, and over the next hour she admired it more than a dozen times. “Oh, I love it! I feel like I have him with me! I will treasure this. It looks just like him!” She commented on his “big eyes” and asked me multiple times how I had it made. As we said goodbye, she thanked us again, bringing us to tears when she said, “I don’t mind staying in bed now. I have Pat with me.” I simply can’t express in words how grateful I am to Mr. Weisenbeck for his kind offer and the team at Funeral Home Gifts for producing a stunningly beautiful, high-quality blanket; but, most of all, I’m eternally and indescribably thankful for the gift of those smiles they put on my mother’s face. ~ Patricia Hartley
