Email List for Monument Company

So, my full-time job is for a monument company. Yes, we make fancy rocks to put on dead people. I've contracted with them to rebuild their website and be in charge of their social media and internet marketing, thanks to WA.

Needless to say, internet marketing in this niche is a little more challenging than normal since, most of the time, you're dealing with people who have recently lost a loved one. Everything has to be very sensitive and tactful. It's also hard to "target" most people ahead of time since most of our customers don't want anythign to do with us until they have no other choice.

Another factor that makes this field difficult is that a majority of our clientele are elderly. This means most of them haven't yet adopted a majority of the technology we work with. That being said, we are trying to get our website and social media in place so that in the next 10-15 years our customers will be much more in tune with websites, emails, social media, etc.

We do try to target couples to come in and purchase "Pre-need" monuments, that is, a monument before they actually need it. This lets them be in control of what it will look like and relieves the financial and stressful burden from their children or widow/er when one of them does eventually pass. This is the one area where we can try to target people.

I'm also trying to build an email list, but am struggling to figure out how to make the "sales" pitch to get people to sign up.

How can I market in this niche? If anyone has any ideas in general about marketing in this niche online and, especially, in regard to building an email list, I'd love to hear them!

Dustin