Gail Rubin and Nick Jaensch of Everdays
Mom’s dog-eared personal phone book in the kitchen drawer is a thing of the past. How will you contact all of the family and friends who need to know about a death in the family? The answer is right there in your smart phone, with help of the Everdays app.
Everdays introduced the Everdays Partner Dashboard to funeral directors attending the ICCFA convention and expo. It allows the funeral home to easily create and give elegant digital memorial announcements to the families they serve. The family then sends the notification to other family and friends through their phone address books.
“We see a big issue with newspapers being seen as a little bit antiquated and costly, and Facebook is not always the most appropriate place to post,” explained Nick Jaensch, Executive Vice President of Everdays. “On Facebook, there’s often conflict in families who say, ‘How could you post that online before I told x or y?'”
Everdays harnesses the powerful, private network of contacts contained in today’s cell phone contact lists. For funeral homes, Everdays’ complimentary software offers a great tool to help client families spread the word through our newfangled smart phones. “Contacts and text messages are the new way to guarantee that someone is going to see the news,” he said.
Not everyone in a family needs to have the app to share the news of a memorial service. Often one family member, usually a younger person who is comfortable with text and email communications, starts the announcement and sends it to the selected group of contacts.
L to R: Dona Yost, Life Chest;, Gail Rubin, A Good Goodbye; Mark Alhermizi and Khal Hanna, Everdays
The manager can name additional managers, and they can select which contacts receive the announcements. Managers can also see who has opened the text message, so those who have not viewed the news can be called. Everdays announcements have an 85% click-through rate, making it a highly effective way to communicate memorial service information.
“The way our system is set up, it’s really simple to walk through your contact book,” said Jaensch. “A lot of times we hear from families saying, ‘We never would have thought of inviting that person’ or ‘I wouldn’t have thought to invite my college roommate’ as they go through their book to see who to invite.”
Jaensch summed it up saying, “It’s a great way to have the broadcast ease of virality, while at the same time you have control and privacy that nobody else can offer.”
While Everdays works with more than 500 funeral home partners, hundreds of families download the app every week and use it on their own, independent of funeral homes. The app originally launched in October 2016 at the National Funeral Directors Association convention as Requiem, and they changed the name to Everdays in February of 2017. For more information, visit www.Everdays.com.