After a brief hiatus of the CTOTW series, we're back in style with a lovely custom theme from Sheldon and Rachel Hart of the Columbia River Gorge area in southern Washington. I love their header image: practically a work of art in itself, it contains a dramatic illustration and only the most important information that the authors want to convey to their potential customers, in this case, their website address. It's beautiful in its simplicity and effectiveness. The rest of the theme, from the color scheme to the fonts they chose, are in perfect harmony with each other. And it's just a great looking flyer, with high-resolution photos, a handsome logo, and a good amount of information; it's thorough without being overwhelming.

For a useful introduction to creating and using custom themes, take a look at this series of short video tutorials on our website.

Through the end of this month, we're offering a free custom branded theme to any auto dealer or service provider with an annual subscription. If you fall under one of these categories, contact support@vflyer.com to claim your free theme. If you have a monthly subscription, we can create a custom theme for you for a discount price of $59.

Again, kudos to Sheldon and Rachel for making such a nice custom theme. If you want your custom theme spotlighted or have come across a custom theme that you think is great, let us know! We love to see the fantastic themes that our users are creating.

Our friend, Ryan Hinricher from Investor Nation in Memphis recently told us that he wanted to be able to email a set of featured listings to his mailing list. We thought it was a great idea, so we introduced the feature for all vFlyer business subscribers. This means that in addition to being able to email a single Flyer through your vFlyer account, you can now create a list of up to seven listings and send the list in a single email. You can choose from four different layouts for the email and apply any standard themes or custom themes in your account to the email. Here's an example of a featured listings email:

Pretty cool, right? You can access this new feature by clicking the Account tab, then clicking the Email Flyer List sub-tab. To create a list, simply click Create New List and choose the Flyers and/or Teasers that you want to include. Then choose the layout and theme for the email, type a subject line, enter or import the email addresses you are sending to, and send it off.  We even provide the HTML content of the email in case you want to send via another email service. 

We hope you enjoy the new Featured Flyers email option. If you have feedback on it or other feature requests, let us know by emailing support@vflyer.com.

On Sunday night, we launched a new mobile landing pages for iPhone, Blackberry, G1 by Google (Android), and other mobile platforms. The new format is tailored to mobile devices and makes it significantly easier to view a Flyer from an iPhone, G1 phone, or another mobile phone.

Now, if you send a Flyer link to someone and that person opens the link on his or her iPhone, it automatically redirects to the new mobile format. This makes navigating the Flyer from the iPhone a snap. There are easy-to-read tabs for the Flyer overview, features, map, YouTube video, links, and other components of the ad. You can even share the Flyer on Facebook and Twitter in just a couple clicks.

As the number of iPhone users (and Android phone users, for that matter) continues to grow, the new mobile format will become increasingly important for vFlyer users because more and more of their colleagues and prospects will be accessing their Flyer content on these devices.

We hope to add more mobile features to our service in the near future. If you have any feedback on the new mobile format or ideas for other mobile capabilities, let us know by sending them to support@vflyer.com.

When we received an email this week from vFlyer subscriber Christa Ross, we couldn't help but admire her wonderful custom theme. As an agent with RE/MAX Select Realty in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Christa has done a fantastic job of branding herself as "Your Certified Green Agent" (as you can see on her very nice website) and has taken that branding and applied it to her vFlyer content in a very elegant way. Her branding is unique, instantly appealing, and truly contemporary. I've written before about the importance of branding yourself so that potential customers remember you and recognize your ads when they see them, but I can't overstate how critical this is, especially when so many others are advertising their products and services online. If you have a website already with your branding on it (as Christa does), it's an easy jump from there to creating a custom branded theme in the vFlyer Theme Editor. Creating consistency in all your online marketing content reinforces your brand and makes it more likely that you will increase your number of leads and, consequently, clients.

Any vFlyer business subscriber can create a branded custom theme and use it in his or her Flyers and Account Profile. For a useful introduction to creating and using custom themes, take a look at this series of short video tutorials on our website. If you have an annual subscription, we can have one of our designers create a custom theme for you at no charge. If you have a monthly subscription, we can create a custom theme for you for a discount price of $79. If you're interested, contact support@vflyer.com. Both of these offers are good through October 31, 2009.

We'll be back next Friday with another Custom Theme of the Week, so if you've created or seen a custom theme and think it should be spotlighted, let us know!

Over the last month we've been running a promotion for free custom branded themes to our new and existing annual subscribers. We got a flood of requests for themes from our members and were only too happy to supply them! The promotion ended at the end of August, but I wanted to highlight some of the great custom themes our designers created last month:

• Donna Baker at Dickson Podley Real Estate in Monrovia, California
• Red Oak Property Management in Manchester, New Hampshire
• Michael Cervelli Real Estate in North Bergen, New Jersey
• Goldleaf Development in Madison, Wisconsin
• Mosser Company in San Francisco, California
• Stead Automotive Group in Richmond, California

Though the theme promotion has ended, we are extending our discount offer of $59 for a custom branded theme for any vFlyer subscriber. So contact support@vflyer.com if you're interested in getting your own custom theme like the beautiful ones above.

We'll be back next Friday with another custom theme of the week, so if you've created or seen a custom theme and think it should be spotlighted, let us know by emailing support@vflyer.com.

We believe that it is important to promote yourself and your listings with branded market content. vFlyer has a highly customizable Theme Editor for creating custom, branded themes and a library of 25 leading real estate broker themes. These custom themes can enhance the marketing content used for single property sites, Account Profiles, Craigslist flyers, print flyers and more. Thousands of members each month are creating themes. That hasn't stopped some of our members from asking for special broker themes for their brokerage. While we would love to create themes for all brokers, that isn't a realistic possibility at this point. For that reason, we decided to stage a contest to select the next 10 broker themes for the library.

It's simple: log in to vFlyer, enter your broker's name in the Feedback application, and click Send. Also, be sure to ask other agents in your office to vote as well. We will tally the votes at the end of September and will have the new broker themes available in mid-October.

You may have noticed that we've been quiet on the blogging front over the last few weeks, but it's not been for lack of activity or (as much as we might wish) extended Fourth of July holidays. Rather, we've been busy at work on some important infrastructure upgrades that have made and will continue to make our application and content produced with it significantly faster.

In a nutshell, these upgrades include:

• the integration with a content delivery network, which results in faster image load times
• added memory, resulting in better and faster site performance
• the enhancement of our software caching layer to dramatically shrink response time, resulting in faster load times of Flyers and single property websites

What this all means is that it will be easier for you both to create vFlyers and other marketing content and impress potential customers with your brilliant, fast-loading Flyers. It has been proven that faster loading pages leads to a greater number of page views.

With regard to the content delivery network, it takes effect on new and existing Flyers automatically. However, it isn’t updated automatically on Craigslist content. If you haven’t republished a flyer in the last few weeks and are using the Craigslist HTML, please republish to take advantage of the faster imaging loading. 

Finally, kudos to the Development Team for their great work on the infrastructure improvements.

This week, I wanted to showcase a custom theme designed by our very own design team at vFlyer. It seems only fitting, given that this month we are offering a free custom theme to the first 50 existing annual subscribers who contact us and the first 100 new annual subscribers. (For more on this promotion, click here.) I chose a theme from Donna Baker at Dickson Podley Real Estate in Monrovia, California. Donna's theme incorporates the design of her website (which is great, by the way) so that her vFlyer listings are perfectly integrated with her other web content.

While any vFlyer user can create a custom theme, and any business subscriber can create a theme using a branded header image, it makes it a lot easier to have a professional designer create a custom theme for you! If you've been considering upgrading to a vFlyer business subscription, or switching from a monthly to an annual subscription, this month is a great time to do it. I can't emphasize enough the importance of having consistent branding across your online marketing content, and this is your opportunity to get a custom branded theme for free! The promotion ends on August 31.

As always, we'll be back next Friday with another custom theme of the week, so if you've created or seen a custom theme and think it should be spotlighted, let us know by emailing support@vflyer.com.

Welcome to the future of online advertising. Don't stay silent in the crowded online marketplace. Speak up and give voice to your advertisements with our new innovative vFlyer Voice service. vFlyer Voice allows you to easily record voice narration that will play when people view your Flyers. Adding narration to your listings elevates them from simple slide shows to all-out virtual tours.

Did I mention that vFlyer Voice is incredibly easy to use? How easy, you ask? It's as simple as answering a phone call. To record your voice messages, simply enter your telephone number in the vFlyer Voice application and our system will call you and enable you to record your narration over the phone. It's really that easy.

You can record voice annotations for each photo in the slideshow or record a single message for your entire Flyer slideshow. The choice is yours. See vFlyer Voice in action...

One voice recording for each photo

One voice recording for the entire slideshow

vFlyer voice is available only to vFlyer business subscribers, so if you don't have a business subscription, upgrade today to take advantage of this groundbreaking advertising tool. Why stay quiet? Speak up and unleash the power of your listings with vFlyer Voice.

Our custom theme of the week comes to us from Olga Katon at Park Place Real Estate Services in Chicago. This is one of my favorite branded themes I've come across for a few reasons. First, I love the look of the branding: urban, edgy, and sophisticated but also fun at the same time. Second, I like how well Olga utilizes the space of the header; she includes not only the company name and logo but also the office address, phone number, and email address. Third, all the colors in the theme work really well together.

I should note that this is the third Chicago-area company that we've highlighted in our Custom Theme of the Week series (the other two being Caliendo Automotive and Vranas Properties). Chicago must be a very design-oriented city! We'll have to see if other cities (New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Boston...) can compete with Chicago in its output of great custom themes.

As always, we'll be back next Friday with another custom theme of the week, so if you've created or seen a custom theme and think it should be spotlighted, let us know by emailing support@vflyer.com.