“Click-to-add a city” for obituaries launches for all partners on September 1, 2022
A new enhancement will be added to AdPortal Obituaries so media partners can provide even better service to funeral homes. Population trends tell us that more and more families want their obituary to reach people in more than one location – it’s the reason newspapers already benefit from iPublish Media’s Targeted Obituaries on Facebook. We are proud to now offer an integration with the Memoriams network.
In a four-month test run with multiple newspapers across the country, funeral home partners clicked from AdPortal’s confirmation page to the Memoriams network, without a ripple in the workflow or customer journey. Here’s what happened:
Early participants included the Toledo Blade, Deseret News, Salt Lake Tribune, all of the Advance Local newspapers, and the Michigan MediaNews Group papers.
When a funeral home logged into AdPortal and completed their obituary, they were saw a newly designed confirmation page which includes a link to the Memoriams network.
If the funeral home is asked by the family to place an obituary in additional newspaper(s), the funeral director simply clicks on the rectangle graphic to redirect to the Memoriams network. The content and images from the original obituary are used to create obituaries in additional newspapers. That’s it! Memoriams has a full support team to handle any additional questions.
The funeral homes in the test group used the feature without training or additional instruction. iPublish provides additional materials to educate funeral homes and call centers if needed.
There were no cancellations of obituaries for the originating newspaper. The feedback from funeral homes was 100% “yes please.” Some funeral directors said that the new process saves an average of 90 minutes in research when a family member requests to have their obituary placed in another market. It also provides a chance for a newspaper to receive obituaries from other markets in the Memoriams network.
Next Steps
iPublish Media Solutions will upgrade all markets beginning September 2022. There is no charge to the funeral homes or newspapers for accessing this feature. In-house order entry teams can benefit from this service as well. Newspapers receive incremental revenue for obituaries placed by the network, in addition to strengthening relationships with local funeral homes.
Contact your funeral homes to announce this Memoriams upgrade – a free value-added feature. We have resources available to help if you need them.
If you have any questions about this feature or want to activate Memoriams immediately, please contact Kim Safran, VP of Sales, at kim@ipublishmedia.com or (772) 532-3435.
Resources:
> Memoriams Overview/Explainer Video
> iPublish Media Obituary AdPortal
> “Obituaries At A Crossroads” whitepaper
