5 Must-Dos for Your Aftercare Email Newsletters
By Lauren Schwenker, Digital Sales Manager
When a family leaves your care, you need a way to stay in touch with them.
That’s where an aftercare program comes in! Here are 4 things to look for in your program.
With aftercare, you can share helpful information with families, ask them for Google reviews, invite them to preplan, and keep those close bonds you made when they were in your care. Read more about why you need an aftercare program here.
Funeral directors keep in touch with families in many ways, including calling them, sending texts, and emailing them.
In this blog, I’ll cover how email can be an important part of your aftercare program and what you should include in your newsletters!
Do – Get permission to email them
Before you start sending resources to families, you need to get their permission to email them. Typically, this looks like asking them if they’re interested in grief resources or if they’d like to be enrolled in your aftercare program.
And once they’ve enrolled, give them the option to opt out of receiving your aftercare email newsletters at any time for any reason.
Do – Share grief resources
Of course, one of the first things you should do when you reach out to a family is ask how they’re doing. Grief is complex, and people can be feeling a range of emotions: sadness, anger, anxiety, and exhaustion, to name a few.
Sharing resources about processing grief is important. FuneralBasics.org has a variety of articles about grief for nearly every circumstance. Here are a few you can start with:
Give Yourself Permission to Grieve
By sharing valuable content, you extend your caring hand to families even after they’ve left your care.
Do – Provide resources about settling the loved one’s estate
When someone passes away, families are left with settling the loved one’s estate and everything that entails. And if the deceased didn’t have a plan in place for his/her estate, the surviving family members have to figure everything out on their own.
That’s why it’s crucial to provide families with how-to articles and videos for settling all parts of the estate. With these resources, you can help answer families’ questions, including:
What documents do I need?
How can I protect my loved one from identity theft?
What do I do with my loved one’s bank accounts?
How can I claim benefits?
How do I get access to my loved one’s social media accounts?
And many, many more. Families likely don’t know what questions to ask, but by sharing information, you help them months after the service ended.
With our program, we provide a website with articles and videos that help families with grief and settling the estate. Learn more here.
Do – Be consistent with your schedule
When you enroll families in your aftercare email newsletters, you need an idea of what you’re going to send and when you’ll send it. A consistent schedule will help you plan your content so it can reach families when they need it most.
Plus, if you plan ahead of time, you can automate your program and schedule emails in advance. No more having to remember to send an email. Read this article for more information about how automating your processes save you time.
Sending 1-2 emails per month with grief and estate settling resources is a good place to start.
Do – Provide a way for families to preplan
Another must-do for your aftercare email newsletters is share how families can plan ahead. You can do this by educating them about the benefits of getting their final wishes in writing, including the peace of mind it can bring.
But you don’t want to ask too soon after a death. And you don’t want a request for a preplanning meeting to be the first time they hear from your funeral home again. We recommend you ask about a month or two after the service ends once you’ve sent them grief and estate resources.
With our program, we handle this for you.
Bonus – Work with a company that does this for you
As a funeral director, you likely don’t have to time to create aftercare email newsletters and follow up with families in a systematic way. Our Circle of Friends+ program was designed to help!
Not only do we incorporate aftercare email newsletters, but we also text families and update our resources with new material for them to read. We even have live text responders who check in with families on the regular. Learn how technology is changing aftercare for the better.
You get to maintain your relationships with families. We handle the rest!
Get a demo today!
Read more about the dos and don’ts of aftercare in the articles below!
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