FeralArt ~ Promotion ~ e-Marketing

e-Marketing

One of the ways to get your website, products, services and most importantly brand noticed is to market yourself online and offline.

You can do this in a number of ways, from using Twitter and Facebook or MySpace, starting your own blog, getting others to link to you, and keeping all your online promotions, emails, and email campaigns visually similar. Your logo and colours need to be displayed across all of your promotions, they are your business and they stop people getting you confused with your competitors.

I have started writing about using Twitter, Facebook and will be covering many other aspects of online marketing in the FeralArt blog. But there is one service I am actively promoting which is a resource for all your business emails, email campaigns (or e-newsletters) and is able to be used for visually promoting your products and services.

comF5 incorporates five different products, MailF5, TemplateF5, MediaF5, LiveF5 and MarketingF5 (Click to visit their website). Now I've only been using this service for a few months and I am amazed at what it can do and how easy it is to use.
As always if you want a demonstration or want more information feel free to contact me, but first I'll explain what each product does.

Click the images below to view larger

The key feature of comF5 is it allows you to record your messages through your webcam, or just your voice with your computer microphone. Your clients can see you talking to them rather then reading text on a page and you can demonstrate how your product works right in front of them

MailF5

MailF5 allows you to use your own email address to send emails from their service, it also allows you to set up the use of more then one email address without having to purchase multiple accounts. So your employees can use the same account for no extra cost and have emails sent out from their email address.
There is a contact manager, which is pretty much an address book.

TemplateF5

TemplateF5 is complementary to all products included in comF5's service, it allows you to make your emails and campaigns look great. When you sign up you automatically get access to about 250 templates which you can change logos and images to suit your business. You can also create your own template, or hire me to create one for you.

MediaF5

MediaF5 is your storage, where you keep your images, videos, slideshows (powerpoint presentations). It's basically hosting, depending on which plan you sign up for depends how much storage and bandwidth you can use, although you won't run out easily.
It also allows you to track how many times a video or demonstration has been watched.

LiveF5

LiveF5 allows you to run webinars so clients or potential clients can view your live product demonstrations (or view prerecorded ones), slideshows. It also has a chat function so they can ask you questions while you are demonstrating.

MarketingF5

MarketingF5 covers your campaigns. It allows you to send out e-newsletters to multiple subscribers at once, you can set up individual lists for different services or products your clients are interested in.
An autoresponder can send new subscibers a thank you email or an email with more information soon after they join, without you having to do anything.
The autoresponder is also great if you have written a short information course. If you have five sessions you can set it to email out one session every day for a week, you don't have to wrorry about forgetting, missing a lesson or not seeing a new subscriber, it does everything for you.
There is also a statistics area, so you can view who has opened and read your email (and how many times). If you added a link to your website you can see who clicked on it and when. See if anyone unsubscribed or if anyone forwarded it on to a friend or family member.

It is surprisingly easy to use, and there is an extensive tutorial section to help you get set up, tips for your campaigns, a forum if you have questions and an online support area to ask questions. It is based in America so approximately half of our day there is someone sitting there to answer questions live, otherwise a question is sent to them and they answer it the following day.

This product is great for all businesses. Some examples:
Clothing stores can record or hold a live fashion show on their website.
Business Consultants, Wedding Celebrants and Event Speakers can send am email to potential clients and prove that they are confident and professional instead of relying on a descriptive piece of text.
Plant Nurseries can show and talk about when to grow particular plants, explain what to do if your plant looks sick, show what weeds you should be looking out for in your garden.