At the 2009 NFDA Convention Jeff Taylor (monster.com, and Tributes.com) gave a presentation titled ?The Evolution of The Obituary?. I really wanted to attend the presentation but was unable to. Luckily for all of us who couldn’t make it, Robin Heppell recorded the presentation and has uploaded it to FuneralFuturist.com.
I watched the presentation last night and I am glad that I did. Jeff provided some very good information for the industry to digest. I was disappointed that there was a lot of promotion for Tributes.com, I didn?t think this would be the case. Aside from that I thought the presentation was very good. Below are some of my thoughts and a link to the video.
About a month ago I posted an article titled “Finally an Obituary Worth Reading? it included an obituary from an online newspaper that was excellent. Following the response to the posting I wrote an article with the same title encouraging funeral directors to step outside of the box when discussing obituaries with client families. I encouraged them to help families write longer obituaries that really told the story of the deceased life. Of course these obituaries would be better suited for use online, especially on the funeral homes website.
I also encouraged funeral directors to use this type of obituary service as another revenue stream (charging a small fee to publish elaborate obits written by the family or through the assistance of an author provided by the funeral home). I submitted the article to Mortuary Management but it was rejected for being to progressive and not relevant for today?s funeral director.
Taylor?s presentation reinforced some of my thoughts. The obituary is evolving into a life story and is setting up perfectly for more integration with your funeral home website, which added the opportunity to offer extended obituary services for a small nominal fee, as well as increasing traffic to your website.
Below is a link to the presentation hosted on Heppell?s website. I strongly encourage watching the presentation; you will just have to weed out the Tributes.com slant as you digest the important information.
Watch the Video Here: http://www.funeralfuturist.com/evolution-obituary-jeff-taylor/
