Our custom theme of the week comes from Stacie Linka at Big Bear Cabins, a vacation rental company in Big Bear Lake, California. Big Bear Cabins has a stellar website and a well-defined brand that fits perfectly with the Big Bear Lake setting. Stacie’s theme nicely matches the website and works well with the excellent cabin photos she includes in her flyers.

In vacation rentals, you’re selling not just a short stay in a house but the whole idea of a place, and Big Bear Cabins’s theme helps convey the sense of the rustic comfort of Big Bear Lake. Nicely done, Stacie!

As the holidays are almost upon us, I’ll be highlighting some seasonal and holiday themed flyers in next week’s post. If you have a winter or holiday theme that you want showcased, feel free send it to us at support@vflyer.com.

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.

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.

Happy Friday! Our custom theme of the week comes from Astrid Zelaya, Consultant at Rent-One. This is such a well-composed theme where each aspect – the header image, background image, theme colors, and the other design elements – works beautifully with all the others. Also, Astrid takes advantage of our Showcase layout for Craigslist (see picture below), one of 10 Craigslist layouts available to business subscribers when they use a custom theme (and my personal favorite).

This Flyer is also a good example of a commercial real estate ad created through the vFlyer application. vFlyer now offers templates for office, industrial, and retail space, commercial land, shopping centers, and multi-unit buildings. The combination of vFlyer’s branding capabilities and these new categories is great news for all you commercial brokers out there.

Fantastic custom theme, Astrid! Keep up the good work!

If you have a vFlyer account and you haven’t yet created a custom theme, give it a try this weekend. You can create a custom theme in literally 5 minutes, and it will give you access to features of the vFlyer service that you couldn’t access before. Here’s a video to get you started.

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.

Beginning July 1, all California Realtors will need to include their CA DRE license number on any “solicitation materials intended to be the first point of contact with consumers,” as stated in a bill passed by the California State Senate (SB 1461). While the new amendment excludes electronic media, since vFlyer also provides print content for our users, we wanted to make sure that they had a way to include their DRE license number on their Flyers. That’s why we introduced an Additional Info field in the Account Profile, where you can enter not only your CA DRE license number but also other information, such as a mobile phone number. And given that different states have different laws regarding real estate advertising, the Additional Info field gives users more flexibility in terms of what information gets included in their Flyers and Account Profile.

You can find the Additional Info field on your Account page. Any text you enter in this field will appear in the Contact Information section of your Flyers (see images below).

Thanks to Chris Crane at Red Oak Realty, Kristine Johnson at Gallagher & Lindsey Realtors, and Jason Born of Signature Realty & Mortgage, Inc., for providing us with useful feedback on the new California law.

If you need assistance, call or email vFlyer Support.

We’re introducing a new blog feature, the “Custom Theme of the Week”. We have so many great custom themes that our members have created using the Theme Editor and their own creativity and resourcefulness, we decided we had to show them off to the rest of the world. This week’s custom theme is from Ryan Hinricher at InvestorNation. Ryan made great use of an uploaded background image and a header image that’s seamlessly integrated with the background. I especially like the upward-pointing arrow in the logo and the contrast of white and blue between the header and background; it gives me a whole new way of thinking about what’s possible with the Theme Editor. Everyone on my team is quite impressed by this custom theme. Nice work, Ryan!

vFlyer’s Theme Editor enables any user to create his or her own custom theme and any business subscriber to upload a branded header image to a theme. It’s a great way of making your Flyers stand out from the rest, and the branding capabilities for business subscribers provide a vehicle for putting your brand front and center on your Flyers. For a useful introduction to creating and using custom themes, take a look at this series of short video tutorials on our website.

We expect to post a new theme every Friday, so keep an eye out for more fantastic custom themes. And if you’ve created a custom theme and think it should be spotlighted, let us know by emailing support@vflyer.com!

The last few weeks have been busy at vFlyer and I wanted to fill you in on some of the great new features we’ve introduced in that time. There are four new features and capabilities in particular that I want to highlight:

First, we added 8 new Craigslist layouts for our vFlyer business subscribers when you publish a Flyer using a custom theme. Now you can choose how your flyers will look on Craigslist. You want bigger photos? Check. You want creative and attractive layouts? Check. See for yourself… New Craigslist Layouts. Also, visit the vFlyer Support Wiki for information on how to use these new Craigslist Layouts.

Second, we enhanced our print content for our vFlyer business subscribers. Now when you print a Flyer that uses a custom theme, you will get a whole second page full of photos. This feature was added due to the popular demand of our users. You see… we do actually listen to you. There are more print layouts on the way.

Third, we added a new narrow blog layout for our vFlyer business subscribers. The blog layout is 480 pixels wide and thus fits most major blog sites including Active Rain and Localism. When you publish a flyer with a custom theme, you can access the blog layout HTML by selecting Blog from the HTML drop-down menu. Then all you have to do is copy and paste the HTML to the blog of your choice. It’s that easy!

Last but not least, you can now share your Flyers on Twitter. When you publish a Flyer, a Share on Twitter link will appear under the More Options section on the right side of the Publish Successful page. We have even created a special shortened URL for Twitter that fits well within the 140 character limit. If you want to get the word out about your Flyer, use Twitter and you can connect with millions of others. For more information on the rapidly increasing popularity of Twitter, check out this article from TechCrunch.

We hope you enjoy these new features. As we continue to enhance our services to make vFlyer better and better, feel free to offer any suggestions you have on how we can make vFlyer work best for you. Send your feedback to support@vflyer.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

I am pleased to announced the first of many service releases to support members outside the U.S. This release focuses on the needs of Canadian members. First, we added support for Canadian addresses and currency. Second, we added support for automatic submission of Canadian listings to Backpage.com and Vast.com. We expect to add more partner sites for Canadian listings in the coming months. Third, we updated our registration process to enable Canadian users to enter their postal code and timezone so that we can provide traffic reports and display times on your listings accurately. I am certain that we will receive more suggestions from our new and existing Canadian members. Thanks in advance.

Here is an example of one of the first published flyers with the new Canadian support:

We’ve gotten a number of requests from our members over the last few months for information about vFlyer Agency Edition, so I wanted to write a post that explains what vFlyer Agency Edition is and how it can benefit vFlyer users.

vFlyer Agency Edition is an account configuration that allows real estate agencies, property management companies, marketing firms, and other organizations that require multiple accounts to create and assign sub-accounts, which are essentially normal vFlyer accounts that are under the management of a main account. The manager and any assistants of the main account can access all sub-accounts via a drop-down list and have the power to assign these sub-accounts to to others so that they can create, edit, and publish content in them. Those assigned to sub-accounts will only have access to the sub-account to which they are assigned.

The main benefits of vFlyer Agency Edition in these scenarios are:

1. You can assign sub-accounts to your employees, team members, or clients for less than what it would cost to set up stand-alone vFlyer accounts for each of them.

2. As the account manager, you have the ability to coordinate and oversee the content in each sub-account so that, for instance, you could have all the sub-accounts use a custom branded Flyer theme you created in the main account to maintain consistency across your company’s or organization’s listings.

vFlyer Agency Edition is ideal for:

1. Real Estate Agencies and Broker Offices
2. Auto Dealership Groups
3. Property Management Companies
4. Mortgage Brokers advertising Realtor listings
5. Marketing and Graphic Design Firms

vFlyer Agency Edition is also a great tool for individual vFlyer members and small companies who have different categories of listings that they want to keep separate from each other. For instance, if you are a Realtor marketing properties in different locations, or properties both for sale and for rent, you could create a sub-account for each that you could access from your main account. Not only does this allow you to manage your listings more easily, it also gives you a separate Account Profile for each sub-account so that viewers of each Account Profile only see the listings you want them to see.

vFlyer Agency Edition is available to vFlyer Premium and vFlyer Professional members.

There is no additional charge for unassigned sub-accounts, which share the Flyer allocation of the main account. In other words, if you have a vFlyer Professional account and you create four sub-accounts, those four sub-accounts as well as the main account all pull from the same allocation of 125 available Active Flyers.

Assigned sub-accounts, on the other hand, have their own allocation of Flyers and are charged based on this allocation. The main account manager can specify the subscription plan associate with each sub-account. Typically, the sub-accounts are discounted at 20% off the normal subscription price. The manager of the main account can specify whether the main account is billed for assigned sub-accounts or the individual sub-account user is billed directly for his or her sub-account.

To learn more about vFlyer Agency Edition, send us an email at sales@vflyer.com.

We’re excited to announce that you can now search for Flyers in your vFlyer account by title, price, street address, city, state, and zip code! This new search feature will hopefully make locating individual Flyers much easier, especially for those of you with dozens of listings to manage.

On your Flyers page, you’ll now see a Search Options link. Clicking this link will bring up a search field and a drop-down menu where you can select the search criteria (whether you want to search by title, price, etc.). You can also specify whether you want to search all of your listings or just active, draft, or expired listings.

Happy Searching!

Check Out These Custom Branded Flyers! It’s been a little over a week now since the release of our new Theme Editor and it’s been really fun to see all the great custom Flyer themes that our members have created in that time. In this post, we’ve decided to share with you some of the spectacular branded themes we’ve seen. Take a look:

Stacey Wilson at George & Co., Realtors

Leonardo Pareja at Express Realty Services LLC 

Urbane Apartments

Patrick and Julie Essig at Vine Property Group

This branded header was designed by graphic designer Anna Hatcher

Matt Jerome at Minnesota Rental Houses

Aren’t they cool? The great thing about the new Theme Editor is that it opens up the possibilities for customizing the design of your Flyers and makes putting your branding front and center on your Flyers easier than ever, as these examples show.

As I wrote last week, vFlyer Starter members and above can upload custom header images to the Theme Editor, create custom themes with them, and use those custom themes in their Flyers. It’s a fantastic new feature that makes the vFlyer service even more valuable to anyone who wants to distinguish his or her online marketing content from the rest.

Finally, I also want to mention that, with our introduction of over 25 new real estate broker themes, we’ve seen a large number of our members create Flyers using these themes. We love a little competition here and there so we’ve been keeping track of how many of each broker theme have been used by our members. The leader? Alain Pinel Real Estate, followed by RE/MAX, Keller Williams, Coldwell Banker, and Century 21. Congratulations to Alain Pinel! Now we’ll see if one of the other brokers can take the top spot in the next week…

Earlier this week, vFlyer launched its new Theme Editor, which allows vFlyer business subscribers not only to customize the colors, fonts, and background patterns of their Flyers but, more importantly, to upload custom branded header images to them. In other words, any vFlyer Starter member or above can add his or her branding to the Flyers in the account… at no extra cost! This is a huge benefit to all you vFlyer business subscribers because it allows you to personalize your Flyers and streamline them with your websites and other marketing content in a way that wasn’t possible before.

In addition to the option of uploading a custom header image, you can also choose from over 25 new broker themes including ERA, GMAC Real Estate, Realty Executives, EXIT Realty, Long & Foster, and many others, or create a text header in the Theme Editor. Also, these 25+ broker themes are themselves customizable, so you can change them to your liking as well.

To create a custom header image, all you need is an image editing program on your computer, whether it be PhotoShop, MS Paint, or another program. What a number of our members are doing is taking a screen shot of their websites, cropping the portion of the image they want to use in the header, and then adjusting the image dimensions. The ideal dimensions of custom headers are 754 x 82 pixels. In your custom header, you can include your logo, a photograph of yourself, graphics from your website… you name it. If you aren’t able to create your own custom header image (or you want a professional designer to do it for you), you could have a graphic designer do it or alternately, vFlyer could create one for you for just $99 through the end of November. Here is an example of one that we created to match this member’s website.

We are really excited about the new Theme Editor because it makes vFlyer immensely more valuable to our users, giving you all expanded capabilities to customize your Flyers. If you try out the Theme Editor and have some comments about it, let us know! You can email your comments to support@vflyer.com. And if you’re especially proud of a custom theme you created, we’d love to see it! Feel free to send a link to a Flyer that uses the custom theme.

By popular demand, we’ve introduced a new Print Flyer function on all vFlyer landing pages. This allows viewers of any vFlyer to print a simplified version of the Flyer with the title, summary information, main photo and up to four gallery photos, location information, map, contact information, and photo and logos. This means that if you’re a real estate agent and a potential buyer finds one of your vFlyers through one of our partner marketplaces such as Trulia, that person can simply click the Print Flyer link instead of having to try to print the landing page itself (which isn’t set up to be printed) or (dare I say) write down the necessary information for the listing. In other words, this new Print Flyer link makes your vFlyer landing pages that much more functional and valuable to both you and the viewers of your vFlyers. And isn’t that the whole idea?

Here’s an example of the new print version: