CRäKN provides software that helps funeral directors and funeral homes manage the many arms of their business. Their blog provides tips and advice to help funeral directors better serve families, improve their operations, and stay on top of the latest tech trends impacting death care. Two recent posts feature advice from yours truly, The Doyenne of Death®.

Before I Die Festivals

The April 4 post, How to Market to Those Who Don’t Plan on Dying, provides in-depth tips about how to put together a festival devoted to getting end-of-life conversations started. Gail Rubin is the event coordinator for Before I Die ABQ, and Justin Magnuson is co-coordinator of Before I Die Louisville. Among the tips for holding a big event:

• Know how much marketing goes into holding a festival.
• Take time to organize your schedule.
• Know what audience size you’re really aiming for.
• Keep your event low cost or no cost.
• Don’t focus on just one demographic.
• Don’t try to do it all yourself.

Before I Die festivals aren’t the only efforts currently being made to get people to address their mortality. Check out the San Francisco Reimagine End of Life festival taking place April 16-22, 2018. The website is www.LetsReimagine.org.

Read the full story here.

Event Ideas for Funeral Directors

Gail Rubin, CT, with a colorful Dia de los Muertos skull

The April 11 post, 15 Event Ideas That Will Help You Educate & Inform Your Families, provides a host of outside-the-box suggestions for community outreach activities. These additional ideas from Gail Rubin, Certified Thanatologist and pioneering death educator, include:

• Conduct a behind-the-scenes visit at your mortuary.
• Host your own Death Cafe conversation.
• Interview your local coroner or medical investigator.
• Hold a panel discussion on religion, spirituality, and/or Near Death Experiences.
• Embrace and answer the questions you’re hearing.

Read the full story here.

Where Did the Name CRäKN Come From?

Here’s the description from CRäKN’s website:

You are probably wondering why the name CRäKN? We admit, it’s unusual. We do think it’s fitting though. CRäKN was founded by Scott Mindrum, who spent 20 years in funeral service primarily as the Founder, CEO & President of MeM (Making Everlasting Memories). After successfully growing MeM and selling it, Scott took some time to invest in and work with startups in the Cincinnati area. Scott wasn’t much for sitting on the sidelines, so he decided to jump back into entrepreneurial life. The problem he wanted to solve was one he had seen so many times: making it easier for funeral professionals to streamline and manage the many touch points and activities that they needed to do each time they worked with a family.

With his Norwegian ancestry as inspiration, Mindrum looked to Nordic origins for a memorable name for the company. The concept of a Kraken—or a Nordic sea monster— resonated with Mindrum. He had seen so many funeral directors who needed more “arms” to handle daily operations so that they could better serve families, and knew that the Kraken could help represent the solution they needed.

From there, an idea was born: a smart, efficiency sea monster that would give funeral directors more arms to handle operations. To capture Customer Relationships and Knowledge, the spelling was changed to CRäKN, keeping the Nordic umlaut over the “a”.