Frazer Blog

2018 NFDA Convention: 5 Interesting Things We Saw While Exploring the Expo

by | Oct 24, 2018 | Funeral Payment Options, Funeral Profession

2018 NFDA Convention

Couldn’t make it to this year’s NFDA Convention in Salt Lake City? There was a lot to see on the expo floor this year, from the array of hearses and caskets to adorable grief therapy pups.

We’ve highlighted five of the most interesting things we saw while exploring the expo hall at this year’s NFDA Convention.

Grief Therapy Dogs

Ultimate Canine brought therapy dogs and puppies to the expo hall. Funeral directors could take some time to unwind and play with the pups — as well as learn how they can get a therapy dog for their funeral home. Therapy dogs need to go through special training and should be non-shedding, hypo-allogenic, and have a calm demeanor.

They also presented for one of the campfire exchange sessions, which we’ll talk more about in the next section.

Campfire Exchange Sessions

The outdoors was brought inside the expo hall for the campfire exchange sessions. The campground complete with a camper, green carpeting as grass, a fake campfire, and chairs set the mood for these more intimate presentations. The sessions covered a variety of topics from technology and marketing to funeral planning and grief.

Kimberly Dolbeer of Ultimate Canine presented one of these sessions. During their session, funeral directors met the therapy dogs and learned the benefits of having one in their funeral home. Not only do therapy dogs make people smile, but they’re also scientifically proven to help lower stress hormones. Having a therapy dog also gives your funeral home some creative marketing and community involvement opportunities.

Another session presented by Dan Katz discussed some funeral home marketing tips. Click here to read our recap of this session.

ASD’s Web Form Watchdog

Answering Service for Directors (ASD) earned the 2018 NFDA Members’ Choice Award for their Web Form Watchdog. It’s a tool that helps Contact Us forms get seen more quickly. When someone submits a form, the Web Form Watchdog sends an alert in ASD’s notification system and sends it to a designated on-call funeral director. They gave demonstrations of this feature at their expo hall booth.

Integrating with an answering service can help your funeral home be more time efficient. You can spend less time on the phone and more time funeral planning and helping families grieve. Most answering services are available 24/7 to assist your families, so you can rest assured that someone will always be there to pick up the line. It’s a simple way to make your job a little easier, and that’s why Frazer-powered websites integrate with answering services like ASD.

Memorial Jewelry

Mourning through jewelry dates as far back as the 1600s. It’s a unique way to keep the memory of a loved one close to you. Today, there are more opportunities to create personalized mourning jewelry, such as engraving a loved one’s name and birth and death date on a stone, or you can even create jewelry using your fingerprint. We saw a lot of unique, beautiful options like these on the expo floor.

Frazer Demonstrations

At the Frazer Consultants booth, our sales consultants did several demonstrations of our products and services, including Tribute Insurance Assignments. Audrey Cassidy, the operations manager of Tribute Insurance Assignments, explained how Tribute Insurance Assignments is a faster and easier process than working with other funding companies. Instead of waiting weeks or even months, your funeral home gets paid in as little as 24 hours. Click here to learn more about this payment service.

What did you learn at this year’s NFDA Convention? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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