Funeral invitations by email

Overview

 

Inviting people to a funeral can be a stressful and a difficult task. Calling friends and family members by phone is normally the best way to announce a death. However, sending an email to each of the deceased’s email contacts can help invite those who may not have been called. It may also help to inform those have changed their phone number.

If the deceased used their email for business purposes, by sending an a funeral invitations by email may reduce the number of ‘business’ phone calls both before and after the funeral.

 

Sending funeral invitations by email

 

*We recommend that invitations by phone, newspaper obituary etc should be made before email funeral invitations are sent out.

 

Subject line & message

 

It is important that the subject line in the email is filled in and relevant to the announcement you are making. You may for example want to use the following subject line:

The death of (insert full name) and an in invitation to (first name)’s funeral

Now write the message in the ‘body’ of the email. By writing the email before adding the list of recipients who will receive the email the likelihood of sending the email by mistake before it is ready is reduced.

 

Using ‘BCC’.

 

When sending funeral invitations to a large number of email contacts we recommend that you send the emails using ‘BCC’ instead of ‘TO’ or ‘CC’ (please see the image below for further reference)

 

Email invitations to funerals

By using ‘BCC’ each email recipient will be unable to view the other people who have also received the email.

We have added two email examples in the ‘BCC” field below along with some ideas for text you may want to include when inviting people to attend a funeral through email.

 

Email invitations to funerals2

 

In certain circumstances emails can be a great medium to ensure that friends, family and work colleagues are informed of both a death and/or a funeral service.  The methods shown above may not be suitable for a number of circumstances. However, when trying to inform a diverse range of individuals and demographics across across multiple states / continents and with a limited amount time, email correspondence can be very useful and affective. 

 

Keeping an email address of the deceased active

 

There are a range of issues associated with using email addresses provided by a broadband provider (such as Virgin, EE, BT, Comcast etc). DeadSocial recommend that you do NOT use email services provided by any broadband providers for two main reasons:

 

  1. It is a way for them to have power over you. If you decide to leave their service they will often charge you to keep your email account active (each month).
  2. When someone dies they will not keep the account of the deceased active (unless you keep paying them to do so).

 

Email - Funeral - Closure - Virgin

 

If you have any experience (good or bad) feel free to get in touch and tell your story.