Ten years and four months ago I decided the next step in my career was to become an executive director. I started looking at job postings and stumbled across one for the Cremation Association of North America. My first reaction was to chuckle and marvel that there really is an association (or three) for any profession. I applied for the position, bombed the phone interview, aced the in-person interview and the rest is history.

Too often, we talk about how slow this profession is to advance. Looking back, however, it’s been an exciting decade of change and growth for the industry and our association in particular. In 2011, CANA was 98 years young – a startup transitioning from an association management company to hiring their first association professional to take the organization to the next level. Cremation was still a threat rather than a reality for non-members. In 2021, cremation is the new tradition and other forms of disposition are clamoring for their own place. CANA’s staff is some of the most dedicated in the business, continuing to evolve our offerings to meet the needs of members and the entire profession.

I can see how much I have learned and continue to learn. Here are ten reflections on cremation and CANA in 2021 compared to 2011:

In 2011, CANA was the primary cremation education provider and I was routinely told by well-known thought leaders that cremation was irrelevant and a fad. Others were angry about the growing adoption of cremation and accused CANA of destroying their businesses. Cremation was still considered to be a fringe disposition to be feared or ignored.

“Cremation is taking food out of my children’s mouths!” expressed a tipsy monument dealer at one of my first professional meetings in fall 2011. I didn’t take this personally at the time, and he later apologized, but I soon learned that cremation had a greater negative impact on cemeteries and memorial suppliers than other types of businesses. That impact continues, but even then, there were opportunities going unexplored.

If cremation is the opposite of casketed burial, as consumers seem to understand it, then traditions linked to burial are often viewed as disconnected to cremation. Why then were cemeteries largely offering burial for cremated remains as the only permanent placement option? Why were the companies building and selling monuments and mausoleums avoiding building columbaria? When I asked these questions early on in my career, I heard variations on the theme that these are business decisions.

Now it is clear that cremation is a persistent trend and all types of CANA members are aware of that and eager to explore how it can grow their businesses. Today’s business decisions incorporate cremation in planning and product development. Those previous era’s thought leaders are largely retired or have changed their tune. We have all learned a lot.

“I don’t own or operate a crematory, so I don’t belong to CANA,” was the common response I received when pitching CANA membership. And it was true, CANA was and is the market leader in crematory operations training and expertise. I learned how to answer questions posed by members and regulators alike. Funeral directors were fielding questions from families choosing cremation and needed to learn more about the technical process to respond with accurate and valuable information.
Membership has tripled over the past decade and the growth is among businesses without crematories. They join CANA to learn how to increase profitability and learn strategies to better serve grieving families beyond the basic (though all-important) crematory operations.

In the macro world of professional and trade associations, membership is decreasing (as is attendance at conventions). With social media and “free” information online, more people are choosing not to affiliate with an association, but seek connections elsewhere. CANA bucks these trends with a +95% member retention rate and attracting more than 100 new members a year.

Fundamentally, associations reflect their member’s challenges and successes. Associations must change and adapt to meet these needs. For example, CANA responded to the growing adoption of online education by creating an online version of its Crematory Operations Certification Program (COCP) in 2017. By 2019, more operators were certified online than in person for convenience and accessibility reasons, but all received the same training and content. I am grateful that CANA’s education offerings are diversified. Building on that success, we offer CE courses, webinars, and professional development online – we’re investing to make CANA Education available anywhere.
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Trends like consolidation, business closure and briefer attention spans are real challenges for all associations that CANA addresses head on.

A decade ago, as I was analyzing CANA member records and meeting members, the majority of members had multiple brands. The brand that was primarily cremation-focused was often the business that held the CANA membership. All funeral service providers could support cremation consumers, and many funeral homes had added “& Cremation Services” to their business names. Generally speaking, cremation societies were largely considered to be “bottom feeders” by their traditional, brick-and-mortar competitors. Advertising on price was a newer, controversial concept.
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Fast forward to a world where many CANA members retain their Funeral Home and Cremation Society, and have added an online brand as well. The goal of this diversification is meeting cremation consumers where they are and offering a variety of options. This trend is true for the national, publicly traded members as well as regional or local providers. Advertising on price is widely accepted and expected for the value brands, whereas the service-oriented brands tend to promote personalization and excellent service. Cremation consumers have more choices in service providers than ever.

The assumption that cremation consumers choose cremation for the lowest price persists and it is damaging to our profession. Very few businesses can survive, much less thrive, on the volume necessary to support low prices. There are low-cost providers in nearly every market already, but emphasis on market share is crucial.

Low income and poor families don’t default to cremation because of price. They crowd source funeral funding for the disposition they want, or, sadly, they abandon their loved one. Indigent deaths are on the rise and that is the result of a complete lack of funding for an unexpected death. Assumptions are creating more distance from the consumer and add to misunderstandings.

In May 2019, CANA and Homesteaders Life Company conducted joint research on the cremation experience. This research resulted in 7 key insights, but our first critical lesson was when designing the research. We contracted with focus group research centers to create groups for us divided into Direct Cremation and Cremation with Service groups. We defined Direct Cremation as people who chose cremation and did nothing, conducting no services. The contact called us back and said they had hundreds of potential participants in our focus groups who chose cremation and were willing to talk about their experience, but they couldn’t find any Direct Cremation consumers. The mistake we made was defining Direct Cremation as doing nothing, when we meant doing nothing with a cremation provider.
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People who choose cremation always do something—the question is whether they view the funeral director as an expert to help them create new traditions, or as a body handler. This is my primary question as I face the next decade.

Ten years ago, I joked that I was the executive director of a 100-year-old start-up, but that is the culture I have attempted to maintain over the past decade. CANA is progressive and committed to creating and delivering content that supports our members and promotes ethical, transformative cremation experiences. I am still learning every day and the staff and I always appreciate your feedback, questions and suggestions.

This work is hard and requires imagination, reliable data to make decisions and collaboration. I hope you will join me in raising a glass to my first ten years with CANA and all we have accomplished together!

If you're reading this, chances are your deathcare firm is already present on at least one social media channel. If I had to guess, I'd say it was Facebook (and I'd put my odds of being correct pretty high). You might also be on one other major site, such as Instagram.

If that's the case, good calls from your marketing teams. Even with some rough patches in 2019 and 2020, Facebook remains the biggest social media platform in America based on number of users. Plus, it's the most popular with middle-age and older adults, who account for most deathcare decision-makers.

Instagram comes in second based on user numbers, and a growing number of adults age 35 and up are joining this channel. That makes it a good choice for cremation providers that can manage two social media pages.
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But what about all the other options? Are you missing out on deathcare social media marketing opportunities because you're ignoring platforms such as Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, Pinterest, or Tumblr. Get some details on these social channels below so you can decide for yourself.

If I asked an average American adult to name three social media channels, they'd probably say "Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter." Twitter comes in third behind the other two when it comes to user numbers, and its user demographics are relatively spread out across age groups from 18 to 64.

The challenge in marketing on Twitter is the fast-paced environment. Short posts of 280 characters or less inundate most people's Twitter feeds, sometimes dozens or even hundreds per minute. That can make it hard for businesses to connect with people on the platform.
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It's not that Twitter is impossible to market on. You just have to be persistent, consistent, and sometimes clever to make it work for your cremation services firm.

More than 200 million people log on and use Snapchat daily, with active users opening the app an average of 30 times a day.

That's a lot of opportunity for engagement and micro-moment marketing (that's when you connect with potential clientele in those stolen moments when they look at their phones).
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The downside of Snapchat for deathcare marketing is that the bulk of the userbase is under the age of 34 . There might be some benefit to growing audiences early, and certainly some younger people do make deathcare decisions. But most deathcare firms aren't going to find their main target audience here.

A relatively new contender, TikTok reports around 100 million users in the United States. Around 62 percent of those users are under the age of 29, which means this social site has the same drawbacks as Snapchat when it comes to demographics.

However, the users on TikTok are highly engaged , spending an average of 40 minutes a day or more on the platform. It's easy to make TikTok videos, which only require a smartphone. And you can use the video you make on TikTok to add video content to other deathcare marketing channels, including Facebook, Instagram, or even your blog.

Pinterest is an image-sharing platform. Users make boards and "pin" images (and related links) to them. The idea is that Pinterest acts as a virtual corkboard, and as you travel around the internet, you can collect things of interest by pinning them to these boards.

Deathcare firms can create their own boards, pinning things of interest for their audience, including blog posts, landing pages for downloads, or images of products.
The bulk of Pinterest users—about 70 percent—are female. While the majority of users are under age 40, the median age of users is 40. That means there's a decent number of middle-age and older users.
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Pinterest is fairly easy to manage, which might make it something deathcare firms can do here and there without a big commitment. You may also be able to get some boost from Pinterest traffic without having a profile and boards for your business. Simply create infographics and other images that would entice people to pin them on their own boards.

Tumblr is a personal blogging site that makes it easy for people to post their own thoughts, writing, and art or share (called reblogging) the posts of others.
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The majority of Tumblr users are under the age of 35. While Tumblr might be a way for cremation providers to reach younger audiences, it's not really known for being a strong marketing channel outside of unique cases.

Ultimately, what works well for your deathcare firm depends on your business needs, brand, and where your target audience is. Most deathcare firms should have a presence on Facebook in 2021, but if you have the marketing resources to add one or two other channels while maintaining quality, you might want to test some of these other options.
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Just don't be afraid to move on if the channel ends up doing nothing for you. Better to invest that time and money into channels that are performing than to stick with something just because you started it.