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You may have heard the saying “What gets measured gets managed.” So often, I talk with funeral home owners who can’t tell if their preneed marketing spends are making an impact on their business. They know that data and metrics could make a real difference.
But they have to be the right metrics. Measuring the wrong things isn’t all that helpful. It’d be like judging the greatness of a football team solely by points scored while ignoring wins, rushing yards, tackles, turnovers, receptions, and so on. You see, the saying is incomplete. The original intent of ‘what gets measured gets managed’ was also a warning to be careful what you measure. Measure the right things and your organization can focus on improving the right things. Measure the wrong things and your organization will focus on improving the wrong things, potentially sinking resources into areas that are effectively meaningless. 1
Of all the pro tips I can share, the most important one is this: Measure what matters. Understanding preneed data can play a key role in prearranging more families at your funeral home. To help explain how, I recently had a great conversation with Precoa Senior Vice President of Partnership Development Carson Johanson about the role data plays in your organization.
Tyler: First off, I want to thank you for joining me to talk about this, Carson. Recently, you've been working closely with our field and data analytics teams on the latest version of Precoa's reporting suite. That work involves clearly articulating the entire preneed journey, from the top of the preneed funnel all the way through to preplanned and prefunded funerals.
What are some of the problems you see most often in our profession when it comes to reporting?
Carson: What I often see is a fractured data set that results in uncertainty throughout the preneed process. This happens because you have multiple vendors and multiple departments all promoting data that applies only to their purview with varying goals and no clear connection.
As an example, a marketing company with no direct connection to sales can only report on what they can track. Those numbers are often what we call vanity metrics: likes, clicks, impressions. But without following through to the bottom of the funnel – the sale – it’s impossible to know the true effectiveness of marketing spends.
That's why we put so much emphasis on capturing and using the data of the entire preneed pipeline.
Tyler: If the only measurable numbers you’re seeing are early in the preneed pipeline, that’s an indication that there might be a hitch in your strategy. It’s easy for vanity metrics to turn into a case of the emperor’s new clothes. You can fool yourself into thinking you’re on the right track when you should be stepping back and taking a closer look.
The fact is: marketing in our industry is more complex than a business like retail, which is complex in its own right. It takes the right combination of touchpoints for a family to decide to preplan or prefund a funeral for themselves or a loved one. And it can be easy to lose even your most interested customers somewhere in that process.
Carson: Exactly. The lack of clear, actionable data through the entire pipeline will slow you down and might even set you on the wrong path. As you said, there are a lot of steps in the preneed journey, and if you're measuring the wrong things, it makes it next to impossible to accurately identify a problem.
Tyler: When we talk about improving a preneed program, we’re really talking about building a system to achieve consistently high performance. Everything you’re putting into your program should be reflected by what you’re getting out of it.
Carson: That’s actually one of the biggest challenges when you don’t have useful pipeline data. Your program’s performance ends up feeling pretty foggy. A lot of funeral homes will put their foot on the gas and feel like their program is strong for a little while and then hit the brakes because they feel like they aren’t getting returns. It’s pretty common for funeral homes to start and stop their programs for this reason. The problem with operating by feel is that uncertainty builds up, making it harder and harder to justify investing in your program.
There are dozens of reasons why your performance might be struggling. It could be a marketing piece, but it could just as easily be an issue with lead intake, the follow-up process, or your advance funeral planner.
The point is that you won’t know unless you have the right data to validate it. That means not only tracking sales volume and marketing returns but also appointment set rates and efficiency rates for every lead source. When you have every step of the preneed pipeline mapped out and a robust system for tracking it, you no longer have to deal with stops and starts. You can just focus on building momentum.
Tyler: That makes sense. When the whole process is clear and you see a direct correlation with better results, your marketing spend is no longer a gamble but an investment. You can trust that every action has an outcome. You see that a specific investment in marketing will result in a specific increase in prearranged families, and that’s no small thing. By taking the guesswork out of the process, you stop deploying your marketing on a hope and a prayer.
Tyler: The obvious first step here is to start gathering data, but a lot of people I talk to discover that’s a big hurdle. It can be hard to get people to provide data. No one wants to be forced to enter the results of an appointment or feel like someone’s looking over their shoulder. Instead, people need to know the value of good data. They need to know the “why.”
Carson: That’s the thing. You can have all the right metrics in place, but you also need buy-in. If your advance funeral planner goes to an appointment and it’s a no-show, they need to see the value of logging it into your system.
Let’s say logging a no-show appointment automatically brings that lead back into your follow-up workflow, which then triggers a phone call or nurture path for a family to reschedule an appointment. Now there’s a clear reason to log it. Not only will your advance funeral planner see the benefit of another opportunity to meet with a family, but it will also benefit the family who has another opportunity to preplan.
It’s similar to what we were saying about marketing. There should always be a consistent outcome for every action.
Tyler: This also points back to the purpose of a proactive preneed program. Our goal is to get funeral homes in front of as many families as possible because we believe a prearranged funeral provides a path to healing when it’s needed most.
Carson: That’s why preneed data and metrics are so important. It’s much more than just inputting numbers into a system and churning out a report to see how well you’re doing each day. The reason we track so many data points is because they’re meaningful. They make a difference to funeral homes, advance funeral planners, and in the lives of families.
We have worked with a lot of funeral home owners who have felt overwhelmed by the thought of tracking all these numbers, all while serving families and running their businesses. So here’s the advice I would give: Review the data metrics you have in place and start charting how they connect. Start with the big numbers: How many leads are being generated? How many of those leads are turning into appointments? Finally, how many of those appointments turned into sales?
Alternatively, you could work with a trusted partner who can track and manage the entire preneed pipeline. As we mentioned, it takes the right combination of touchpoints for some families to feel ready to preplan. And if the ball is dropped anywhere in that journey, your funeral home is losing out on the growth that’s possible in your market.
Keeping track of where your customers are in their journey – all the way from lead to sale – is the only way to ensure your lead generation, appointment setting, sales team and everything else in your preneed program is working. But more importantly, it’s the best way to ensure that the families who are asking for your help are receiving that help and becoming lifelong brand advocates for your funeral home.
In my next column, I'll share why preneed is important beyond the numbers and how effective metrics can make a meaningful difference in people's lives.
Have a preneed question? Please reach out and I’d be happy to answer at preneedprotips@precoa.com
Tyler Anderson is Senior Vice President of Business Development at Precoa, a preneed company that helps hundreds of funeral homes prearrange more families and grow their markets. Born and raised in the funeral profession, Tyler appreciated the importance of ceremony, ritual, and gathering from an early age. He is passionate about sharing a new vision for preneed that helps more families across the country experience a meaningful funeral service.