Around 70% of all notices published on funeral-notices.co.uk have been booked directly by the Funeral Director, using our self-serve booking system. If you are one of those Funeral Directors/Arrangers, or you are interested in having a go at booking your own notices, we have put together a list of 5 top tips to help you achieve seamless booking and ensure you are getting the full benefits for your families from their funeral notice.
- 1: Don't be afraid you might make a mistake
Every notice you submit via the booking system drops into a 'scrutineering' queue to be checked by one of our dedicated scrutineers. We check for any typos, spelling and grammar errors as well as checking the correct charity has been selected to match the requested donations in the notice.
Whilst your notices are in our scrutineering queue it will show in your booking history as 'pending approval' (see example, top left).
As soon as we release the notice you may make amendments to it right until deadline by clicking 'amend live' (see example, bottom left).
If you choose instant publication your notice will still be checked by our scrutineers and any changes made will be applied to the live notice on funeral-notices.co.uk.
Don't worry, all amendments come back through to our scrutineers to check again.
Self-serve guarantee: In the rare instance something is missed in a notice you have booked, we guarantee to rebook the notice for you, for free.
- 3: You can book notices for any location using just one simple system
One simple booking portal for all of our print titles/online notices: Our booking site includes a UK wide search function allowing notices to be booked for any location. If we do not have a print title in your chosen location, you will be offered an online notice. The search facility is set up to recognise villages, towns and cities across all the home nations. Simply begin typing the location to see what is available.
We can offer
FREE online notices until the end of the year. More information on how to book these may be found
here.
- 4: Take advantage of online donations for your families
If you've never used our online donations on your notices, there has never been a better time to give them a go. Online donations benefit your families as it saves them time and stress in setting up their own donation page elsewhere. Funeral-notices.co.uk benefits from a huge audience made up of new and repeat users who come to us to read who has passed away in their area, who has had notices published in their local paper as well as those who come to find a specific notice. Since we added the option for online donations to our notices, our audience have raised almost £2 million (including Gift Aid) for local and national charities. Even if you have your own procedure for online donations, it can be worth adding donations to your funeral notices too - to give loved ones an even greater opportunity to raise funds in memory.
For more on how to add donations to your notice, watch our brief video guide
here or for a more in-depth look at charitable donations, including how they are viewed by a representative from the RNLI, watch our webinar
Online Donations: How to make the most of them for you and your families.
- 5: Let us inform your families when their notice is live
During the booking journey, just after you select your dates, you are invited to confirm the details of your booking and add a 'keepsake' of the notice if the family would like one.
To the bottom of this page you are invited to submit numerous contact emails for the family. This helpful tool allows us to email family and friends as soon as the notice is live on funeral-notices.co.uk, meaning you don't have to.
We encourage people to share their notices via social media and messaging apps. Each notice is published alongside your logo and branch details, helping to make sure your community knows who is dealing with the arrangements whilst also serving as a free marketing tool for your business.
These are our top 5 tips for booking your own funeral notices. Of course, however you book your notices, we are available to support you through our Live Chat system, by emailing fdteam@funeral-notices.co.uk or by calling us on 03444060276.
If you would like to try booking your own notices, read and download our guide:
How to book a newspaper notice To get in touch with us about this, or for help in unlocking the free benefits available to you from funeral-notices.co.uk, please complete the contact form below and an Account Manager will be in touch.
We would love to hear from you.