Two Years. Every Thread.Every Hour.
An audit of every documented interaction between funeralOne and NorthStar Memorial Group across 24 months. 2,142+ email-verified interactions. 1,452 estimated hours. 89 above-and-beyond items. Zero additional invoices.
What We Actually Do
2,142+ interactions across 16 distinct work categories. Over half is engineering-grade execution: integration, development, bug fixes, emergency response, and conversion optimization.
Every interaction was categorized by work type and time-weighted based on complexity. 2,142+ interactions became 1,452 hours across 16 categories.
Work Breakdown — 16 Categories, 1,452 Hours
1,452 hours of dedicated partnership work across 16 categories
CRM Integration
Dynamics 365, GTM, Meta pixels, ASD after-hours, phone tracking, Conversions API
Development
Scheduler builds, DNC compliance forms, catering pages across 29 properties, website launches, CRM architecture
Analytics & Reporting
GA4 configuration, executive reporting, traffic analysis, form data extraction, 99K submission export, Domo integration
Website Changes
Content updates, page builds, GPL postings, image sliders, awards showcases, bilingual badges, new property sites
Partner Coordination
Vendor sync meetings, Intellibright technical support, third-party pixel installs, Osano escalation, ASD coordination
Critical Response
Bug fixes (106 hrs) + emergency support (34 hrs). Revenue-critical form outages resolved in minutes. Production emergencies at 3 AM.
Additionally: Strategic Consultation (42) · New Features (29) · CRO (24) · Design (21) · New Site Launch (16) · Account Management (16) · Customer Service (11) · Store/Commerce (11)
103 performance and SEO commits pushed to NSMG repositories — silent engineering improvements to Core Web Vitals, schema markup, and template optimization.
The Complete Record
25 months. No gaps. Consistent, high-volume delivery from February 2024 through February 2026.
Monthly Thread Volume — 25 Months of Documented Work
Year 1
Feb 2024 – Jan 2025
threads
Year 2
Feb 2025 – Jan 2026
threads
Peak Month
January 2026
threads
Average
Per Month
threads / month
Who We Work With
91+ unique contacts across the partnership. funeralOne doesn't just serve NSMG — we coordinate with every vendor in the ecosystem.
Partnership Engagement — 91+ Direct Contacts
Marketing, Content & Other NSMG
Brand, content, field ops, and leadership
Cam Koehler — Content & Social Media · ~18
David Jacobson — VP Marketing · 13
Richard McCown — VP Operations · ~5
Matthew DiGiovanni — CMO · 2
Jason Cox — Dir, Brand · ~1
+ 4 additional NSMG contacts
Operations, CRM & Field
Corporate to property-level — the relationship goes deep
John Renfro — COO · 50
Cara Sesostris — Dir, CRM · 48
Stacy Adams — Property-Level · ~38
Holly Donahue — Fort Myers · 25+
Spencer Hines — SVP Sales · 21
Mark Neal — Grace Hudson · ~20
Christie Fewlass — VP IT · ~12
Jen Rudolph — Operations · ~10
External Partners
Vendor ecosystem coordination across multiple partners
Summit Marketing — 44 interactions
ASD — After-hours answering integration
Directors' Choice — 3 contacts
aperi / SmartCremation — Additional vendor coordinationfuneralOne serves as the technical hub connecting NSMG to its entire vendor ecosystem
How Fast We Respond
470 interactions with measurable response times. More than half resolved in under 10 minutes. Industry standard: 24–72 hours. We measure in minutes.
Response Distribution — 470 Measurable
Response times measured from email-verified interactions. Multi-day threads are large projects (scheduler builds, website launches, CRM migrations) where the thread spanned weeks — not the response.
Fastest Documented Responses
Above & Beyond
89 documented instances where the team delivered meaningfully beyond what was asked — product builds, emergency responses, holiday work, proactive security audits, and unsolicited problem-solving.
Defining Moments
Restland Staff Page
146 employees entered by the Senior Managing Partner herself — no training needed. Jody Herrington called unprompted: “Tell your team they knocked it out of the park.” The only property-level defining moment on this board. Built, launched, and adopted in under two weeks.
Hurricane Milton
Category 5 hurricane. Team members evacuating. Response time: instant. Zero-minute documented response while ensuring NSMG properties stayed online for families in crisis.
Carnival Weekend
Felipe worked through Brazil’s biggest national holiday. 38-minute response time on a day when his entire country was celebrating.
Osano Cookie Compliance
Implemented Osano consent management across all NSMG properties — a project that would cost $50,000+ from an agency. Delivered as part of the partnership at zero additional charge.
ASD After-Hours Integration
Custom integration built around NSMG's multi-timezone operations. Mapped which lead forms route to ASD (their answering service) based on region and time of day — Hawaii, California, Florida, and everywhere in between. Worked directly with NSMG ops to configure which forms go where, and when. Complex routing, delivered in 7 days.
Chapel of the Chimes Emergency De-Indexing
A viral news story hijacked a family’s tribute page at Chapel of the Chimes Hayward, flooding it with negative comments. The VPO Western Region sent a double-URGENT email at 7:10 PM on a Thursday evening. De-indexing request submitted to Google within 9 minutes. Both the regional VP and the Managing Partner responded with written thanks for the fast action.
New Year’s GPL Emergency
Routine GPL update became a regulatory crisis across 7 Western Region properties. Skip worked New Year’s Eve, confirmed California GPLs on New Year’s morning, and reverted all 7 sites within one hour of a VP’s urgent email on January 2nd.
Silent Performance Engineering
103 performance and SEO commits pushed to NSMG repositories. Core Web Vitals optimization, schema markup, template improvements. Zero requests filed — the team identified and fixed issues proactively.
NorthStar Privacy Portal
Guilherme stood up the entire NorthStar Privacy Portal (privacy.northstarmemorialgroup.net) in a single day — a dedicated compliance hub with Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, Cookie Notice, and Unsubscribe access — plus updated privacy and legal pages across all NSMG websites. A tangible compliance deliverable built at zero cost.
From the Record
“This is awesome and very thorough!”
“You went above and beyond here... Now everyone is gonna want this!”
“That’s really appreciated, Skip! The prompt response is amazing.”
Appointment Scheduler: From Pilot to Revenue Asset
The initial pilot showed 17 leads in 5 days. Here’s what happened in the next 60.
In just 2 months across 5 pilot properties (Greenwood, Restland, Fort Myers, Mountain View, Floral Haven). Launched July 15, 2024.
10% appointment-to-sale conversion rate. COO John Renfro personally analyzing as a strategic growth lever.
Full product lifecycle — spec, build, training for 30+ staff, CRM integration, property-level follow-ups, weekly reporting — all unbilled.
“Fantastic! Let’s roll! Great work and super exciting to have this option for our families.”
“You guys are the best!!! Can we please work with the remaining locations to roll this out on their websites?”
$355,050 Documented.
$0 Billed.
Every single one of the 2,142+ documented interactions was performed at no additional charge.
What This Work Would Cost at Market Rate
Complexity Tiers
How we weighted the work:
Complexity Distribution — 1,452 Hours
Platform Performance
The infrastructure behind 50+ NSMG websites. Measured against global and industry benchmarks.
Top 1% of all websites globally
Facebook scores 30
7.5x more reliable than industry avg
Competitor: F rating, 36 complaints
First increase since 2011 — from $85.50 to $156/month. Still below industry standard for a platform of this scope.
Per lead through platform forms. Industry paid average: $85–$150/lead. 13–23x cheaper.
5 Versions. 13 Years. Continuous Investment.
Every major version delivered measurably higher engagement. Here is the full arc.
Pre-Need Leads Per Tribute
Year-by-year growth across five platform versions — from near zero to approaching 1.0
From 0.16 forms per tribute at baseline to 1.57 today. The platform turned passive visitors into active engagers.
From nearly zero to approaching 1 lead per tribute. Each version of the platform expanded the lead capture surface.
From 0.43 orders per tribute at baseline to 1.16 today. The sympathy store grew alongside every platform upgrade.
The platform didn't just maintain — it compounded. Each version delivered measurably higher engagement per tribute. The store was already working in 2012. Everything else — forms, pre-need capture, at-need routing, scheduler integration — was built from zero and turned a website into a lead generation system. Pre-need leads per tribute went from 0.049 to 0.921. Forms went from 0.156 to 1.573. Orders went from 0.431 to 1.163. Today, the platform delivers nearly one pre-need lead for every tribute created.
We Audited the Analytics. Here's What We Found.
While working in NorthStar's GA4 property, funeralOne identified measurement architecture issues that affect how vendor performance is evaluated. These observations are shared to support informed decision-making.
of all sessions are people visiting obituaries — driven by funerals, not marketing campaigns.
of total sessions came from identifiable paid agency campaigns across the entire property.
The reported ‘organic drop’ did not exist at group level. Organic actually grew.
All NorthStar sites report into a single GA4 property, making site-level attribution unreliable.
funeralOne reviewed session data across 24 months and surfaced several observations: revenue tracked in GA4 represents sympathy flower sales ($75–$150 orders), not funeral services; a significant portion of conversions had no source attribution; and the Osano consent management configuration created a measurement blackout affecting traffic data. These findings are shared at no charge to support informed vendor evaluation.
What's Next
Active development across 6 initiatives. funeralOne has invested $10M+ in platform R&D — at zero cost to NSMG.
ATLAS
5-agent AI system for self-optimizing websites. Autonomous performance monitoring, content optimization, and conversion improvement.
AI Obituary Writer
Saves funeral directors 30–45 minutes per case. Already deployed and active across NSMG properties.
Automated CRO Testing
4 active variants at Restland. Results will inform rollout strategy across 85+ locations.
Predictive Analytics
Domo integration powering lead scoring and market prediction capabilities.
Moments Creator
AI-powered visual tributes. A new category of memorial content that differentiates NSMG from competitors.
Real-Time Dashboard
Self-updating executive KPIs with live data feeds across all NSMG properties.
Irreplaceable.
2,142+ documented interactions. 91+ contacts across 32 domains. 1,452 hours. $355,050 in documented value. $500,000–$750,000+ estimated true value. 89 above-and-beyond items. 54% response time under 10 minutes. 10+ team members. 50+ properties. 24 months. Zero additional invoices.
What NSMG Said
“Great job today Skip, thank you!”
“Fantastic! Let’s roll!”
“You guys are the best!!!”
“This is awesome and very thorough!”
“You went above and beyond here.”
“We need your help... I just want you to understand the urgency here.”
“Skip is ready and on standby as soon as we get the correct files.”
“I could not be happier... better than what I had in mind... tell your team they knocked it out of the park.”
The only property-level voice in this section. Every other quote is corporate. Jody manages the operation. She entered 146 employees herself. She called without being asked.
In February 2025, Chief Sales Officer Tom Reichert personally reached out to Skip regarding a legal compliance matter (Teri Caballero / Ferdinand) — bypassing all intermediaries and support channels. Skip replied in 2 minutes. A C-suite officer treating a vendor contact as a trusted advisor on legal matters, not routing through ticketing systems, speaks to the depth of this relationship.
How This Was Built
Audit Scope
Period: February 2024 – February 2026 (24 months)
Interactions: 2,142+ verified from email audit
Contacts: 91+ unique direct contacts across the partnership
Method: Categorized by work type and time-weighted by complexity
Confidence: 95%+ — All figures from audited records
Valuation Method
Hours: 1,452 total. Complexity × standard hours per category. LOW (0.5h), MEDIUM (2.0h), HIGH (6.0h), CRITICAL (4–40h)
Rates: Industry-standard billing for comparable work. $150/hr (LOW), $195/hr (MEDIUM), $295/hr (HIGH/CRITICAL)
Floor: $355,050 from 3 audited inboxes + Slack (Skip $257K, Lucas $70.6K, Felipe $27.4K)
FTE Equivalency: 4–5 FTEs × $85K–$120K/yr = $340K–$600K annually in salary alone
Estimate: $500K–$750K+ including uncaptured team members (7+ additional contributors)
Platform: 99.98% uptime, PageSpeed 98/88, A+ BBB — from platform monitoring and third-party tools