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All these tricks raise the question: Why are obituaries taken so seriously? According to Robin Heppell, a funeral marketing consultant, the answer is simple: obituaries will attract internet traffic.
Take Monique Heller as an example, Her father’s obituary, Including how he frustrated the “lunch thief with laxative chocolate cake and poop patties sandwich”, which became popular in 2019. The local newspaper reported her unusually frank report about her father, the National Public Radio contacted her, and her father’s name was briefly popular on Twitter. “I thought, my goodness, Dad, you know, you did it,” she said.
Obituaries like Heller are magnetically attractive. According to documents from the US Securities and Exchange Commission, SCI’s website attracted nearly 160 million visitors in 2020, up from 130 million in 2019. Heppell is also responsible for the design and management of funeral home websites. He said that some funeral home websites in metropolitan areas have more than 1 million visits per year. In some smaller newspapers, the obituary section has twice as many visits as the news section. The executive of Legacy.com, John Heald, is a company that cooperates with newspapers to issue death notices. On the podcast in July.
This flow leads to cash. Leclerc said that Echovita generated $5 million in revenue in 2020. He said the company charges commissions for the sales of flowers, candles and memorial trees.He said that since 2018, he has reinvested more than US$1 million from Echovita in a company called funeral, He envisioned it as an online market for funeral services. “I want to use this technology to become a disruptor in the industry,” he said.
Online obituaries can attract investors with deep pockets. Marketing consultant and funeral home website designer Heppel said that the private equity fund Providence Strategic Growth Company approached him in 2018 on the acquisition of his business. When the topic turned to the company’s valuation, he said that the fund representative asked him how many obituaries he posted on the website he manages. “Their valuation of the business will be based on obituaries,” he concluded. Heppel later ended his conversation with Providence.
At that time, Providence owned Tribute Technology, which provided a set of technical services for funeral homes, including website design and management. At the end of 2020, Providence sold Tribute Technology to two other private equity funds The Carlyle Group and Vista Equity Partners. Reported to exceed $1 billionProvidence could not be reached for comment.
On its website, Tribute Technology stated that it is “changing the world one obituary at a time.” According to Heppel, in order to obtain these obituaries, one of its subsidiaries provided a free funeral home website. Brian Waters, director of the Indiana funeral home, said his family business received its website for free from a Tribute company. In exchange, Waters said that Tribute would collect a 50% commission from all the flowers sold next to his funeral home obituary, as well as most of the funds for the memorial tree sold on his funeral home website.Then it collects the obituaries that have been posted Central ArchivesA spokesperson for Tribute declined to comment.
The rise of Tribute has put pressure on Legacy.com, which is a fixed device in the online death economy for more than 20 years; Legacy founder and CEO Stopher Bartol said that the site has 1.1 billion visits per year. Since 1998, Legacy.com has signed contracts with newspapers to obtain obituaries issued by them. In 2017, Legacy.com The vice president told Cnet The company issues obituaries for 75% of Americans. In the same year, Legacy.com Tell Slate It cooperates with 1,500 newspapers and 3,500 funeral homes. Legacy said that these figures are still “generally representative,” but declined to comment on specific details. Hilder said in a podcast in July that recently, the company has shifted more attention to funeral homes. Bartol said it has also begun to work with the Arbor Day Foundation to sell commemorative trees.
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