Capitalizing on Multimedia Presentations

Multimedia email presentations are being discovered by flower shop owners as tools to increase their sales and keep in touch with their customers. This technology enables them to convey ideas for floral gifts and to promote holiday offerings and other specials through narration, music, photographs and video clips.

For instance, you can create an email devoted to your wedding designs and send it whenever customers express interest in hiring you to do their wedding.

Creating affordable and dynamic email presentations can be accomplished by following these steps:

1. Pinpoint your primary goal.
   Determine what action you want your customers to take after viewing your presentation, such as asking them to send someone special a floral arrangement or a themed gift basket. Make sure your presentation is aimed at this goal.
   
2. Select a format.
   Choose how you will illustrate your presentation. You can scan photos or download them from the Internet. Just be sure you have permission to use any photographs you select. Depending on the mood or information you want to convey, you'll want to use music, narration and/or text in your presentation. Keep narration and text short and succinct. Avoid using italicized or all capital letters in text because they are difficult to read. Select interesting music that isn't overpowering or in contrast to what you're selling.
   
3. Use appropriate software.
   Microsoft PowerPoint® and Video Express® from ImageMind can be used to create your email presentation. Once your message is complete, you can save it in a runtime format that can be viewed on your customers' computers without them having to own special software. However, runtime presentation files are usually large, so email them only to customers who have expressed interest in a particular product or service.

Creating multimedia products is so easy and inexpensive today, it's no wonder that it's one of the hottest forms of advertising and promotion for small businesses.