Promoting business cost effectively with Winfax Pro<\/p>\n
By Zatni Arbi<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): Obviously, a small or new business would not
\nhave the financial power to buy space in newspapers to place
\ntheir ads, or airtime on radio or TV stations to place
\ncommercials. However, without promotion campaigns, how can they
\nmake their products or services known to prospective customers?
\nNot to worry, though. Computer technologies (what else?) provide
\ncheaper ways to make other people aware of products or services
\nthey offer. Not only SOHOs (small offices, home offices), big
\nbusinesses should also look at more cost-effective alternatives
\nto promote their products and services with the help of PCs and
\ngreat software.<\/p>\n
Recently, a client launched a business -- well, she couldn't
\nbe exactly categorized as a small business since what she was
\nstarting up was an upscale bar at a star-rated hotel. She asked
\nme to help set up her PC and modem so that it would automatically
\nfax a promotional flyer to the people on her mailing list. I
\nagreed to do it, as long as she had a legitimate copy of Winfax
\nPro. And that was the first time I met with the real prowess of
\nWinfax Pro 4.0. It was a rewarding experience, indeed.<\/p>\n
Features<\/p>\n
Winfax Pro is powerful fax software that has won award after
\naward over a long period. The entire computer industry recognizes
\nit as the most sophisticated fax software for the Windows
\nenvironment. At least until today, that is.<\/p>\n
Of course, as a fax software Winfax Pro will enable you to
\nsend a fax using your PC and your modem -- and therefore without
\nyour printer and fax machine. It will also enable you to receive
\nincoming faxes and store them on your hard disk. You can schedule
\nthe events, i.e., when your faxes should be transmitted so that
\nyou can keep your phone bill down. You can set up Winfax so that
\nit automatically lets you know if a fax comes in by playing a
\nsound file that you can choose yourself.<\/p>\n
Winfax Pro also has modules that let you create phonebooks,
\ndesign your cover pages, scan and automatically recognize your
\nincoming faxes with a built-in OCR and save it in popular file
\nformats, such as Ami Pro, WordPerfect, WordStar, and, of course,
\nASCII. A file in these formats do not gobble up as much as
\nstorage space as a fax image file does. To send out faxes, you
\ncan also scan printed documents from within Winfax Pro if you
\nhave a scanner attached to your PC.<\/p>\n
You can attach documents created in any Windows-application,
\nsuch as Winword or Ami Pro, to your fax, so that your recipient
\n-- as long as he's also running Winfax Pro on his end -- can
\nreceive a copy of the file in exactly the same format for the
\nsame application. These files will be transmitted in the binary
\nformat, though. So, for instance, I can fax my research report
\nthat I did in WordPerfect 6.0 and my colleague will receive the
\nfile that he can immediately load into his own WordPerfect 6.0.<\/p>\n
For SOHOs, Winfax Pro's most welcomed feature is perhaps its
\nability to send faxes to multiple recipients without requiring
\nattendance. It's the cost-efficient way of sending out faxed
\nflyers. What we need to do is prepare the list of the recipients,
\nprepare the pages to be faxed, set the time of operation, and
\nleave the PC and the modem on until the job is completed. Then
\nyou can look at the Send Log to see which of your intended
\nrecipients failed to receive the fax.<\/p>\n
We can also set the program to repeat transmission attempt as
\nmany times as we wish, so that it will automatically redial the
\nnumber each time it fails to transmit the fax.<\/p>\n
We can create a new list by entering all the names we want to
\ninclude in it and save it under the name that we give. Or, if we
\nalready have a database of names and fax numbers, we can just
\nimport it into Winfax Pro's phonebook.<\/p>\n
If we have more than one hundred names in the phonebook,
\nWinfax Pro requires us to distribute them into groups before
\nadding them to the list of recipients for every fax job.<\/p>\n
Winfax Pro comes with a gaggle of pre-designed cover pages.
\nChances are you'll find just what you need to spice up your
\ncommunication from its collection of cover pages.<\/p>\n
Choose the time<\/p>\n
If you use Winfax Pro to fax out your promotion flyer, you
\nshould set the fax to start sending the fax at 5 p.m. at the
\nearliest and to stop at 8 a.m., so that you can be sure the
\ntelephone line will be free during office hours. Besides, based
\non PT Telkom's policy, the phone charge is lower during this time
\n-- one pulse lasts three minutes, while during peak hours (9 a.m.
\nto 3 p.m.) one pulse lasts only two minutes.<\/p>\n
In my experience, a fax with one full page of graphics
\nnormally takes between 3 minutes 10 seconds to over 9 minutes to
\ntransmit. The long transmission time occurs when the fax
\ntransmission speed can only reach 4800 BPS, perhaps because the
\nphone line condition is bad or because the fax equipment on the
\nother end is an old one. Based on this, we can calculate that
\neach fax will cost us at least two pulses, or Rp 220 for a full
\npage of graphics and standard resolution. Text pages take less
\ntime to fax, about 2 minutes per page, and will cost you Rp 110
\nto transmit during off-peak hours (3 p.m. to 9 p.m.). Based on
\nthese figures, you can easily calculate how much your fax
\npromotion campaign will cost.<\/p>\n
If you need to scan a graphics artwork to be faxed, make sure
\nthat the resolution of the scanned image matches the fax
\ncapability, which is 200 by 200 for the \"Fine\" resolution or 200
\nby 100 for the \"Standard\" resolution. You can also import
\ngraphics files in popular format such as .PCX, .TIF, and .BMP.<\/p>\n
New versions<\/p>\n
I have learned that scanning artwork with black and white half
\ntone yields a sufficiently clear and crisp fax although
\ntransmitted in the standard resolution. Interestingly, the fax
\nviewer also has tools to touch up and clean up bitmap graphics,
\nnamely a brush and an eraser.<\/p>\n
The version I looked at is the stand-alone Winfax Pro 4.0.
\nDelrina, a company that I mentioned when I reviewed notify!
\npaging software, also had a network version that allows us to
\nsend and retrieve faxes through a networked fax\/modem.<\/p>\n
Winfax Pro 4.0 is also sold in a bundle called Communication
\nSuite 2.1. The package contains, besides the formidable fax
\nsoftware, a communication program called Wincomm Pro. However,
\nthis extra is not as spectacular as the fax core.<\/p>\n
If you don't have a scanner but you have to scan printed
\ndocuments to be faxed, Delrina also sells Winfax Scanner. The
\nspace-saving scanner, made by Fujitsu, connects to your PC
\nthrough its parallel port, and you connect your printer to
\nanother parallel port on the scanner.<\/p>\n
Now, to satisfy the users' insatiable hunger for Windows 95
\nsoftware, Delrina has already launched Winfax Pro 7.0. New to
\nthis version is the capability to fax grayscale, which we
\ncouldn't do with earlier versions. In addition, as it is a 32-bit
\nsoftware running in Win 95 environment, it is fully multitasking.
\nUnlike its predecessors, it will keep on sending faxes in the
\nbackground without slowing down your PC and regularly stopping
\nyou in your work.<\/p>\n
One thing to remember, though. When you fax your flyer to
\nsomebody, you'll be using up his fax paper, which he has to buy.
\nSo, it's extremely important to select your recipients carefully
\nto make sure the information in your flyer is useful to him.
\nBesides, never send out faxes that are not socially and ethically
\nacceptable. Please.<\/p>",
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