Funny, but sometimes technology pundits and science writers forget to tell us when one of those great breakthroughs we have been waiting for actually happens. There has been a lot of talk in the last decade or so about the coming digital convergence, and how all manner of communications channels will, well, converge! It may not be as newsworthy as celebrity gossip, but the fact that all cell phone services are now digital really did help that elusive convergence happen in the here and now. It means that right here, right now, you have a great mobile tool to use with your online fax service.

Before mobile phone service was digitized, sending a fax via your cell phone was more than a bit complicated. Dealing with analog circuits was complicated, period, but other communications advances like faster networks and more powerful phones have helped considerably. By leveraging some of the features of your phone with those of your online fax service, you really do have a virtual office in your hands.

What you need

In addition to the phone, of course, you will need e-mail access (with a mail app or via a Web browser) as well as an online fax account. It is dead simple getting one of those, and there are a number of leading firms from which to choose. Make sure you know how much online faxing your firm really needs before choosing a plan, as the costs vary dramatically. You can get bare bones service for low or no cost (if you don’t mind ads on your cover sheets), or you can get fee-based monthly and even annual plans that work out to pennies per page, if you use that much. Get the right fit, and if need be, try out the service with a company that will give you a refund after, say, 30 days if it doesn’t work out.

Naturally, you are not going to pull off online faxing unless your cell phone plan includes Internet access, so get it if you need it. Your phone also needs a camera for this to work, and most phones made in the last couple of years have them, except for some stripped down throwaway models sold in convenience stores. (Some low-price phones now have them, too.) The better the camera, the better the results of your cell phone faxing.

How to proceed

Put the document(s) that you want to fax flat on a well-lit surface. Make certain you fully frame the document in the viewfinder or the phone’s image display. You may need to take several shots depending on the size of the document and the distance from which you are snapping your pics. Phone camera quality varies considerably, so in addition to getting good light and good distance, ensure that you are holding the camera steady for best results. Your phone camera may even have adjustment tools, so use the highest resolution and largest framing options (full screen). If there is a zoom lens, experiment with it to get the best possible shots, remembering that you may have to take more shots if you take ones that are close up.

You can also improve the quality of camera photos to near-scanned quality with one of the Web applications made for the purpose (Qipit was an early entrant in the field). Most are free for the using after signing up with a valid e-mail address. Whether on your phone itself or at the online image service, you will want to convert your document to a PDF (Portable Document Format) file. This will be easier for the various hardware and software tools along the way (phone service, online fax service, recipient’s fax machine) to deal with.

Make the call

Create a new e-mail and add the PDF file as an attachment, just as you would do at your desk. If there are several attachments, and the involved services allow this, attach them all. If not, send a series of e-mails, correctly labeled, with one attachment each. You want to ensure that the recipient can put the multi-part document back together again. Send the e-mail as you normally would via your online fax service. The e-mail(s) will be processed and the resulting fax(es) will come out of the recipient’s fax machine.

Why not just send an e-mail? The answer is that not everyone has e-mail, especially if you do business overseas. Fax machines still number in the hundreds of millions, so being able to reach them from your office, and now your mobile phone, could be a very smart business move. Perhaps one day everyone will dispense with faxing, but honestly, it will not be any time soon. You should be prepared to use online faxing in every possible way that can give you an edge in a competitive world economy.

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If you don’t think you need an online fax service because (a) you have a fax machine or (b) you always use e-mail, phones or the Internet, then you might need to back up a step or two and read the articles about why fax technology still survives (and where). The fact of the fax, frankly, is that it is still used in many areas where people cannot get an Internet provider, such as large swaths of Africa and Asia. Whether you use a fax machine or not, plenty of people do. If they represent potential customers of yours, you are missing possible sales. It does not matter what you use to connect with other folks that are totally plugged into the new communications channels. What matters is having a way to connect to all the others who rely on fax machines.

So, now that you are back from reading up on why you really do need an online fax service, let us take a look at the real-world scenario for how to decide on a service. There are many services available with very different ranges of offerings and different ideas on what kind of service and features you need. There is not just a single reputable, reasonably-priced service, but a number of them, run by honest and hardworking people. By the same token, there are bound to be a number of scammers and disreputable folks running online fax firms, too. The best way to figure out what the right service is for you and your needs is to take advantage of the various free trial offers.

Make a plan

Before you even hit the search engines to find out where the free offers are for the most positively reviewed online fax services, you need to have a clear picture of your individual and/or corporate fax use. Since most services measure in- and out-bound traffic by the month, you should make sure your own usage figures are for 30-day periods. You also need to account for your use (or not) of cover pages, the kinds of attachments you will send, the location (local, national, international) of the recipients and other particulars of your use. This is the only way to control the cost variables and compare apples to apples at the end of the test period(s).

Now you are ready to go find out where the free trial offers are located. Search on the obvious terms and phrases and start compiling a list. Make sure to note the charges, whether per-page or per month, as well as any over-limit charges for the firms that offer a set number of in/out pages per month. Do not forget to add information in your growing collection of online fax service notes about customer service offerings (chat, phone, e-mail) and the hours they are available. Once you have a complete description of how each firm operates and what they offer, you can start your test drives.

Get different opinions

Now, you probably do not have time to do a 30-day trial for all five or six (or 10) online fax services you listed, and this is not necessary, either. Get several different employees, if they are available (or family if you work at home), to start using different services to do normal daily faxing. Keep notes about how the service works, how long it takes, the quality of the documents arriving to the recipient and so on. As the days go by, you will begin to collect a great deal of information on the different firms and should start to get a picture of the leading ones. The inferior offerings will also be evident early on, and they can be eliminated from your list of possible winners.

Make sure that all the different kinds of attachments that you need to send are translated and delivered correctly. Check with the recipient after each one is sent, to ensure that the Excel spreadsheet came out right or the Word document arrived properly formatted. Most leading services support the major office applications and graphics formats, but real-world testing is the best way to confirm that your employees and customers are getting what they need from the service.

Bottom line

It should not take more than a week or so for a few winners to start separating themselves from the pack. You will find the best services smooth, transparent, simple to use and hard to confuse. Take the several best performers and crunch the numbers for their costs and features, and you will likely arrive at one or two perfect fits. Talk to the other users at your firm (if any), and your fax-machine-using recipients, about which service worked the best. In case of ties, you can use your favorite tie-breaker (coin flip, rock-scissors-paper, etc.) and still feel pretty good about whichever service gets the nod.

MetroFax is a leader in fax to email service solutions for any sized business. Less expensive and more reliable than traditional fax services – you’ll enjoy the convenience and well as the cost. Visit us today for more information on our small business and corporate fax solutions

The subject line matters a lot when we are sending an email. It takes very little time to make a subject line convince a reader to open a message and read what the email is all about.

Whenever you write an email to someone, just know that you are in competition for attention with spam and other unwarranted emails. Therefore, having a poor first impression immediately sinks you down the pecking order.

As long as you are writing a marketing email to someone who does not know you, he will be excused if he deleted your message to the trash items folder without thinking twice. Even your good selling prowess will fail you.

The trick around this is to come up with a subject line that will get the person reading his inbox to find himself opening the email simply because you were captivating. These three techniques will show you how.

Giving out a special offer will work well. People like to be given gifts and special treatment. Therefore, these will get the attention of the person browsing through this inbox. There is no doubt that the more unique an offer sounds, the more enticing it will be to the person reading the emails.

You should be able to announce your choicest of benefits. This is what will keep the person focused on your email because it is what will attract him more to keep him interested in reading it.

By the time you are sending that email to somebody, you have probably thought about what that person likes. You will score double points if you are able to anticipate correctly, what that person is expecting and reproduce the key idea in your email.

In marketing, the true worth of your subject line and how effective it is depends on the response you get form people. You need to monitor carefully the progress.

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Spend a little time searching the Web for stories on fax technology, and you will run into many articles that proclaim the death of the fax machine, or of fax technology completely (including online faxing). These predictions are being made, not by companies with a vested interest in e-mail or cloud computing, but by independent analysts and leading computer publications. In fact, Computerworld magazine also proclaimed the death of the fax machine.

That was in the summer of 2005.

Five years on, we see this has not occurred. Now, it is true that the fax machine is no longer the central, staple technology item in the U.S. and other high-tech nations, although most companies still have operating faxes today. It is important to realize, too, that the world does not advance in lockstep technologically, and that some areas (Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe) will be some distance behind that cutting-edge curve and will still be using fax machines for years to come. The challenge for businesses today is to move into the future of communications without burning all the bridges to the past, and the fax machine seems to be the connection as of now.

Demands of business

One of the major demands on businesses today is the need to archive documents for legal, tax and accounting purposes. The mountain of paper produced by faxes has to be reviewed, replied to, distributed and then stored in case they are needed again in the future. This takes huge amounts of real estate, and it is not uncommon for government agencies around the world to have entire warehouses dedicated to paper files. The obvious advantage of e-mail and online faxing is that computer storage is cheap, and getting cheaper all the time.

Today there are software tools that turn bitmapped faxes (scans, actually) into text for e-mails, word processing or other uses. To integrate these steps into a company workflow still requires a substantial investment in money, time and expertise, but before too long it will be cost-effective for all businesses of all sizes and kinds. Although nothing will really produce the 1980s dream of the paperless office, since more and more paper is used for print purposes, at least the mountains of faxes can be dispensed with over time. This will make a big environmental impact, without a doubt.

Alternatives abound

Savvy businesspeople know that the fax machine is not what’s called a demand piece of technology. Printing and copying, however, are, which is why the paperless office is still just a dream. In fact, while faxes may be decreasing, the presence of the new multifunction devices (MFDs) that combine printing, copying, faxing and scanning means more paper being used, albeit in a more effective manner. People can now buy a device that does four things, rather than four that do one thing each. This is one reason that faxing continues to be used. It is simple to do and everyone is familiar with it.

This is also the reason that IT managers and marketing people disagree with many analysts that think the fax machine is dead or dying. While IT managers are a bit more divided on the issue, marketing types realize that fax machines and faxing technology are on a two-way street. These technologies keep businesses in touch with parts of the world where Internet services are not dependable, allowing communication in both directions with documents that can be integrated with a step or two into the digital workflow.

Various reasons for faxes

Reaching the developing world is only one reason (although a big one for some companies) for firms to keep using fax machines and other types of fax communication like online faxing. The fact is, there will always be a need for alternative communications channels as a backup to the primary ones. If the corporate network goes down, the computers crash or the Internet itself bogs down to slow speed (or no speed), fax machines offer an alternative means of getting the messages in and out of a business that needs to keep moving forward.

With online faxing getting better, less costly and more capable every day, maintaining multiple channels of communication is less troublesome than ever. In addition to this, fax technology can reach into regions where dependable Internet services are not yet in place. While pundits continue to write articles about the death of faxing, clearly it is a technology that still has an important place in business, and it will be around longer than many of the people convinced of its imminent demise.

Metro Hi Speed is a leader in fax to email service solutions for any sized business. Less expensive and more reliable than traditional fax services – you’ll enjoy the convenience and well as the cost. Visit us today for more information on our small business and corporate fax solutions.

Among the many email marketing software available on the market, e-marketing is in high demand. It is the quickest, cheapest and most convenient of getting an email broadcast and an email newsletter to your target market. This aspect is very important for any business owner. It can help the owner of any business to send emails to the target customers.

Using email marketing software is a very effective marketing tool. This allows you to send creative messages, whether it is for business or personal use. The email marketing software has the capability to send emails to an extensive list of e-mail contacts. This tool is very handy especially for people who need to send newsletters, multiple client notifications, advertisements, and more.

Establishing a strong connection with your clients is one of the most effective ways of running your business. If you use e-marketing frequently, you will definitely have more sales because you would be able to preserve the relationship that you have with your clients and customers.

At the same time, a routine e-marketing newsletter signifies that you will be able to supply your customers and clients some materials or hand outs that contains information about your business’ products and services. This may be very practical for the customer. As an alternative to giving out hand outs, you will just need to give emails on consistently.

Both email broadcasts and email newsletters are a kind of e-marketing strategy. You will be able to advertise you products and services to your buyers and potential customers with no need of sending them hand outs. With this type of technology, you don’t need to spend so a lot on promoting your business.

There are plenty of firms online who offer different email strategies. The majority of these firms make it simple for you to speedily create, send & track professional looking emails that deliver results and help your business develop.

Majority of these e-marketing firms also give webinars twenty-four seven with low monthly fees. All that you have to do is to look for the finest marketing experts that can supply you with these email broadcast and email newsletter services.

Services offered by these e-marketing specialists range from Exceptional Email Delivery; Detailed Email Reporting & Statistics; Email Marketing; Email Marketing Partner; Outstanding Customer Support & Help Resources; Robust Email Creation Tools; plus many more.

E-marketing is a good way for a company to send email newsletters to their customers. With the right type of, email marketing software a company can contact and inform thousands of people about upcoming promotions and offers.