Unlock the Power of Proactive Preneed

Every funeral home owner has faced it—that uneasy realization that valuable leads are slipping through the cracks. You’ve spent time and money on marketing campaigns, from digital ads to community events, and while you’re reaching the "low-hanging fruit," you still have drawers full of leads who never get a follow-up.

It’s a frustrating cycle. You’re seeing a minimal return on your marketing investment, but it’s not just about lost revenue—it’s about missed opportunities to help families. Each lead represents someone who reached out for guidance and support.

So, how do you break free from this cycle? The answer lies in reimagining preneed not just as a collection of separate tasks but as a fully integrated system that maximizes the quality and potential of every lead.

Go from Passive to Proactive

If you're like many funeral homes, walk-ins and call-ins form the bulk of your preneed business. Most of these families are choosing you for good reason. They’ve often already built a relationship with your brand, and they both know and trust your funeral home.

These are obviously very important families to focus on, and you’re right to nurture them. But the truth is they would have likely chosen your funeral home anyway. To grow and expand your market, it’s important to prearrange new families—those who may not be familiar with your brand or may be undecided about their chosen funeral home.

This is where the shift to proactive preneed becomes so critical. It’s not just about marketing and setting appointments with the people who know and love you. It’s about expanding your reach, building relationships with new families, and giving them the education and clarity they need to choose your funeral home.

Tap Your Full Potential

Relying on walk-ins and call-ins is like playing defense—it’s safe, but it’s not scalable. To truly grow your business, you need an offense—a proactive system that builds connections with new families and turns them into loyal customers.

Consider this: depending on the size of your market, there are likely hundreds if not thousands of families in your serviceable area who are interested in prearranging a funeral. They may not be quite ready to take the next step and set an appointment, but a proactive approach to preneed allows you to develop a relationship starting today.

In other words, by reaching these families through proactive marketing, personalized follow-ups, and education, you’re creating a bridge from "undecided and unaware" to "excited and eager to act."

As you probably already know, consumer preferences are shifting faster than ever. 29% of the population today are religiously unaffiliated, meaning they no longer identify with a specific religion, and communities are changing as people move away from their hometowns.

It used to be that our profession could rely on our institutions and communities to build the value of a funeral as a meaningful source of ritual, ceremony, and gathering. But today’s shifting preferences have reduced this built-in value. Families still want to honor their loved ones, but they are less aware of their options.

Being proactive allows you to change this. You get to fill the shoes that our institutions and communities once filled. Not only can you help families understand the full range of options available and shift their perspective early on, but you can also share the value of a meaningful funeral experience and its importance in helping their loved ones heal.

Proactive Marketing is Just the Beginning

A lot of people think active preneed comes down to active marketing—sending out direct mail campaigns, running social ads, and holding community events. But while that is a critical piece of running a healthy program, it’s only part of the equation.

When you generate quality leads through marketing, you see who is interested in learning more. Real growth comes from what happens next—your ability to nurture that interest, keep families engaged, and inspire them to take action.

Without an interconnected system or clear plan of action, it’s easy for these leads to slip away. Maybe one person on your team is doing all the follow-ups, but they’re stretched too thin. Or perhaps everyone is "pitching in" on follow-ups, but no one is 100% accountable.

This "all hands on deck" approach often leads to confusion and missed connections. The ball simply gets dropped. To keep it moving forward and consistently prearrange more families, you need a way to create a next step for every lead—and then a framework for tracking, measuring, and managing each of those steps.

Deliver Remarkable Preneed Experiences

At the heart of preneed should be a commitment to delivering exceptional experiences. Think about how transformative it is for a family to walk into your funeral home after a loved one’s passing and realize that everything has already been taken care of. Stress levels drop, the focus shifts to healing and connection, and your team can focus on providing personalized, compassionate care.

That’s the result of a great preneed experience—and it’s something that can start long before a family’s time of need. By providing a consistent, personalized, and proactive preneed experience, you’re building brand loyalty and creating families who will be fans of your funeral home for years to come.

A proactive approach to preneed ensures that every family, from the moment they first see your marketing message to the moment they finalize their plan, has a seamless and supportive experience.

But this takes a lot more than flipping a switch. Here are a few key steps that will help you unlock your preneed potential. 

Sell with Purpose

A preneed appointment isn’t just about discussing service options. It’s about educating families on the emotional and financial benefits of preplanning. The most successful Advance Funeral Planners are those who position themselves as guides and advocates—not just salespeople.

When you approach preneed from this perspective, you’re inviting families to make an informed decision that benefits their loved ones. You’re giving them the chance to leave a legacy, reduce stress for their family, and create space for connection and healing.

This is proactive sales. It’s about more than just "closing the deal." It’s about starting a relationship that lasts. When families walk away from a preneed appointment with a deeper appreciation for your funeral home’s purpose, they’re far more likely to trust you when they need you most.

Build a Follow-up Process that Works

Every family who’s expressed interest in preneed is a family worth following up with. Yet too often, these leads end up sitting in a drawer, a spreadsheet, or a CRM—forgotten until it’s too late.

Here’s the hard truth: The "low-hanging fruit" who are ready to act today is only a small portion of your total potential. Many families need time to consider, reflect, and discuss the idea of preplanning with loved ones. And that’s okay—as long as you have a system for following up.

The key is persistence. Not every family will book an appointment after one call, but with a few gentle touchpoints, you can re-engage them. This is why it’s so important to have a team that’s fully accountable for follow-ups. They’re not just making calls. They’re building lasting relationships.

Go Beyond Clicks & Returns

It’s natural to focus on "vanity metrics" like ad clicks and campaign returns because they’re easy to see and easy to measure.

But the most important metric is what happens after a lead is generated. Did the family schedule an appointment? Did they meet with an Advance Funeral Planner? Did they prearrange a funeral?

For most funeral homes these stages of the preneed pipeline are often unclear or disconnected from the preneed marketing function. This makes measuring them a challenge.

But when you can start tracking and improving these key metrics, you ensure that you’re not just generating leads—you’re converting them into prearranged families.

Tie it All Together

The best systems are invisible. They’re so seamless and well-integrated that it feels like everything "just works."

For a preneed program to reach its full potential, every stage of the pipeline—marketing, follow-ups, sales, and data tracking—must be fully connected. This is the difference between having "pieces" of a preneed program and having a truly proactive system that gets you the results you’re looking for.

The best place to start is by clarifying who is responsible for what. Who’s entering leads into your CRM? Analyzing appointment set rates? Measuring campaign performance? Tracking the number of appointments that hold and do not get canceled?

Every step matters, and accountability and metrics are the best path to improvement.

Conclusion

To sustain a growing preneed program, it’s important to be proactive and keep everyone accountable. Every lead needs a next step, and each of these steps needs to be measured and tracked.

This was one of the first things we realized when we developed ProActive Preneed®. Our system is designed to connect every piece of your preneed pipeline and give every family a clear path forward.

Being proactive should not only generate more quality leads for your funeral home, but it should also result in more quality preneed appointments, more prearranged families, and strong relationships that last.
Learn more about ProActive Preneed® at precoa.com

Discover how to communicate the value of pre-planning at CANA’s 2025 Cremation Symposium this February. Join Tyler Anderson and other expert panelists for an engaging discussion on Cremation Preneed Success: Strategies, Insights, and Innovation in Sales and Marketing. Whether you're new to cremation preneed marketing or a seasoned professional, register now and head to Las Vegas this February 26-28! Learn more at cremationassociation.org/success

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. Tyler’s grandfather started his first funeral home in 1944 and the Anderson family continues to own and operate firms in the state of Ohio today. Tyler began his preneed career as an advance planner, then regional sales manager with The Outlook Group, which his father, Charles, founded in 1985. Later, as CEO and President (2010-2016), Tyler helped Outlook Group become one of the nation’s top preneed companies. His unwavering passion to help more families experience a meaningful service fueled his decision to unite with Precoa in 2017. Today he continues to be passionate about sharing a new vision for preneed that helps more families across the country experience a meaningful funeral service. Tyler lives in Portland, OR with his wife, Jana, and daughter, Noemie.

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