Tyler Huffer
Funeral Director & Preplanning Specialist
Titus Funeral Homes & Cremation Services
North Webster, Syracuse, and Warsaw, IN
Average call volume: 400 calls/year
Growing your funeral home takes focus.
But when your time is split between serving families, managing vendors, and running your business, that focus gets pulled in a lot of different directions.
Tyler Huffer and his team at Titus Funeral Home & Cremation Services experienced this firsthand.
While the business was stable, their preneed program wasn’t growing, and marketing was consuming his team’s time. Tyler knew that if he wanted to see real growth, he needed a different approach.
That's when he brought his preneed, digital marketing, and accounting all under one roof with Funeral Directors Life (FDL). Tyler traded the complexities of working with multiple vendors for the ease of using a single, collaborative team. And the positive results followed.
“Partnering with FDL has alleviated so much burden and reduced the amount we have to do and manage on our own,” Tyler said.
Keep reading to learn how Tyler found success by partnering with FDL.
We were already using Passare for our funeral home software when we started thinking about switching our insurance trust company. I met with Brad Matuszak [Market Center Manager at FDL], and he walked me through all the different things FDL could provide our funeral home. Everything fell into place from there. Now, we’re all in with FDL, and it’s made everything so easy. We don’t have to call one vendor, then another, and another. With FDL, we can call one person and get the answers and resources we need right away.
Before we partnered with FDL, our preneed program was becoming stagnant. We’d reach a certain number every year, but we weren’t growing.
With FDL, we’ve already exceeded that number, and we’re only halfway through the year. Through the Select Producer Program, social media, Google, and our website, FDL has helped us grow our preneed program, and it’s been phenomenal.
Previously, we did all of our marketing on our own. But as we grew, we no longer had the time to manage everything on our own. Partnering with FDL has alleviated so much burden and reduced the amount we have to do and manage on our own. Social media changes so quickly, and it can get confusing, but FDL’s marketing team stays on top of everything for us. Plus, we’ve seen a 12% increase in our at-need numbers since we started working with FDL.
John Greer [Video Production Specialist at FDL] came out to our funeral home, and we had a great experience. We were really excited to have him here to conduct staff interviews, capture testimonials, and film community videos.
With FDL, we have CPAs (Certified Public Accountants) at our fingertips 24/7. They help us understand how things are going, see where we’re trending, and figure out where we need to improve. We’re really excited to have access to analytics we weren’t getting before.
Having a CPA in our corner takes the worry off our backs and puts it in the hands of someone who does it correctly. Because we are funeral directors. We are not accountants.
The collaboration across the board, from FDL and Passare to Claimcheck, is what it’s all about. Everyone works together to see us succeed as an independent funeral home. Having the team and leadership at FDL behind us has been phenomenal. They want to help us improve and keep succeeding long-term. It is very important to work with a company that knows the business as well as FDL does.
Click here to learn more or fill out the form below to meet with our team!