By Joey Haas
Transcript from our video interview with Angela Erickson at Forest Lawn Funeral Home
Heather:
Hi everyone. And thanks for checking in with us at Funeral Innovations: Trends, Tips and Technology, where we chat with industry professionals to discuss marketing trends, business tips, and technology innovation. And then we discuss how digital marketing helps you better serve your families. I’m Heather Mierzejewski. I am the director of marketing here at Funeral Innovations
Joey:
And I’m Joey, I’m the marketing and design coordinator at Funeral Innovations.
Heather:
And today our guest is Angela Erickson from Forest Lawn. Hi Angela. Glad you joined us today. And to kick us off, tell us a little bit about yourself and about your business.
Angela:
Well I’m with Forest Lawn Funeral Home and Cemetery in Omaha, Nebraska. I’ve been here for about three and a half years, but I’ve been in the industry for a little over 20 years. So I’ve worn many different hats over the years. And I’ve never looked back. So this has just been a life passion of mine. And it’s wonderful to work in a combo facility where we can offer everybody all arrangements under one roof. So I’m happy about that.
Joey:
So do you think you could kind of describe the mausoleum you have just in general?
Angela:
So we’re actually constructing a new mausoleum. We’re really excited about that. It is a rather large building. That’s going to have indoor and outdoor options. So it’s about 11,000 square feet. It has indoor and outdoor crypts for traditional burial and then niches. So we’ll have a combination of granite front niches and glass front niches. Obviously granite niches, indoor and out, and then the class niches inside, but we’ll also have some private alcoves within the interior of the building for those families that want something a little bit more privately yet want to be in that inside setting. So really there’s options for everyone, whether it’s traditional burial, cremation, or somebody that’s wanting more of a private family estate.
Heather:
Could you describe the alcoves a little bit? Like what would that look like to a family?
Angela:
So actually when a family, when you, when you go into the building, when you’re coming inside the building, you’re going to have that combination of traditional burial throughout crypts and then niches on the exterior of the building, you’re going to have those alcoves where they’ll, they have the option of adding a gate to that alcove stained glass window. Really, they can make it a personalized alcove where they go in, it’ll have four traditional crypts, which they can convert to niches if they wanted to. It just really depends on the family’s wants. A gentleman that’s already purchased one in there, he’s a local business owner. And so he’s going to put some of his memorabilia of his business in there along with some signage and things. So we’re really able to accommodate all the family’s needs just depending on, you know, what they choose to do. So, yeah.
Heather:
So why did you guys decide to build a mausoleum and why did you choose now to do it? I don’t know when the construction started and when you’re expected to finish, but why, what, tell me about the timing and your decision.
Angela:
Well with cremation, we knew that families wanted to personalize now more than ever. So families today are looking for unique options for burial, whether that’s traditional burial or cremation, but really cremation specifically. We saw actually over the years, the rising rate of cremation and we are trying to keep up with that demand. We also noticed a trend of families taking cremated remains home just because they didn’t have an option that was attractive to them. And it’s so important, and I could talk about this topic for hours, but it’s so important for families to have a place to go and pay their respects and grieve within a cemetery. So if a family takes those cremated remains home, there’s no place for those that are left behind to go pay their respects, grieve, say a prayer, leave a flower. And so it’s important. With this building, with a large number of glass front niches, that is a form of burial where a family can personalize. I, I describe it like a shadow box where you have your urn in there, but families can also place pictures of their family. They can place memorabilia or keepsakes that were special to them. So you really can walk up to it and learn something about someone’s life without ever knowing them. So it’s really, it’s a really neat concept and families find that very attractive. And so, I mean, again, and we were running out of mausoleum space and that seems to be a growing trend as well. So it was just perfect timing to keep up with the demands in the community and, and the growing trends that we see forthcoming.
Joey:
And so you’ve talked you talked a little bit about you’re kind of a full service funeral home. How does the mausoleum compliment the other options available in the cemetery and how does your funeral home work with the permanent resting places you have available?
Angela:
Well, we actually worked very well together. Ao you know, some options require like a burial vault for example, and some don’t. So it’s really about communication amongst our team to be able to offer full service. Not only on the cemetery side of things, but also on the funeral home side. So the funeral home side, which I’ll point out is new for us because our cemetery has been here since 1885, but our funeral home was just built and opened the doors in 2015, July of 2015. So just about five years now. And so we’ve worked very well just by communication. So for example, the mausoleum you know, a burial vault would not be required for above ground burial options, whereas in the cemetery it would be required, you know, same with an urn. Some of those cremation options such as cremation benches don’t require urns, whereas something like a glass front niche, somebody might choose more of a decorative urn. So our cemetery counselors and our funeral directors work very well together and communicating what the family’s needs are going to be. They do compliment each other and they, they blend in well with the options that we have to offer because not everybody prefers to be in-ground burial. Some people do prefer that above ground option, especially here in Nebraska and our new building we’re able to have that climate control insight, and people do prefer that to where we have snow on the ground for extended periods of time, some years. And so families prefer to be able to come and visit year round where they don’t have to worry about the snow and the cold. And even at, in the summer or fall, when it’s raining, they don’t have to worry about that so they can come, they can pull up under the covered Portico go right inside. They don’t have to worry about the walks being scooped and not being able to find a loved one’s grave site out in the snow. And even as we age and get older art, it’s, it’s difficult to visit some areas of the cemetery. If you’re utilizing like a walker, a wheelchair, a cane, whereas the mausoleum it’s just easily accessible for those people that need a little bit of extra assistance. So they compliment each other nice because we’re within the same cemetery. If somebody chooses, I want to be in the ground, but I want to be in the mausoleum. They’re still very close together with other family members that may choose one option over the other.
Heather:
That makes sense. Can you give me a sense of which do people usually pick cemetery arrangements and then use your funeral home too? Or do they come in through the funeral home and then she has cemetery arrangements?
Angela:
That’s a great question. It really depends on the family situation. If somebody has already made prearrangements and a death occurs, then more than likely they’re going to with that arrangement. So what I mean by that is most people start with their cemetery arrangements first, and then they make funeral arrangements second. So if a family already has their funeral arrangements, pre-fund more than likely stick with that funeral home that they’ve already pre-funded. And then they come to us on behalf of the cemetery. But if a family has no pre plans in place at the time of death, they more than likely will stick with the one facility, people like that option of having everything under one roof just because it’s convenient, you don’t have to worry about getting from point A to point B. You’ve got everything at one location. So it really depends on the manner in which they come to us. So, because our funeral home is fairly new, just five years since we’ve opened our doors, some of the families we’re serving already have those plans in place. You know, and we don’t encourage families. Cause sometimes they don’t even know that we have a funeral home til they come and signed paperwork on the cemetery side that we even have the funeral home in Southern. They said, well, can we switch over here? We don’t encourage that at the time of need, but you know, we’re happy to serve their family in the future. You know, if they choose to do so.
Joey:
Gotcha. And so kind of getting back to the mausoleum, how has the construction of it like how has your community responded?
Angela:
Really good. They’re actually ahead of schedule, which is great. We are, it’s scheduled to be completed in the spring of 2021. So they have been working. It was a pretty mild winter here, which I’m thankful for this year because they were able to work on that throughout the entire winter. The construction has gone very quickly and they’re working on it, like I say, they’re from out of state. And so they’re working on it diligently and they’re ahead of schedule. So the community has responded amazing. Right when you pull in this mausoleum is really at the front of the cemetery, so it’s in a very prominent place. And so a lot of people stopped to inquire what’s going there and asking additional questions. We have signs and billboards up now that, that I know shows what the completed project will look like. And so a lot of people just have a lot more questions on what’s going in there. We do get a lot of inquiries. And I know we’re going to talk about it a little bit as far as how we’re marketing that. So I can just actually roll right into that if you’d like. But so I already mentioned the billboard that we have within our own cemetery, but we do have billboards that are not up yet, but they will be going up shortly in and around the community. We have done radio spots. We have a new commercial that’s getting ready to start, we have done a lot of marketing through Funeral Innovations through our website. We’ve done some Facebook campaigns as well. So we’ve done a few direct mail pieces, but it’s really hard to track, you know, how well the response has been from those pieces. So we have gotten a lot of traffic through our Facebook our website and just through our cemetery whether they’re here to visit a loved one, whether they’re here for a funeral service and word of mouth.
Heather:
And what kind of response do people do you get when people react to those marketing campaigns? Or are they just calling, it’s asking for, tell me what my options are. What stage kind of in the ready to commit, are they?
Angela:
So a lot of people, you know, obviously they want to know what the price is. They want to know what the options are available to them. And so it’s just a matter of, you know, getting them here. We have a lot of materials here. We have some glass front niches on display in the facility so they can see what that glass front is. Cause I can talk about a glass front niche all day long, but until you actually see what you can do with the glass front niche, that’s more powerful than anything. So a lot of it has to do with pricing, what the options are available to them. So first and foremost, we’re obviously offering to schedule an appointment or a time to get together with those families so we can share with them because there’s six different levels of crypts. There’s different styles of crypts, there’s different levels of niches, there’s indoor and outdoor. So the information just as with any arrangement on the cemetery or funeral side can be confusing just verbally going over the phone. So but most of the time it’s questions about pricing. When will it be completed? What happens if a death occurs prior to the building being constructed? You know, it may be an at need call where a loved one has passed that option. So they want to know what their options are currently. And so we just share all what, you know, whatever their questions are. Well, we’re happy to answer those
Heather:
So that marketing really helps keep that connection going until people are ready to come in and see what you have to offer and make a decision.
Angela:
It really is. And a lot of times people just have immediate questions over the phone, but we’ve been able to keep in contact with them, whether that’s phone, email and you know, we’re starting to see some of those families come back around now that we’ve been under construction for several months when the project just got started and the word was getting out, there were a lot of people that had immediate questions, but now that the construction’s going and they can see the project you know, really coming full circle, a lot of them have expressed interest again and are reaching back out or have now since responded a little bit better to when we reach out to them.
Joey:
And then thinking on that, like visual aspect, I know you said there’s so many options that sometimes it’s just better to show people, but I wanted to mention that I saw the virtual tour of the construction of the building and I think that is so cool. Cause it, I think that’s a really cool way for people to kind of see on the projected you know, construction and get a better sense of what it’ll look like. Cause I, I agree some, you know, visually it’s it’s a lot easier to understand options, you know, so yeah.
Angela:
It really is, yeah. And those materials have helped us tremendously. Cause I said, you know, like I said, I could sit here all day long and talk about glass front niches and, and what you can do with them. But until it person can visually see that, sometimes that’s not a reality. Some people, some people can visualize that, but some people like myself really need to see it. And that’s been very helpful. So we have that on our website. We’ve shared that with Facebook and on one of our newsletters through Funeral Innovations. And so we also have that on our in our arrangement rooms here where we can virtually walk families through those options where they almost feel like they’re standing in the building and it’s like, okay, now we’re going to look this direction. Now we’re going to look this direction and they feel like they’re inside of it. And that has been an amazing selling tool for us to be able to create that picture for the family. And then just the way you present those options to the family, because they have to, again, visualize their glass friend niche, what would I place in that niche? Or how would I create my, you know, some people, like I say, like to call it a shadow box, you know, what memorabilia would I put in there. And we’ve also found that even when, not even with a cremation, but with traditional burial some of our early clients that came in that purchased, wanted a shadow box for their traditional option. So, you know, typically we think of a glass front niche for an urn or a cremation, but we had one gentleman in particular came in and he said, you know, I want traditional burial, but I want a shadow box too. So we actually modified one of our original drawings. We have some couch crypts and on the sides of the couch crypts, we actually put two shadow boxes on a couple levels of our crypts. They literally are shadow boxes. They’re not meant for urns or cremated remains, but he wanted to put some of his memorabilia and display family pictures and photos of, of his, his life work. So it was really cool. So those were some of the early modifications we had to make just based on community feedback.
Joey:
Definitely. Very cool.
Heather:
Super cool marketing material. So if you were to, if you were speaking to either another cemetery that’s thinking about starting a mausoleum or even a funeral home, that’s undertaking a major construction project. Are there any lessons that you’ve learned or tips that you would give, challenges that you’ve overcome that you would share with other people in the profession?
Angela:
Yeah, well I don’t think you can go wrong with niches, glass front niches. It is, you know, cremation is not going away. Cremation is a growing trend, the projections show it’s not going away. And so I I’d say embrace it. I know some people fight that growing trend and want to stick with traditional, but if you embrace cremation it really is a wonder, you can do so many amazing things with it. And so we really try to embrace cremation and put those unique options out there for families. Again, different sizes of niches are, are really important, so it’s not just one size. One thing we found early on in our construction is one just listening to the customer’s feedback. And thankfully we were early enough in the process that we were able to make those modifications. So the gentlemen I was just talking about with that one of the shadow boxes, it was easy to make those modifications for him because it was early in the process. Another modification that we had to make was on the sizing of our glass front niches. I quickly found that couples in particular wanted a larger glass front niche. Because that, by the time you put two urns in there, you want to have room to place those keepsakes pictures of the family. And you’re not able to do that with a smaller niche. And so we had to make a huge adjustment on the sizing of our niches to allow for that larger size, typically a 24×12 glass front niche that can accommodate for a husband and wife or a couple because that was so important to them. There’s smaller companion sizes that don’t allow for that personalization. And we quickly found how important that is to families. So you know, as I mentioned, we saw an uptick of families wanting to take those cremated remains home, and that was very concerning for me personally as well, just because I’ve been in the business a long time and I know how important it is for families to have that place to go. You know, we’ve seen over the years where people come into the cemetery and want to know where someone’s buried, and then we tell them that, that person’s not, not very here. You know, and then they’re left with no place to go and pay their respects and grieve. And if somebody has taken those cremated remains home, you know, it’s really hard to say, well, I can not, I’m not going to go knock on Bob’s door and see if I can, you know, visit a loved one on the fireplace. It just, that doesn’t happen. And so those people are left feeling like they just, they don’t have a place to go and pay their respect. So it is important. You know when we started this project right in the early phases of it, we had a lot of historic flooding in Nebraska. This was just last year. And some of the feedback and commentary that we got from people is very sad. But they had scattered cremated remains and they had a very specific place that they would go to whether it was out in a field or a riverbank or wherever that was, but that memorial that they had is no longer there. And it’s heartbreaking for these families when you hear these stories that, you know, mom was right here, but now she’s just gone because the flooding took all of that. And, you know, those are things that our customers don’t necessarily think about. But it it’s our job to tell those stories. So they don’t do this every day, but we do. And we need to share our feedback and our thoughts. While, not putting our opinions in front of theirs, but it is our job to present to them what the options are and why it’s important for those we leave behind.
Heather:
So that they’re educated on their choices and can make an informed decision instead of making one on a whim. Sorry, it’s my door and my daughter coming in and out of the door in the background. Yeah. So yeah, I think that’s a really important part. Joey and I are both just new to the industry or the profession in the last couple years. So for us, it’s really interesting anytime we hear those stories and things that, of course we had never thought about before. I want to know all these things. I think your families want to know all these things and certainly our clients want to let their families know all the options.
Angela:
Well, that’s a whole ‘nother video because I can talk about cremation information and its importance for an hour or so for sure.
Joey:
So do you think you could talk about kind of the pandemic related challenges that you’ve faced this year?
Angela:
Oh, well, you know, the thing about our industry is always changing. It is, and, and you have to embrace it and you, and, you know, this year has been amazing in so many different ways. We’ve all had to learn and grow and get out of our comfort zone. And you know, for me, when you’re out of your comfort zone, you’re learning and you’re growing. So I embrace that. But not everybody does. And, you know, speaking on behalf of our customers, you know we’ve offered Zoom, we’ve offered all these things, but our clients don’t necessarily want that. They still prefer just give me a phone call or what have you. So the face-to-face meetings early on in the pandemic you know, everything just kinda came to a screeching halt. So it was tough to get in front of those customers and clients at first. And then we’ve offered Zoom. A lot of our clients personally have not taken us up on that offer. They prefer to just, you know, let’s do everything email. We’ve utilized Now Deck just a little bit, so we can, you know, transfer those documents and be looking at the same thing. We have snail mail and we were meeting clients by appointments only with masks and social distancing. But it took a while for people to get onboard with that. On the flip side of that, people it seems now more than ever understand the importance of pre-planning. So for us, you know, we have continued on with what we do every day, sharing our message, sharing the importance of preplanning. You have two sets of people: those that understand the importance and the value of preplanning now more than ever, they, you know, they’re seeing gosh with everything going on. It’s really made us think. We understand how important preplanning is and we want to get this taken care of God forbid. I happened to get this virus and, you know, something happens. But then you also have those people that are very fearful that don’t want to come and meet right now. But also are with the economy, you know, holding onto those funds and kind of want to wait it out and see what happens. But for us, it really has been a good time for us to get that message out to our customers and our clients. And, you know, we didn’t let the pandemic get in the way of us sharing our message. And so that’s really helped us along the way.
Heather:
That sounds like you, I mean, you address both of our questions and questions there with what challenges do you face, but also what successes have you had. And I think we’ve heard that from other people too, that pre-planning people are really thinking about that and interested in what their options are right now. And people in general, in the profession seem to think that that’s just going to keep going in the near future.
Angela:
I agreed with you. I think so. Yeah.
Heather:
So we had this last question that we ask everybody that’s on our show. What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned while serving in this profession?
Angela:
I’ve learned a lot. You know, I professionally I’ve already talked a little bit about it. This is an ever evolving industry. I’ve been doing this for over 20 years now and I learned something new, I swear every day. And I’m happy about that. I’m excited about that because if I, if I wasn’t then again, I would just be comfortable. So I’m excited about that, but you also have to embrace that. You have to be able to adapt to the change when I got into this business and industry, traditional burial, I mean, we in Nebraska, we were at 12% cremation. Whereas now we’re over 50% cremation, so it’s evolved. And early on in my career, I was traditional, traditional, traditional. I, I hadn’t embraced that cremation yet. I am fully on board with cremation because that’s just the way, that’s what people want. Not everybody, but that is a growing trend. And we have to embrace that. And again, give families the options that they want. It’s important, so this could be professional and personal, but now more than ever, I know how important it is to make prearrangements. And this isn’t just a biased opinion of mine, but you can’t leave your family guessing what you would have wanted because you’re leaving those left behind, constantly asking themselves if you did the right thing and you know, leave them the answers, let family know, let your family know what you would have wanted, but on a personal level, you never know when that day will come. So keep in contact with your family, tell your family you love them, hug them each day like it’s your last, because I need last year at this time, Who would have thought we were in a pandemic and, you know, accidents happen every day. Things happen every day that are unexpected. So I could go on and on about personal and professional, what I’ve learned in this business and industry, but I’ve learned a lot. And I’ve learned that the most important things is your family and having your priorities straight. And we’ve all heard the stories in this business, and we don’t want that for our own family, but it also becomes our job to share those stories with the families we’re serving so that they can make informed, educated decisions as well.
Joey:
I think that was really well said, especially for now. Yes, family is important and I definitely think a very good point.
Angela:
It makes you think.
Joey:
Yes it does. So the that’s all the questions we have for you. So thanks so much, Angela. We really appreciate your time. And thanks for joining us this week on Funeral Innovations: Trends, Tips, and Technology. So we’ll be posting this video on our blog, on our YouTube channel, and you’ll be able to access it on our Facebook feed. And then next week we’ll be back with another show. So make sure to check back in, if you have any topics you’d like to see discussed or someone you’d like to hear from in an interview, add it in the comments down below and be sure to visit our website at funeralinnovations.com. Thanks so much. Have a great day. Bye. Thanks Angela.
Angela:
Bye.
