U-T San Diego To Launch Memoriams.com

By: Press Release | U-T San Diego

Adpay, Inc., innovators of the Memoriams.com network and obituary order entry platform, today announced that U-T San Diego is joining the rapidly growing list of Memoriams.com partners. With their decision to provide this platform to local funeral directors, U-T San Diego joins a group of publishers who recognize this strategy as a means to protect and grow their obituaries.

Memoriams.com is designed to provide a solution to funeral directors’ obituary order entry needs and is the culmination of thousands of hours of funeral director research into those needs. It cements the partnership with these advertisers and keeps obituary content in print as well as online. Memoriams.com ensures that newspapers remain the primary source of communication regarding deaths in the community, and around the U.S. It also expands the universe of obituaries going to newspapers by enabling funeral directors to place both locally and out-of-market.

Deployment will include an integration for print back into U-T San Diego’s Mactive front end system. This creates a streamlined workflow for both the funeral director and the newspaper. Custom upsells are anticipated to increase revenues, while a collection of specific data needed by Legacy.com for the digital obituary display will improve process.  “The advertiser goodwill generated by Memoriams.com was reason enough to go with it,” said Mike Hodges, President & COO U-T San Diego. “However, we also see enormous revenue potential both from custom upsells and expanded local obituaries, as well as in the network opportunity to receive out-of-market placements.
 
As all boats can rise with the tide, the more papers who participate, the greater the out-of-market return for everyone.”  “U-T San Diego is a proven, tech savvy industry leader,” said Michael Heene, CEO of Adpay. “They see the strategy and vision of our network and know that this is much more than a new product decision for obituaries.  We know our strategy is right on target when newspapers like the U-T San Diego choose to trust Memoriams.com with their obituary business.”

U-T San Diego is planning an April 2, 2014 launch party at their headquarters. This introduction is an opportunity for U-T leadership to reengage with the local funeral director advertisers.  The festive event will include a breakfast, followed by training provided by the U-T advertising team and the Memoriams.com product management team. Representatives from Legacy.com will also be on hand to demonstrate their new products. 

The Memoriams.com and Legacy.com teams worked together on recent launches at the Idaho Falls Post-Register and Frederick News-Post to provide co-training sessions. These sessions detailed the platform benefits, and the simplicity of upselling Legacy.com services through Memoriams.com.

Stopher Bartol, CEO of Legacy.com stated, “The complimentary nature of our two products has resulted in the synergy of co-training events that provide many benefits to our mutual media partners.  We’re excited about the future of print and online obituaries and how we can meet the needs of funeral directors and the newspapers serving them.”

Results show that Memoriams.com generates significant increases in a newspaper’s local obituary revenue via larger print obituaries and upsells like plaques and additional run dates. It also solves funeral directors’ number one problem with newspaper obituaries--the placement of obituaries in other out-of-market newspapers.