By Thomas A. Parmalee
The CEO of OneRoom, a video streaming platform that enables people from around the world to virtually be a part of a funeral service when distance or circumstance prevent in-person attendance, has been hard at work introducing innovations that could be a game changer for funeral homes.
Brady Cox took on the job of CEO about a year ago from the former chief, David Lutterman, who remains a shareholder.
As someone who has spent almost 20 years in senior management, Cox is proving he’s the right person for the job, even though he had a lot of learning to do about deathcare when he joined the company.
“Coming into it, I have been pleasantly surprised,” Cox (pictured at top) said. “My first real experience spending time with funeral professionals was going to the Selected Independent Funeral Homes’ annual meeting. I am excited about the opportunity in front of us and the nature of the people we are working with … I am sold on the industry and what it does.”
Although Cox had attended numerous funerals before joining OneRoom, he hadn’t given the deathcare profession much thought. He’s quickly discovered it is ripe for change, which he thrives on.
“As a CEO, I have always been involved with technology and enabling businesses to do things more efficiently and/or effectively,” he said.
Adapting to a Digital World
While everyone knows OneRoom as a funeral streaming platform, Cox has been focused on delivering greater value to funeral homes, which are increasingly struggling to connect with families via traditional community outreach and need help in a digital world.
“Our streaming platform provides people with access to come to a service, but we can also boost the ecommerce of a business as well,” he explained. “People are engaging with their screens for an hour or an hour and twenty minutes, and that provides funeral homes with the opportunity to market through our platform.”
It’s a big opportunity given that OneRoom streams about 60,000 funerals per year.
“Our primary advantage is the years of refinement we’ve engaged in to make the streaming process as seamless and as easy as possible,” Cox said.
In addition to great hardware on the backend, OneRoom offers funeral homes the peace of mind that comes with professionally installed and high-quality cameras, Cox said. “It all means that funeral directors don’t have any overhead associated with actually running the stream,” he said. “The second thing is that it requires very little work to set up a stream once they have loaded a case into the funeral management system. It takes less than a minute to set up and activate a stream, but it’s taken years of refinement to get to that point.”
Prime Preneed Prospects
When OneRoom started, it did not fully appreciate the gravity of those watching funerals on its platform being prime preneed prospects.
“In recent years, we have really embraced the understanding that customers are watching these services for an extended time,” Cox said. “Throughout the experience, they are reflecting on their own environment and the legacy they will leave behind for their loved ones – they are engaging in self-reflection.”
They also want to provide comfort and support to the family members of the deceased individual they are honoring by attending a livestreamed service, he said. “They want to donate flowers and other gifts,” he said.
It’s hard to underestimate what a powerful preneed lead generation tool funeral streaming can be given all the above, he said.
“We have really refined the user experience in terms of the flow of interactions that our viewers have to optimize those e-commerce elements and to maximize preneed lead generation opportunities,” Cox said.
That includes updating banners and tribute buttons to boost clicks in a meaningful way, he said.
“There is a decent amount of real estate we dedicate to explaining the concept of preneed,” Cox said. “And when they click, there is another screen that talks about the benefits of preneed. So then, when they can click further for more information, we know they are well qualified. They are intentionally asking for information about preneed.”
Almost 2% of livestream attendees finish a two-click process to seek more information about preplanning, he said.
“And 75% of the people that fill out their contact information when they attend, voluntarily include their cell phone number,” he said. “We pass on those names, email addresses and phone numbers to whoever the funeral home wants to process that information,” which could include a third-party preneed marketer, he said.
OneRoom can also partner with whomever a funeral home may work with for grief support. “We get up to 10% of people clicking on grief support as they watch these services,” he said, noting this represents an underutilized opportunity for funeral homes to build relationships with potential customers.
All the buttons a viewer can click on for more information are “incredibly discreet, elegant and respectful,” Cox said.
Significant Numbers
In terms of the number of people viewing streams and all those requests for information, they add up.
About 30 people on average attend a livestreamed service, so multiplying that by 60,000 streams per year is pretty easy math.
Of course, some services may have one or two viewers, and occasionally, there may be a stream that doesn’t have anyone watching at all – while others may attract hundreds.
An interesting data point is that of those average 30 people, about 30% – or about 9 people per stream – live within 15 miles of the funeral home hosting the service.
“They may not be able to get out of the house, or they may not feel comfortable attending the service – maybe they are colleagues but are not that close,” Cox said. “That is a really interesting statistic … when you get a request for more information about preneed from someone who is located that close – that is a quality, relevant lead.”
But that doesn’t discount the quality of other leads, which may come from attendees who live outside your immediate coverage area, he pointed out.
A high percentage have an affiliation with your region, according to Cox. For instance, they may be children who moved away, but if someone else dies, they will most likely be involved with planning a funeral in your area. “So, we think it is worth building that relationship,” Cox said.
These attendees are getting full exposure to your brand, and without a livestream, the maximum number you would have been able to reach is the 30% who lived in your coverage area, Cox said. “And it’s all branded to your funeral home. That is at least 20 people for every single service who would not have been on your premises.”
While there is no definitive data, if you consider that anecdotal evidence suggests that the average number of people who attend a chapel service is about 60 (some services will have more and some will have fewer people), that means you’re increasing the number of people exposed to your brand by about 50%, Cox said.
“There are a lot of branding elements to this,” he said.
An Added Benefit for Families
Beyond contributing to preneed lead generation and flowers and donations, funeral streaming is also an option that family members at the service appreciate – even if they may not fully realize it at the time, Cox said.
“What we have found is that the people who are really close to a deceased person may be there in person … but they are in a bit of a fog,” Cox said. “They get to be a part of it, but they actually miss a lot of the details. So, what we provide by recording these services is the ability to go back and say, ‘Oh, I don’t remember Bob saying that … that was a beautiful speech.’”
As OneRoom team members began thinking about all this more, they took a deep dive into how the funeral streaming interfaces with the digital keepsake market.
“What we have done in the past is the funeral home effectively provided the recorded steam to a family to download, and it was for the immediate family only,” Cox said. “So, when you leave, the funeral director may give you a thumb drive, which is a recording of that stream … so you can go back and look at it and you get those memories.”
Most likely, the thumb drive ends up in grandmother’s drawer, he said. “The broader community never gets to see it again,” he said.
An hour-long video that someone needs to scrub through to view the funeral’s most special moments is an “antiquated way to view video” – especially for a society accustomed to Instagram and Netflix, Cox observed.
These days, families want video that is more consumable and accessible. “We don’t want gaps or silence in our video,” he said.
As a result of this realization, OneRoom will roll out some new features, including one that groups moments into chapters, such as a welcome speech, various eulogies or a poem being read, which will make it easy for family members and loved ones to jump to key events arranged by the order in which they happened.
Moreover, the OneRoom team will compile “key moments,” he said.
“So, if there are five or six key moments that are emotional, funny or engaging in some way, we will package those together,” Cox said. “If you are viewer, you can watch the whole thing or just the bits you want to come back to and see. It will be much more accessible and easily digestible,” he said.
Since the streams will be processed and repackaged, OneRoom will also be able to add subtitles or even translate videos into various languages.
“It’s in testing right now, but we have an entire suite of features coming out,” Cox said. “Key moments will be a thing. Chapters will be a thing. And further down the road, we will create stories that will be sharable on social media.”
OneRoom is also planning to eventually make it possible to download recorded livestreams more widely, which is something the profession has avoided since funeral homes are unable to distribute copyrighted music to a wider audience, Cox said.
“There is no protection for recording and distributing copyrighted music, but we have a patent pending on an approach that will allow us to strip out copyrighted music on services,” Cox said. “If we take out the copyrighted music and include a playlist of songs that you can listen to on your own, we can confidently distribute it to people who want it – to make it accessible beyond the thumb drive that is in Grandma’s drawer,” Cox said.
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