Funeral Webcasting: Is It Right For Your Funeral Home?

As technology advances, more and more funerals are being conducted via webcasting. This raises the question: should your funeral home offer it? Here, we’ll explore the pros and cons of this growing trend. By the end of this post, you’ll have a better understanding of whether or not funeral webcasting is right for your business.

What is Funeral Webcasting?

To summarize, funeral webcasting is a service that allows families and mourners to attend a funeral service virtually, from anywhere in the world. Funeral webcasts are live streamed online, and can be viewed on a computer, tablet, or smartphone.

Funeral Webcasting Statistics

At Gather, we analyzed our current lineup of our funeral home customers who use our funeral webcasting services and compiled the following data:

• 64% of funeral homes webcast or live stream every one of their funeral services.
• Each month, funeral homes live stream or webcast more than 1,000 hours of funeral services, and more than 1,000 days of video are consumed by viewers.
• When comparing January 2021 to January 2022, the volume of live streamed services increased by 32% year-over-year.
• When comparing June 2021 to June 2022, the volume of live streamed services only decreased by 9% year-over-year.
• The average price that funeral homes charge for live streams is nearly $195 per funeral service. The most common price point is $180, and the next most common price point is $250.

While more research needs to be conducted, it’s clear to see that there is still a need for webcasting and funeral live streaming.

The Pros and Cons of Funeral Webcasting

As with anything, there are pros and cons that come with your funeral home offering to live stream every funeral service.

Pro #1: Allow Visitors to View Services From Anywhere in The World

Families and friends may be unable to attend a loved one’s funeral in person. By offering funeral webcasting, you provide those individuals with the opportunity to participate in a funeral service without having to travel or be there physically.

This capability was especially important during COVID-19, but it’s now uncovered new opportunities and options for people who are physically unable to attend funerals due to:

• • Health concerns
  • Travel expenses
  • Previous commitments

Con #1: Technical Difficulties Can Take Place When Webcasting

As with most technology, technical difficulties can take place when your funeral home tries to live stream a funeral. A few particular areas that you’ll want to be mindful of when it comes to live streaming funerals include:

• Video Quality: you want to ensure that you use a video recording camera that provides high-quality video that is clear and crisp
• Video Outages: due to connection or wifi issues, video live streams can experience outages
• Online Privacy Concerns: families may be concerned with the security of the streamed funeral services and ensuring that they are private
• Music Licensing Issues: when you use free live streaming platforms, you may run into issues with music usage rights

Pro #2: You Can Extend Your Funeral Home’s Reach and Impact

By offering to live stream every service, you’re offering more people a way to view funeral services. When you do that, you’re also simultaneously getting more visibility on your funeral home’s brand. When funeral live streams are conducted successfully, you’re also positively marketing and promoting your funeral home.

Con #2: It May Be Difficult to Make Live Streams Personal

While offering funeral webcasting is an incredible way to offer more value to families, it can be fairly difficult to make live streams more personal while they’re taking place. Coming up with new ideas to make them more personal and interact directly with people watching the stream online will take more creativity, and ultimately more time.

Pro #3: Funeral Webcasting Can Help Bring in More Revenue

Taking data from our customer study above, it’s clear to see that funeral homes can actually make funeral webcasting and live streaming a new revenue generator. Your funeral home can:

• Confidently charge $180 per service to live stream
• Promote funeral live streaming as an additional value add for families
• Webcast or live stream as many funerals as you’d like per month

Con #3: It Can Be Tough to Know How to Get Started

More than anything, adopting new technology or learning a new skill can be intimidating – especially when you don’t have any previous experience. Generally, it can be easier to outsource and work with a provider or a platform that offers a support team to help guide you through onboarding, setup, and implementation.

Pro #4: Funeral Webcasting is Another Way to Add More Intrinsic Value to The Experience Your Provide For Families

Families want a great experience when they work with a funeral home, especially in a world where technology offers new possibilities every day.

One way to improve the experience is by offering additional options and accommodations for families – this is where you can use funeral webcasting to your benefit.

How to Get Started With Funeral Webcasting

To help you figure out how your funeral home can set up funeral webcasting, we’ve created a quick and simple guide below that you can follow.

Decide on The Live Streaming Platform That You Will Use

There are several different funeral live streaming platforms that are available for you to use, both free and paid, each with different benefits.

With free options, you obviously save money. However, you may run into several different roadblocks such as video quality, technical restrictions, and much more.

Paid options are obviously more expensive, but you are generally able to avoid any music-licensing issues or risk of zoom bombing. Plus with paid options, you receive substantially more support and provide a higher quality funeral webcasting experience for families.

Get The Live Streaming Equipment That You Need

If you plan on setting up live streaming on your own, here are a few basic pieces of equipment that you will need in order to begin streaming every funeral service.

• Video Recording Camera: recommended to utilize an iPad or high-quality video camera
• Directional Microphones: these will help ensure that viewers of a service’s stream can hear everything that is being said
• Tripod: you will want a heavy-duty tripod that comes with an attachment to set up the video recording camera
• SD and SD Card Reader: these will be used to store and upload video streams

Create a Standardized Process on How to Live Stream Every Funeral

Once you have your equipment and you feel comfortable after practicing funeral webcasting for a few services, create a new shareable document. Within that document, map out the process to help teach your other employees and team members how to live stream a funeral service from start to finish.

Consider How You Will Allow People to Rewatch Streamed Services

You will want to think about how you post or share the funeral live stream to families and friends who want to go back and watch the live stream of the funeral service.

Oftentimes, funeral homes will mark up and offer physical copies of streamed services through USB drives or CDs. Other funeral homes will explore ways to include the digital version of the live stream directly on a decedent’s obituary on their website.

See What Funeral Webcasting With Gather is Like

Hundreds of funeral homes use Gather to webcast or live stream funeral services without any of potential worry or headaches. Plus, every live streamed funeral lives on a permanent online memorial page that you can provide to families forever.

Schedule your free demo with our team, or give us a call directly at (866) 313-1601 to get your questions answered.