Funeral Innovations Copilot aims to grow and engage a Funeral Home’s following on Facebook.
When a friend new to the funeral services field came calling on Greg Young for technical help five years ago, he recruited his IBM co-worker, Zack Garbow, to assist him. Young’s friend believed there was a better way to do his job with the help of technology, but he didn’t know how. So Young and Garbow, based in Rochester, Minn., at the time, put together a strategy.
Eventually, that strategy led to the start of a consulting business for Young (far left) and Garbow (near left), and today, it’s behind a product that costs a user $95 per month.
Thanks to our sponsor
Young, who’s now based in Des Moines, and Garbow, who’s in Boulder, Colo., are the co-founders of Funeral Innovations, a company offering web, mobile and social media marketing tools for funeral homes.
“We automate and streamline the business process for funeral directors,” Young said.
Their product, Funeral Innovations Copilot, aims to make it easy for funeral homes to “get results” on Facebook.
“We’re first to market with FI Copilot, which automatically publishes content on a funeral home’s Facebook page to grow and engage their fan base,” Young said.
And its seems to be working.
“In (one) case, the funeral home reached over 2,000 people in a town of less than 10,000,” Young said. “The impact of this is that we leverage Facebook to help the community to learn more about grief, end of life planning and other topics. There are no other outreach methods today that yield this type of results.”
FI Copilot lets users set a schedule for their content to automatically publish it in the future with an aim to keep fans engaged. Users are given feeds of example content, such as photos, grief tips (below), motivational quotes, inspirational stories and pre-planning. Users can also edit their schedules, add their own posts or remove items they don’t like. Copilot will email the user about the next scheduled post, keeping the user in charge of what’s published to their Facebook page.
Funeral Innovation Copilot provides users with suggested articles to share on Facebook.
Another of the products offered by the company is monument services.
“We offer real-time, color renderings of stone monuments clients can view before purchasing,” Young said.
Young said there are a couple of competitors in their field, especially with monument design software, but their integrations, such as “Remembrance Codes” that link to an online memorial, set them a part.
Funeral Innovations is also working on a product to help funeral directors collect email addresses for newsletters and grief resources.
The company charges a monthly fee for most of their services and it offers web strategy consulting.
Young said they used their savings to get started, so they didn’t take on any investment, although they’d consider it if the right opportunity presented itself.
As for the future, Young said they’ll focus on the changing technology landscape, especially mobile, as he said that seems untapped in the funeral services business.
Credits: Screenshot and photos from funeralinnovations.com.
