Online Tools to Announce a Funeral

When a loved one passes away, it’s sometimes difficult to announce funeral arrangements to everyone who might wish to attend. Newspaper obituaries reach a limited geographic area, unless someone knows to watch for them online. Making multiple phone calls to distant friends and relatives isn’t practical, especially in the stressful time following a death.  Many people are moving to funeral announcements online.

An easier way to make sure those out of town are notified of funeral arrangements is to take advantage of free email invitation services online, your own email application or perhaps even social media. The tools available today make this task a simplev and one. Here’s what you’ll need to know.

Using Free Online Tools to Send Funeral Invitations

The first way to get information about a funeral to people out of town is by sending funeral invitations by email. Numerous websites offering free invitation-by-email service are available simply by setting up an account. Two of the most popular email invitation websites are Punchbowl and Evite.

With either of these tools, you can use one of their packaged invitation templates and modify it to fit your needs or create a funeral invitation from scratch, inserting text, photos and graphics with the assistance of their editing tools.

When your funeral invitation is ready to send, you can either enter the email addresses to receive it manually on their website or upload a list of email addresses in a .csv spreadsheet. Most major email applications allow you create a .csv file of your current email contacts. Be sure to look over the list and delete contacts you won’t be sending the invitation.

Using Social Media to Announce Funerals and Memorials

Another way you can let many people know quickly about funeral arrangements is through social media. It’s possible, for example, to set up an event page on Facebook and send invitations to view event details to specific ‘friends’ on Facebook. This is actually a better solution than simply announcing funeral arrangements on the deceased’s (or your own) Facebook page, if you’d rather not broadcast the information to potentially thousands of ‘friends of friends’, depending on their privacy settings.  Also, see our article on handling online accounts after death to learn how to dispose of social media accounts once a loved one passes.

Using Your Email to Send Funeral Invitations

If you don’t wish to upload your contact list to a website, you could also purchase downloadable funeral invitation templates. These templates are created to allow you to add a photo and text to announce funeral details. They can be edited in common word processing or desktop publishing programs such as MS Word or Publisher and MAC Pages.

Once you’ve downloaded the template and created a custom funeral invitation or funeral announcement template, you can attach it to messages created in your own email application and send to anyone in your email address book. The customized funeral invitation file can be saved to your computer for printing and hand-delivering to nearby friends and relatives. It’s also possible to create coordinated funeral programs or bulletins, prayer cards and other mementos using downloadable templates.

Whether you choose to take advantage of free online email invitation services and social media, or to create a custom funeral invitation and email it through your own email application, getting the word out about funeral arrangements doesn’t need to be difficult. Today’s online tools allow you to reach many people quickly with the details of a funeral, allowing you to concentrate on planning a memorable tribute to your loved one.  Also consider online obituaries another way to memorialize your loved one.