Everlife, hypergrowth

Everlife, at first a comparison site for funeral directors, has grown into a major name in funeral planning in Switzerland.
By offering a simple, transparent solution, Everlife relieves families of the practical burdens that come at the end of a life.

Introduction

This case study follows the key stages of that transformation, the figures that matter, the strategic work with Bright, and the various methods of customer acquisition. Through it we will see how Everlife brings a customer-centred approach together with marketing performance tuned to the full, and so holds its place as the reference in the sector.

The key dates of Everlife.ch

As we said, Everlife has pivoted and grown over the years. Here are a few key dates that trace the company’s progress:

• April 2020: launch of the first funeral-director comparison site
• November 2020: launch of the digital safe
• January 2021: launch of our own funeral planning offer
• May 2021: opening of the German-speaking market and first campaigns in central Switzerland
• January 2024: new rebranding and rollout of the “all-in-one” offer in B2C

Those moments show how readily Everlife fits the needs of the market, while keeping an approach that is human and transparent.

Everlife, in figures

Everlife’s growth has come with concrete results, in recognition as much as in customer satisfaction. Through its services and its commitment to transparency, the company has turned a little-known sector into an essential service for a great many families.

The figures below reflect that progress, with a steady rise in the number of contracts and growing recognition in the Swiss market.

Strategy

Since 2020, Everlife has worked hand in hand with Bright to refine its campaigns and understand families’ needs better. Together we have made the campaigns more effective while honing the messaging to meet what this market specifically expects. That strategic work has let Everlife strengthen its presence with the public, improve its lead acquisition and communicate more sharply, while growing steadily.

Why Test & Learn matters

“Rome wasn’t built in a day” — a cliché, you will say. And yet nothing is truer. To be where we are today with Everlife, we had to test a great many things and learn from our mistakes along the way. That is what we call Test & Learn: you try, you put things out, and you see what results come back. Whatever those results, whether the test works or not, we learn something, and we use what we learn to move forward. By proceeding in stages and adjusting regularly, we make sure we answer what the Swiss market and its customers expect, as well as it can be answered.

One notable example is the rebuild of the campaigns in 2022, where access to information was simplified. That let interested people find answers faster, and reach the information more directly.

A second example is the simplification of the forms at the start of 2024. Early that year we worked together to remove as much friction as possible, so as to improve the customer experience. We identified the opportunities quickly and made the changes needed to improve the campaigns’ relevance and performance.

As you can see, those changes had a decidedly positive impact, both on customer satisfaction and on the effectiveness of the campaigns. Every day we keep exploring new approaches and drawing lessons from them, while keeping the customer at the centre of our acquisition strategies.

A floating budget

To make sure the resources go where they should, we adjust the marketing and communication budgets regularly, against campaign performance and against the period. That is what we call a floating budget. What is a floating budget? One that is not fixed: it can vary from what was planned for the month, and it can change from one month to the next. In other words, we have a budget set for the year and budgets planned for each month, but depending on performance or on outside factors, we can move that budget — up or down.

In Everlife’s case, here are a few situations where the floating budget is essential to us:

• If a piece of creative is right in terms of user intent — judged by the number and the quality of the enquiries — we can raise the budget behind it and go after more volume.
• If one part of the year is better than another in terms of customer interest, we can raise the budget there too. Conversely, if a period is weaker, we will not hesitate to cut the budget sharply.

That budget flexibility lets the communication effort adapt without compromising the quality of the services offered. Through those continuous adjustments, Everlife is able to get the most impact out of its investment while delivering a quality service, fitted to what the market needs.

A campaign structure built around customers

To communicate in a way that fits, Everlife renews its messaging and its visuals regularly. Each element is designed to answer customers’ concerns while reflecting Everlife’s core values: transparency, accessibility and care.

To that end, our campaign structure rests on two blocks:

• “Test” campaigns: these serve to test visuals with new messaging, new formats or new offers. The aim is to try new things and see how the market responds in relation to customer intent. These are campaigns of exploration.
• “Best” campaigns: these serve to capitalise on whatever answers customer intent best. Whether an ad, a form, or a combination of several things, we use these campaigns to capitalise on and spread what speaks most to the market — with a view to opening up a field that is very new in Switzerland. These are the “scaling” campaigns.

That structure lets us not only meet customers’ needs but, at the same time, get the most out of our marketing effort. By aligning what we do with what prospective customers expect, we improve our ability to turn them into satisfied customers.

Support fitted to each person, at every stage

Everlife’s commitment does not stop, of course, at generating qualified enquiries. Once someone shows interest in the services, they receive support fitted to them. Everlife’s teams are there to answer questions and to help each person make the best decisions for their needs.

Since this field is new in its current opening up, the “contact” stage remains necessary, so that the ins and outs of such a service can be explained.

In that setting, everyone gains. Supporting users in their intent is simpler, the enquiries are highly qualified, and the “contact” allows the solution to be explained by a person.

That makes for a customer experience that is richer, and appreciated.

Recognition, to make the public aware of funeral planning.

Since 2023, Everlife has strengthened its presence so as to make the public more aware of funeral planning, and of its place in society. By informing families about this delicate subject, Everlife wants to be there at the moment they most need it, with a service that is fitting, simple and human.

By Everett Rogers’s law and his theory of the adoption of innovation, funeral planning in Switzerland sits rather early on the curve. It is therefore essential to work on the audience’s awareness, through “recognition” campaigns.

At Bright, so-called “recognition” campaigns are not handled apart from the digital campaigns, but as one body, in a cross-cutting view, so that synergies can arise between them. In Everlife’s case, those “recognition” campaigns feed the overall campaigns.

These campaigns are at the heart of our strategy. Here too, they serve both the customer and the campaigns’ performance.

Impact

In short, the Everlife case illustrates perfectly how a customer-centred approach can live alongside marketing performance pushed to its limit. Through a Test & Learn strategy, a flexible budget allocation and communication that fits, Everlife has not only established itself as a leader in funeral planning in Switzerland, but above all delivered a quality service that answers what families really need.

The close work between Everlife and Bright has been essential to improving the communication, letting the messaging be adjusted quickly and the results be used in real time. The recognition campaigns, far from being a “simple” add-on, are built into an overall strategy.

By putting the customer experience at the heart of its concerns while taking a proactive approach to improvement, Everlife shows that the future of funeral planning rests on understanding families’ needs deeply and on being nimble in how it communicates. That double orientation brings not only durability and growth in commercial performance, but above all customer satisfaction — by carrying the right message, at the right moment, in the right place.