At FrontRunner, we are more than just a website and technology provider. We work each and every day to help funeral homes around North America build better businesses and become institutions in their community.
When it came to the next thing we’d bring or help bring to funeral service, we knew it had to be a platform to help funeral homes take back control of their obituaries, something we’ve voiced our concern over for years. Unfortunately, the FrontRunner team couldn’t lead this up because of the growth of our company, so we aligned ourselves the right people, and financially supported them with one goal in mind: to protect the future of funeral service.
We are proud to introduce the National Obituary Registry, an organization that empowers funeral homes to benefit from their own obituary traffic and provides them every necessary touchpoint families want. But we can’t do this alone and require the support of professional associations, newspapers, other technology vendors like us and ALL funeral homes around the continent. Together, we can make change happen.
For too long, funeral homes across North America have suffered at the hands of third-party obituary posting schemes that use obituary traffic for their own self gain, replacing local firms on search engines and creating a confusing online landscape for families to navigate. If they continue to be ignored, funeral homes will lose, and the online traffic that belongs to your funeral home will be gone forever, taking your profits and future families with it.
Unfortunately, we have already seen this situation get to a point of no return and unless firms come together to take back control over their online traffic, we may see the decline of local funeral businesses as we know them. That is why we felt it was imperative to get behind this cause and share it with the thousands of funeral homes we work with across North America. Let’s take a few minutes to walk through some of the key strategies and features of the National Obituary Registry that will immediately benefit you and your business, and know that as a FrontRunner client, we’ve done this all for you, on your behalf so there is nothing you physically need to do:
National Obituary Registry & ObitTree.com
National Obituary Registry is an organization dedicated to uniting funeral professionals with the collective goal of taking back control of funeral service. ObitTree is the obituary posting engine that drives that effort by providing ample opportunities for funeral homes to benefit from their obituary traffic, and connect with more families, something funeral homes desperately need right now but don’t have the budget or expertise to do.
By registering your funeral home and posting your obituaries on the National Obituary Registry first, you’ll benefit from better obituary rankings on search engines and more exposure to families. Why continue to lose traffic and profits? National Obituary Registry and ObitTree put your firm in the driver’s seat and bring more families directly to you.
A New Consumer Hub For All Things Death Care
If funeral professionals come together, ObitTree.com will quickly become the most important centerpiece in building a better tomorrow for families, funeral professionals and the industry as a whole. To achieve this goal of empowering funeral businesses to expand their community reach and win back their online profits, ObitTree will work with the National Obituary Registry and funeral homes to capture the online traffic being sent elsewhere and keep it in the rightful hands of our great profession. This will be done using advanced digital strategies to keep your obituary front and center on Google, and help generate pre-need and at-need leads as well as offer more interactive online memorial pages where families can do more than ever before to build a permanent tribute to their deceased loved one, all while benefiting your firm.
All The Features You Need, In One Place
You will never have to worry about families having basic unanswered questions about funeral service or the time it takes to get this information on your funeral home website, instead you can focus on providing them with the personalized and unique care that every family deserves because ObitTree is educating consumers on your behalf and directing them to you. Families will have access to pre-planning tools, educational resources and helpful guidance, and more. We even encourage every funeral professional to submit their “good” story to The Good Funeral to contribute to the positive message about funeral service that ObitTree has set out to build.
In addition, one of the major touch points you will give families is An Amazing Life online memorial tribute pages, which will provide advanced memorial websites equipped with the powerful MemorialFX personalization engine, allowing families to create stunning tribute videos, beautiful memorial stationery and an expansive tribute book that captures all periods in one’s life. An Amazing Life will bring many new dimensions to the world of sympathy gestures with the Honoring A Life memorial tree program, and FuneralPay, a tool built in partnership with GoFundMe, allowing funeral homes to offer families a transparent, easy and efficient way to make contributions to final expenses and related funeral costs.
More Online Security and Money In Your Pocket
It is impossible for one funeral home alone, doing a hundred or even a few hundred calls, to compete with websites that host millions of obituaries. At the National Obituary Registry, we believe it is imperative to help funeral businesses retain authority over their own online obituaries and online memorial tribute pages through both search engine authority and taking advantage of online opportunities. By repurposing online obituary traffic to once again benefit those who work hard to serve the families of their communities, the National Obituary Registry is giving funeral homes more opportunity to succeed. With National Obituary Registry and ObitTree, your firm will be more secure and visible online, helping to secure a future for your business moving further into the digital age – and it’s all free. Why? Because the future of funeral service is at stake and someone needed to do something.
FrontRunner Clients, It’s Already Connected!
Good news, FrontRunner clients! Because we are the first company in our profession to financially support and endorse the National Obituary Registry and ObitTree, all FrontRunner clients already have their system seamlessly integrated. This means that your obituaries are already pushing directly to the National Obituary Registry and ObitTree.com, and it is only a matter of time before you start to experience the benefits of the initiative. Not only will your funeral home benefit immensely from new families connecting with your firm, but with every obituary posted, you will be contributing to putting funeral homes back in control of their obituaries, traffic, and building a better future for funeral service.
What To Expect Moving Forward as a FrontRunner Client
This is an exciting time, your obituaries just became your funeral home’s most important asset in the fight to take back control of your profession.
Meet Your National Obituary Registry Representative:
Within the coming weeks you will be hearing from your National Obituary Registry representative who will reach out and provide a more detailed introduction to this program. This designated individual is part of the National Obituary Registry team, and their job is to help funeral homes that are tired of losing profits, traffic, ranking low on Google and missing out on countless online opportunities.
Important to note: Your representative will also be introducing you to new families that have requested to contact your funeral home. They will also keep you up to date on the progress of the initiative. Too many funeral homes have had to close their doors due to unpreparedness to run a business in this day and age. Your National Obituary Registry representative will be a strong ally for your funeral home moving forward, so make sure you get to know them!
There is Nothing You Need to Do, Except Help Us Spread the Word
We are proud to arm our clients with the ability to fight back against these threats. While there is nothing you need to do to get your obituaries posted through the National Obituary Registry, you can help the initiative by spreading the word. Every single funeral professional counts, so share this post with your funeral director friends, associations, technology vendors and more. It’s not just funeral homes affected if nothing is done – it’s our entire profession.
If you have any questions about the National Obituary Registry, ObitTree, or what your firm can do to ensure the success of this unprecedented movement, contact any of the FrontRunner team members at 1-866-748-3625 or by email at success@frontrunner360.com.
Ashley Montroy, Marketing Director at FrontRunner Professional, has committed herself to helping funeral professionals understand and excel in today’s digital age. With a long-standing history in the funeral business and her father being a licensed funeral director for over 30 years; she grew up learning the family funeral business. Ashley holds a bachelor’s degree from Carleton University and diploma from Algonquin College. Today, she continues to speak to over 15 state and provincial funeral association groups each year on funeral marketing in the digital age and protecting funeral firms online using experiences and examples from working with thousands of funeral homes in North America through FrontRunner Professional.
