Tribute Technology Announces Obit360: A Reimagined Obituary Experience for the Digital Age

WAUNAKEE, WI – Tribute Technology has announced the upcoming launch of Obit360, a next-generation obituary platform that transforms how families and communities engage with online memorials. Obit360 is the most significant evolution of Tribute Technology’s obituary experience to date, delivering a faster, more intuitive, and emotionally resonant design built for today’s digital expectations.

Optimized for mobile, powered by improved SEO, and designed to increase engagement and revenue, Obit360 helps funeral homes better serve families while elevating their online presence.

“Obit360 is the result of listening closely to our clients and the families they serve,” said Craig Greenseid, CEO of Tribute Technology. “We knew the obituary experience needed to evolve — so we built something faster, smarter, and more personal. Obit360 helps funeral homes create deeper connections and greater value from their websites.”

Matt Powell, Tribute Technology’s Chief Technology Officer, added, “We’re seeing a fundamental shift in how families connect and grieve, and it’s happening online. In the first 48 hours after a death, more than 25% of all obituary traffic occurs, and that traffic is not passive. It drives condolence messages, flower orders, donations, and even attendance. Obit360 was built to meet this moment: to turn every obituary into an engine of connection, compassion, and community, and to help funeral homes turn visibility into real-world impact.”

Built for the Way People Engage Today

Obit360 was designed using real user behavior, family feedback, and industry best practices. It introduces a clean, scrollable layout that places details all in one continuous view — no tabs or extra clicks required. With 70–80% of visitors arriving on mobile, the platform delivers a smooth, intuitive experience on any device while keeping the focus on the loved one being honored. Pages load 30% faster, rank higher in search results, and display sympathy gift options directly within the tribute — leading to a 60% increase in purchases. The straightforward design helps reduce confusion, minimizing support calls from families and guests.

Real Results for Funeral Homes

Firms using Obit360 report major improvements: obituary page visits have increased by 97%, condolence messages by 86%, and sympathy gift purchases by 60%. With fewer support requests, stronger engagement, and a more modern online presence, funeral homes are deepening their connection with families while elevating their digital brand.

Available Soon

Obit360 will be available first to funeral homes on Tribute Technology’s Premier Partner Network, with expanded availability to follow.

About Tribute Technology: 

Tribute Technology’s mission is to bring the best technology to all funeral homes, to help communities around the world celebrate life, and to pay tribute to loved ones. Over 9,000 end-of-life providers already use Tribute Technology’s software and product offerings, including websites, marketing services, management software, online planning, personalized memorial keepsakes, payment processing, and other solutions. Tribute Technology is focused on innovating to help funeral directors save time on tasks, so they can focus more on connecting with the families who have lost a loved one. The company’s goal is to give funeral directors everything they need to run their business in one place, making their lives easier.

Last week the country of Denmark once again set in place an increased age for receiving government sponsored retirement benefits.  As you can see in this article those citizens of Denmark born after 1970 will not be able to access this benefit until age 70 — up from the current age of 67, with gradual increases to the 70 mark moving forward.

As you may know, the United States, in most instances, lets citizens receive pre-retirement benefits at age 62, full benefits at age 67, and increased beginning benefits at age 70.  For each year that one delays taking those benefits an increase of 8% on your beginning benefit is earned. Here’s a chart on how those benefits might look like at different ages for someone set to receive $2500 of benefits at age 62.  (Note:  Annual Cost of Living Adjustments are not figured into the Cumulative Value at Age 80)

While the United States life expectancy rate for children born today sits at 77.4 years overall, the life expectancy rate for someone who has lived to age 65 sits at 83 years for males and 86 years for females.  So, calculating only until age 80 may be short and one who collects the higher amount at age 70 may eventually pass the 67 year old in lifetime benefits as they continue to age.

While I picked the $2,500 figure somewhat out of the air, according to the Social Security Administration, maximum initial benefits for today’s retirees in 2025 are $2,831 at age 62, $4,018 at age 67, and $5,108 at age 70.

How Does the Retirement Age and Life Expectancy figure into your Preneed Marketing?:

I will give you a couple of thoughts on how I looked at Preneed marketing and what worked for us.  To understand my thought process you need to know that I came into the business world the same year that Ronald Reagan became President and First Lady Nancy Reagan staunchly supported an anti-drug program in the United States named “Just Say No”.  Part of the “Just Say No” program was to educate children at younger ages than ever before about the negative aspects of illicit drug use.  The thought process was letting them know at younger ages simply gave more awareness and importance to the program.

• I picked up on that younger and younger education and eventually realized that we should not simply be waiting for people to walk in the funeral home door who had been told that setting aside money for an eventual funeral was a way to legally “spend-down” to help with government paid nursing home care.  Oddly enough, prior to about 1980 the thought of “soliciting” people to pre-fund their eventual funeral was thought of by many funeral operators, including myself, as potentially bad public relations that could harm your business.

• About 1990 we became bold and started sending out mailers for funeral pre-arrangement to those 65 years of age and older.  Prior to that it was only the insurance companies themselves who sent out the mailers.  That thought process kept the funeral home from looking “too solicitous”.

• In 2001 we started doing monthly small-group, one-hour seminars, aimed at those 65 and older.  We bought mailing lists, composed the letter ourselves, and offered a $20 restaurant gift certificate per couple for attending and found, through trial and error, that if we sent out 200 mailers, we would have about 10-12 couples attend which was not too many . . .  but our closing rate on those couples was about 70% — meaning we sold about 12-16 policies from that meeting.  We used a very simple in-house developed questionaire that led couples into asking for an appointment with a pre-arrangement counselor.

• One thing we learned over time was to pre-screen our mailing list and as we refined it our results became even better.  I remember that one of the big items that we screened for was “home ownership”.  People that didn’t own a home did not get an invitation to a seminar.

• At that time we were doing about 160 at-need cases per year so the seminars brought in about 70-80% of our at-need volume.  We realized that this would grow volume over time.

• A few years later we experimented with the Nancy Reagan philosophy of trying even “earlier ages” and was surprised at the number of still-working couples who took a morning off of work to attend the seminars upon invitation.  We also moved our philosophy of saying this is something “retired people” should plan for to bringing a mantra of “when you are starting to think of retirement, you should not only plan for when you will take Social Security, but you should also think of your will, your legacy, and your funeral arrangements”.   A big part of our seminars was the suggestion telling potential clientele that they should have serious discussions about their choice of cremation or earth burial and where the permanent memorialization of their cremated remains or casketed body would be.  We found this “optionality” of decisions moved people to the discussion stage.

• I found that having the discussion about permanent memorialization probably moved more people to pre-arrange than did the discussion of cremation/earth burial.  In many instances family lots were in different cemeteries and the couple needed the discussion to decide which to make use of. . . . or, our closest National Veterans Cemetery was 140 miles away and a discussion about using that cemetery versus a local cemetery often was a reason that couples took up the conversation.

• Over the years we were able to move our preneed business to a situation where we had a one to one ratio with at need calls which I think, in today’s world, should be a minimum ratio for businesses that want to grow.

• While we did have acquisitions to increase our call volume, the decision to make Preneed as big a priority as At-need played a major role in our organic growth over time.  My brother, Dave, took on this mantle and it went from a part-time gig to a more than full-time one when we needed to hire a 2nd part-time agent to folow up on seminar leads.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  My direct take on the question posed in the title of this article is that retirement age should not affect pre-need.  My reason for saying that is because you should already be prospecting the “before retirement” cohort of potential clients.

On the other hand, it may make a slight difference on the potential client’s reaction to your lead generation.  They may think that “they have plenty of time to do this” because retirement is far off.

If you don’t do monthly seminars I would suggest a call to my friend Patrick Zalusky at Laker Planning (507.327.6938) to get some pointers on how to start.

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I received a broadcasted mass e-mail last Thursday inviting me to tune into the newest podcast for our profession.  This one was titled “The Graveyard Shift” and was promoted by Passare.  It is probably good and informative, but I’ve also been invited to listen to a podcast that originates from Great Britain with the same title — “The Graveyard Shift”.

Two podcasts with the same title carries home my point that there are lots of opportunities to get news, opinions, and advice from the Death Care world in which this blog — “Funeral Director Daily” is one of them.  It’s a lot different from when I started in the business and the arrival of the monthly National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) official publication of their member magazine “The Director” was an eagerly awaited arrival.

Related — Here is a link to the Passare Graveyard Shift podcast

John Naisbitt in his early 1980’s best-selling book Megatrends predicted that the world would soon pass into what he called the “Information Age”.  His thesis, especially for the United States was that we had been through the Agricultural Age, the Industrial Age, and the invention of the telephone entered us into the technology age of which we were still in during the 1980’s.  His prediction, and I think it has came true, was that we would soon enter the “Information Age”.

His belief was that “information would become very valuable”, that we would pay for it like never before, and that our technology would make it widespread and easily accessible. . . . Not like having to go to a library or somewhere similar as was the case for a couple of centuries prior.

I think we have reached that point. . . and we have reached it in the funeral and cemetery business.  It does create a world where “caveat emptor” is necessary however.  “Caveat emptor” is Latin for “Let the Buyer beware”.  I also believe that in a world where anybody can distribute information that is a pretty important thought.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

No longer do we simply have NFDA proof-reading articles and fact-checking those articles, as they did in the decades-old “The Director” magazine before they are distributed to America’s funeral businesses.  Today, we have scores of information sources distributing their thoughts to us all in a world where there is more information distributed than ever before and nothing is fact-checked.

I’m old enough to remember when we received, at least what we believed was “fact-checked” news at 6 pm every evening on television and in the newspaper every morning.  Surveys tell us that in the United States, very few people under the age of 50 get their news in that fashion at this point in time. . . . . and, how they get their news is in more of an opinion setting — such as podcasts or blogs.

You don’t have to look any further than the emphasis that has been put on the latest presidential contest and how campaign news was sought. . . It was almost all social media — TikTok, Instagram, podcasts, and the like.  And now, we have even more of those political types starting podcasts to inform people because they have seen them successfully work and move markets.  Or, in the political world — votes.

I think Death Care has two branches of news, opinions, and marketing to formulate.  One branch is easily seen in the vendor and practitioner side of the business — that is podcasts and publications that serve the practitioner with knowledge and in some capacities “plug” the vendor.  Quite frankly, Funeral Director Daily fits into that category as a blog publication.  There’s lots of others in this lane — both in podcasts and in blogs or journals.  It’s up to the practitioner to recognize if the authors of such podcasts and/or publications have the knowledge, reputation, worthwhile advice, and value to be worthy of their time in listenening or reading.

The other branch that I see is that of “Marketing’ by Death Care consumer providers.  I think it is a real new world out there on how your future consumer clientele will choose your funeral home/cemetery and how once they choose you will pick the services that you offer.  Your future clients are now also part of Naisbitt’s “Information Age” and are looking to you for the information about Death Care that they need to make decisions.

And, just as funeral providers have to filter their “caveat emptor” situation, so do your potential clients.  How you tell them what you do and how believeable that you can be in that situation will make a difference in your business in the future.  It’s an area where “Reputation” will mean everything going forward to help with this belief.

It’s my opinion that, just like incumbent politicians with name recognition, legacy family owned funeral homes have a great reputational advantage  —  if you wonder about the “new consumer” and if they will choose your firm, now is probably the time to find the right marketing partner for you to connect via social media and other avenues with these people.

Because every day the start-up operations or the acquisition-company owned firms in your community are trying to use their expertise to pry these clients away from you.  Again, in my opinion, doing nothing won’t help your cause.

Related — It’s probably pretty likely that Welton Hong and his team at Ring Ring Marketing can help your funeral home be heard “Loud and Clear” in today’s Information Age.

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