Banner

This banner is displayed at the top of every issue of your newsletter. The masthead can contain any relevant logos and images. Customers are welcome to use a standard template, design their own, or have the VR staff create one for them, free of charge.

Date

The date of publication is automatically displayed in every issue.

Product Line

The name of the relevant product line is displayed above each article. Only customers that are signed up to receive that specific line will see that article in their newsletter. Articles of general interest are not filed under a line; instead, they are sent out to the entire subscriber list under a heading displaying your organization's name.

Picture

Each article has a corresponding image. You may chose to include pictures of products, training, logos, or clip art. Animations can also be inserted into the newsletter. Images should be in .JPG or .GIF format.

Headline

The headline is displayed in a larger font, right above the article. The headline is also used to search for articles that were written in the past.

Article

The body of your article goes here. When composing an article, you can chose different fonts and colors, the size of the text, and how the text will be justified. The Rich Text Editor also includes spell-check and many other features.

Reminders

The space for any reminders relating to products within product lines.

Staff

The newsletter displays your organization's staff information in each issue. This enables readers to get in quick contact with you, especially if they have a question or comment pertaining to your newsletter.

Lines

All of the product lines that your newsletter has are displayed at the bottom of each issue. Readers can click on the links to access each company's website.

Footer

Name and address of publisher with un-subscribe link.

Newsletter Publishing System

Welcome to the Virtual Representative Web Site.

This straightforward system enables you to simply add the three C’s to your business:

• Communications – Get your messages out
• Control – Easily manage who gets what message
• Consistency – Simple enough to do regularly

The Virtual Representative adds an easily managed e-mail based newsletter system to your business.

With VR, you will deliver controlled communication, to your network of contacts, simply and easily. It was originated by a frustrated sales rep who needed to be more time efficient and more effective getting the right sales messages to the right dealers and salespeople.

The Virtual Newsletter was created to simplify and professionalize this process for thousands of businesses like yours. We've learned from our own experiences and solved our communications needs with this easy-to-administer newsletter format.

Here is our version's look and feel. Please scroll over the example and see how each element is fully controlled by you. Yours can look however you wish. The Virtual Newsletter engine gives you the simple tools to get your message out, to your audience, whenever you want.

About Us

The stroke of genius behind Virtual Representative occurred while manufacturer’s rep, Steve Zaboji, was logging long hours of "windshield time". Steve found his time eaten up with territory travel and less spent on meaningful sales communications. Yet his manufacturers were introducing newer, more exciting products at an ever-increasing pace.

Steve longed for a way to easily "push" information to his dealers with valuable product features and their benefits so he could cover his entire territory with a "click" of a keyboard. Then it hit him! An electronic newsletter could be set up to easily accept pictures and copy, and with a "1-click-connection" access additional links or websites for added info. He could push that out to his dealers on a regular basis.

Steve liked the idea so much that he assembled an experienced team to construct exactly that and Virtual Newsletters were born. Once his dealers got in the habit of looking to his Virtual Newsletter for the latest sales tips and product info, sales grew and expenses decreased.

Here are some symptoms Steve found in his business and led to Virtual Newsletter as the perfect solution. Which of these factors do you find in your business?

• Profit squeeze. Your cost of business keeps rising, yet new competition and the fear of losing business prevents you from raising your prices.
• Increased client expectations. Your vendors AND your customers both expect more, maybe even questioning your value. To survive, you need to add value to build loyalty and strengthen your relationships.
• There's no time for extended learning curves. Business is changing fast and the stakes are too high to use anything other than proven tools that can be quickly and easily put into regular use.

For Steve's company to survive in the competitive, fast-moving consumer electronics field, they had to go outside the box to find a way to decrease expenses and increase communication power. Virtual Representative hit the nail on the head - delivering valuable benefits to the manufacturers they represented and the retailers they served.

Virtual Representative is a highly targeted marketing communications system that efficiently enables you to deliver timely, relevant information – to drive sales – without doing all the driving.

Here are some of the ways this system helped Steve's dealers, large and small:

• More immediate sales thanks to quicker information
• Greater future sales through better planning
• Faster turns means more turns
• More immediate training = better sales
• Faster roll out of new products

Virtual Representative can transform your business like it transformed Steve's. It will lead you in healthy, profitable, new directions without jeopardizing other aspects of your business that are working well.

The Virtual Representative team has built this system from the ground up, and they are available to walk you through the process. VR is straightforward to put in place. Once you do, it delivers immediate benefits to you and to your business relationships.

Why a Newsletter?

Newsletters have been a popular marketing and sales tool for a long time but they could be painful to create on a regular basis. Add in the time and money it takes to write, lay out, produce, print and mail – and it adds up to a significant challenge. Traditional newsletters fade away after just a few issues… victims of too much work, and too little return for too much money. Virtual Newsletters make it a brand new ballgame.

Newsletter marketing has always been a great idea for independent sales, marketing, manufacturing, professional and consulting firms. Newsletters let you target your message, provide helpful, timely information, and keep in constant touch with clients, prospects, and marketing partners.

But because of challenges like those listed above, only the largest and richest global corporations have had the resources and dedicated staff needed to produce, print, and distribute printed newsletters. Many firms also found to their surprise and frustration, that early digital newsletter solutions presented their own set of challenges.

What's different now?

The Virtual Representative enables firms of all sizes to keep in touch with their markets without the financial burden and physical delays of page layout, printing, addressing, and mailing. And with The Virtual Representative, delivery is immediate and powerfully present on their screen.

The Virtual Representative "engine" is engineered to clearly walk you through the set-up process and enable you to maintain an ongoing presence with your market. It also customizes the contents of each recipient's newsletter - automatically! Each recipient's newsletter contains only what you choose to be appropriate and relevant to them.

Once you are set up, the content you create is automatically filtered, with no further action on your part. Your Virtual Newsletter engine is now ready for simple, effective distribution with new information, whenever you want.

Get started by signing up now!

Why the VR?

The Virtual Representative is much more than just another e-Newsletter. It is constructed with unique capabilities and functions that make it a more powerful tool than traditional e-Newsletters. It is geared to drive your sales via knowledge and education. We equip you to be the driving force.

Virtual Newsletter Attributes

VR allows for feedback and response with your audience, and it's easy on the eyes – combining graphics and copy in a quickly readable format.

This web-based newsletter publishing system is made possible by the digital revolution that has dramatically changed our world. The Virtual Representative puts our unique e-publishing system at your fingertips:

• Highly efficient
• Easy to use
• Makes you instantly responsive to business needs
• Gives you a professional image

These benefits are immediately visible and instantly make you more competitive in your marketplace.

Newsletters – to the power of You.

You control the content – for each subscriber.

You control the subscriber list – for each topic.

You control the frequency – as often as you wish.

Simply, easily, controllably

Subscriber-Tailored Newsletters.

Each subscriber receives only information that is relevant to them. At sign-up, subscribers select the product lines or topics they want to know more about. You still have control – even if they self-subscribed, each subscription gets validated by your firm.

Every time you publish your VR newsletter, each subscriber gets their customized version, because VR automatically sends only selected product or topic information to the subscriber. VR also automatically reconfigures the layout of the newsletter in order to keep the appearance clean and symmetrical. VR makes your firm look more professional, sound knowledgeable and communicate like a pro.

Simplicity.

Type directly – or Drag and Drop.

Composing the content and publishing it in your VR is easy. You can either type copy directly into the VR's RichText editor, or you can drag-and-drop from another source. Your articles and their accompanying images are securely stored on VR's server, so you have guaranteed access to them whenever you need.

VR's layout is perfect for today's high-speed life-style. No one wants to pour through another lengthy document or e-mail. VR is clean and organized, giving your newsletter a polished look. The symmetrical layout has been designed to be inviting and easy to read. The simple design communicates efficiently and makes it effortless for you to create good-looking customized newsletters.

Sharing. VR makes it easy for organizations in the same industry or with similar interests to share articles. If you wish, VR Publishers from across the country can access all of the voluntarily shared articles in the database and add them to their newsletters. The sharing option allows for better communication across industries, and is a great way for territorial organizations like manufacturer's representatives to help each other out.

Statistics. VR is constructed to give you access to meaningful statistical feedback to learn who is reading which parts of your newsletter. This helps you consistently improve your VR impact and success.

Support. The VR staff is available Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm EST to support you by phone or email. The VR website also has many useful materials. A detailed user manual is available to help you with the process of maintaining your subscriber database, composing articles and publishing.

Straightforward Pricing. There is no additional charge for subscriber lists of less than 10,000 e-mail addresses. One monthly fee provides all users with the same premium features. There are no limits on the number of subscribers, emails, product lines, articles, images or links. Everything is included, along with friendly support from the VR staff.

Easy Publishing Steps

The Virtual Representative resides on our dedicated server and is accessible from any computer that has access to the Internet. Your ability to publish your VR newsletter, using our proprietary system, is enabled simply by your username and password.

Once you log in you will land on VR's Function page where you can choose whatever specific task you wish to work on. The choices are:

• Add/Edit Staff
• Add/Edit Subscribers
• Add/Edit Lines
• Add/Edit Articles
• Add/Edit Reminders
• Compose/Publish Newsletter
• Upload New Masthead
• View Subscribers Sorted by Name
• View Subscribers Sorted by Email Address
• View Subscribers Sorted by Organization
• View Subscribers Sorted by Subscription Date
• Purge Deleted Subscribers

First – complete your VR newsletter set-up phase:

• input the names of your staff members
• input your line, header or topic categories
• input your subscribers
• input the top banner (your company's identity and/or art work at the top)

Now you are ready to write and save articles and reminders (small, imageless articles which span the entire width of the newsletter - see sample to the left).

When you want to Publish, just enter the Compose/Publish Newsletter section and drag and drop the articles in the order that you would like to see them in your newsletter.

IMPORTANT NOTE: At the time you sign up a subscriber, you have the opportunity, via a set of corresponding check boxes, to custom tailor the content of each subscriber's newsletter. When you publish, the VR engine will auto-sort each of your subscriber's issues – meaning they will only see those parts of the newsletter prescribed by you. For more detail, please review our newsletter page that easily explains each section.

How much does it cost to keep in touch using the Virtual Representative?

If the total number of subscribers to your newsletter is less than 10,000, there are only two fees: The Set-up Fee and the Monthly Fee

Set-up Fee

The one-time initial set-up fee is $350 (US). It includes the creation of your account, VR's assistance creating the banner at the top of your newsletter, setting up content categories (i.e., product lines), and more.

Monthly Fee

The monthly fee for The Virtual Representative is $150 (US). The fee provides you with unlimited use of the VR Newsletter engine with a subscriber list(s) of up to 10,000 email addresses. This entitles you to:

Add up to 10,000 subscribers. You may enter up to 10,000 names and e-mail addresses.

Send unlimited issues. You may publish your newsletter as frequently as you choose.

Write unlimited articles. You can write and save articles as you desire, and upload a different graphic to accompany each article. If desired, you may participate in our Article Share feature, which allows you to reuse articles prepared by others in your field, and allow them to use articles you've written.

Links. You may also include as many links to other websites or documents, such as PDF documents, as you choose.

Payment plans and discounts

We invoice for the next month's service at the end of each prior month. You can choose to pay month-to-month, or you can take advantage of our advance payment discounts:

• Quarterly payment discount. 5% discount for the convenience of pre-paying quarterly, i.e., 3 months at a time.
• Yearly payment discount. We offer a 10% discount for prepaying a year in advance.

Payment options

You may submit payments by check, Visa, Mastercard, or PayPal.

Click to get started, or contact us by phone or e-mail.

Frequently Asked Questions about the Virtual Reresentative

Why should I publish a newsletter?

The Top 8 reasons to publish a newsletter include:

• Inform channel partners about new products
• Share sales and installation tips
• Announce upcoming sales promotions
• Introduce new staff members
• Discuss trends, challenges, and upcoming events
• Maintain interest in otherwise-overlooked products
• Express appreciation for the support of others
• Build familiarity and loyalty through constant communications

What makes today's newsletters different?

Digital marketing makes target marketing and constant visibility easier, faster, and more effective, than ever before. You can now instantly communicate customized information, tailored to each recipient. You can build familiarity and loyalty based on meaningful, customized information, for a fraction of the time and money required by previous solutions. You can set up the program and send your first issue the day you decide to begin.

What should I look for in a newsletter?

The three most important criteria include:

• Ease of setup and use. The system must be easy to set up and easy to use on a routine basis. The system must be delegatable.
• Personalized content. Once size no longer fits all. Each copy must contain only information appropriate for each recipient.
• No hidden costs. Costs should remain the same, regardless of mailing frequency or the size of your mailing list.

How much do I need to know about graphic design?

None. We can help you get started by creating a simple banner, or graphic, for the top of your newsletter. Or, you can use the artwork you use on your business card or website. Later, you can update the artwork. Each article can contain relevant photographs. You can usually obtain these for free from your vendor's websites.

How much writing experience do I need?

The Virtual Representative's format puts a premium on conciseness.

We recommend limiting articles to between 50 and 100 words highlighting a few of the features and benefits associated with each of the products or services you want to feature. (NOTE: this paragraph contain 49 words!) This is fewer words than you typically speak in a minute or two! As an option, you can base all, or part, of each issue on articles other Virtual Representative publishers have written and agreed to share. You can also choose to make your articles available to others.

What sort of help is available?

Our Start-Up Guide walks you through the process of setting up your first issue. We are also available for telephone and e-mail technical and editorial assistance. In addition, Roger C. Parker, author of 38 books that have sold over 1.6 million copies, is the Virtual Representative�s Writing Coach.

How often should I publish my newsletter?

Success is based on consistency. Consistency is more important than the number of articles in each issue, or their length of the articles. Best results occur when you on the same day each week. This establishes magazine-like consistency and familiarity. Consistency builds anticipation. Your newsletter become part of the recipient's routine. Many begin on a twice a month basis, then step-up to weekly publication.

How do I customize each recipient's newsletter?

Each newsletter automatically targets each issue. When adding subscribers, you determine which categories of information—typically product lines—will be included in the newsletters you send them. Different contents can be targeted to different individuals within organizations. This is a one-time, "set and forget," task that you can later update.

What does it take to get started?

The easiest way to get started is to pick up the phone and tell us, "I'm ready!" Or, you can sign up now. We will send you, via e-mail, our start-up guide, and an invoice for $350, the first month's fee. Upon receipt of payment, we will send you a user name and password, so you can get started. You may pay via check, credit card, or PayPal. The Virtual Representative system will then prompt you as you set up your newsletter and assemble your mailing list.

How much does it cost each month?

Cost is just $150 a month, all inclusive.

Ready to begin? Sign up now to get started!

Contact Us

Please use the form below so that we may contact you at a time convenient for you to discuss your e-mail publishing requirements.

We would like to know some more about your business so we can help you get maximum benefit from your Virtual Representative newsletter.

Telephone: 555-1212

Mailing Address: