Prelude’s website makes this statement “We created the world’s best in-person selling software that anyone in your funeral home can use to close in just one meeting”.

One year ago on March 8, 2024, Funeral Director Daily published our first article on the company.  That article, that you can read here, was titled, “Will Prelude be the product?”

I didn’t know much about the company or the product at that time, but in the time since I see that they are still moving forward.  The company landed an investment from Cortado Ventures of Oklahoma City and now, according to this press release, has landed another investor in Hurricane Ventures out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. . . . It should be noted that Prelude is an Oklahoma-based company.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

In the last year I’ve also got to take a “test-ride” of their product acting as a consumer with their digital platform.  Quite frankly, I found the experience, which must use artificial intelligence (AI), to be pretty simple and easily understandable in guiding me through an arrangement conference to pricing and preneed financing.

I was at the point that I said to myself, “This is something the common consumer could use”.

Like a lot of products in the developing stages I’m sure that there will be enhancements moving forward, but the experience that I had with my Prelude test-drive has convinced me that computer arrangements and pre-arrangements will be the choice for a certain percentage of consumers in Death Care’s future.

To learn more about Prelude you can access their website here.

To learn more about Hurricane Ventures you can access their website here.

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Okay. . . I’m generally not one to toot my own horn, but I did promise my friend Charis Rethorford, Head of Partnerships and Marketing at Prelude, that I would appear on one of their Zoom webinars to discuss the state of the funeral profession, as I see it,  with her.  If you want to lean in on what Charis and I will discuss make sure that you click here to register for Wednesday’s session sponsored by Prelude.

According to Prelude’s information on the session Charis and I will discuss  “. . . cutting-edge innovations and strategies for funeral homes to thrive in a rapidly evolving market. I will share my insights into challenges like cremation trends, eco-friendly options, and shifting consumer behavior.” 

Quite frankly, I’m looking forward to the session.  It’s not often that I get the chance to visit in a live format with those of you who read Funeral Director Daily.  And, while I’m not exactly sure, I do believe that there may be a way for webinar enrollees to ask questions.

This all takes place on Wednesday, January 29, at Noon Eastern Time, 11:00 am Central Time, and 9:00 am Pacific Time.

For more information on Prelude and where it fits in the Death Care ecosystem you can click here.

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The last time we mentioned the upstart preneed company Prelude in Funeral Director Daily was this article back in March 2024 when we first heard of them.  We mentioned that we didn’t know much about them but from their LinkedIn references and website it appeared that they were in the business of helping individual funeral homes sell preneed directly to the consumer public.

Earlier this week we received this press release from Cortado Ventures of Oklahoma City making known the fact that Cortado Ventures has invested in Prelude.  Here’s what that press release says in the first paragraph:

“Cortado Ventures has invested in the end-to-end digital preneed funeral planning company Prelude, which helps families, as well as funeral homes, craft an individual’s legacy by making it easier to plan and pre-pay for their own funeral. Offering a human-focused alternative to the highly transactional options in the funeral planning industry, Prelude harnesses a member-based insurance collective with AI-enabled B2B software aimed at transforming the funeral pre-planning process.”

Cortado Ventures’ Managing Partner Nathaniel Harding is quoted in the press release with this statement, “Prelude’s innovative solutions to funeral planning provides not only logistical ease but also emotional comfort and security before one of life’s most sensitive times.  End-of-life planning is never easy, but Cortado is excited to invest in a company that will serve Oklahomans, in life and after, and provide families some certainty in the face of life’s greatest uncertainty.”

Related Article — “Why we Invested:  Prelude”   —  Dated September 16, 2024, from the Cortado Ventures website.

Funeral Director Daily:  We still don’t know exactly how Prelude will work in integration with a funeral home, but their website has pages of information and one of them says this that is attributed to Prelude Co-Founder and CEO Kris Yee, “At Prelude we partner with independent funeral homes to revolutionize the preneed process.  . . .With Prelude you stay in control, increase profitability, and see significant growth in your preneed sales. . . . “

Here is the website for Prelude

Here is the website for Cortado Ventures

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I’m always searching the web for things that might be tied in to the funeral/cremation or greater Death Care business world.  Just the other day I came across a website for a company in the preneed arena which has a home page that states, “The Promise of Preneed“.

The company is Prelude and here is the website.  I’m not exactly sure of how the company operates but it appears to me that they partner with funeral homes or other disposition providers to offer almost instant preneed funeral policies to consumers.  Diving into the website and LinkedIn a little deeper here’s three things that they claim:

1. Prelude leads you and your customers through intuitive prompts and questions that helps them thoughtfully preplan their funeral.
2. Customers design their preneed plans, Prelude creates the ideal policy recommendations.
3. Pricing is generated instantly and customers can fully bind a policy in under ten minutes.

The LinkedIn site also states, “With Prelude, any employee in your office can walk a customer through our intuitive iPad-based experience and make a preneed sale, without needing to be a licensed agent.”

Here is the website for Prelude.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  I operated a funeral home for over 30 years.  In that time period I did all kinds of advertising and public relations for the funeral home and it became apparent to me that the easiest and most cost-efficient way to build future market share was through the sale of preneed funeral policies.

Preneed funeral policies were a pretty simple sale — especially those types of policies that guaranteed that the consumer could have the option to use the proceeds at a different funeral home in the chance that they moved out of the area or our funeral home would be closed or acquired.  In essence, potential consumer clients knew that a funeral policy was not like a term-insurance policy or a Long-Term Care policy that “might be used in the event of. . . ”   Funeral policies were certain to be used at some point in time — at the time of death of the policy-holder. . . . They could be thought of as “Set-it-up and forget-about-it” policies for a future peace of mind.

And the great thing about “Set-it-up” and “Forget-about-it” is that once that was done there was not a great deal of “retention contact” necessary to make sure that death call was at your funeral home. . . . in essence, the future market share growth was virtually assured.

Our funeral home got pretty good at marketing the pre-need policies at a very reasonable customer-acquisition cost.  We used monthly seminars that were well attended by retirement folk and those seminars provided tons of leads.  That kind of customer acquisition still works today and if your funeral home is not doing it yet drop an e-mail to Patrick Zalusky at Laker Planning (lakerp@aol.com) who can be your one-contact to get everything done for a successful and well attended seminar almost anywhere in the country.

However, the big key to getting more and more people into pre-arrangements with your funeral home in today’s world might also entail the option of enrolling and signing up future clients online without them having ever met you.  We know more and more people want to do this planning in the comfort of their own home, but it is our opinion, no one in the profession has really got this concept down to the correct science yet. . . . For instance, we know that there is a reluctance by the consumer to make a one-time pre-payment for future death care services via credit card.   Might it be easier with monthly pre-approved drafts?  I think so and maybe an online-insurer can do that.

I don’t know much about Prelude, but maybe it might be worth your while to check into what their website says, “Discover a modern planning tool designed to complement your relationship-driven business.

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