Centers Business Management is an established Southern California retail property management, leasing and sales company. The company likes to use e-mail to announce new property listings and updates about continuing listings.

Technical efficiency.
For years, CBM relied on the inefficient "convert to html" button within the company's desktop publishing software to convert property brochures into e-mailable "html" flyers. We put html in quotes, because the result is not a crafted html page but merely a huge image -- and a fuzzy one at that. Not only was the quality lacking, the image took an inordinate amount of time to load, even when using a high-speed connection. So CBM asked Pixel Relish to design and build a custom, flexible template that would better display the ads -- and that CBM could operate in-house through the online mass e-mail service, bronto.com, to which it already subscribed.

Consistent company image.
Pixel Relish drew upon the palette and design it created a few months earlier for CBM's web site in designing the e-mail template. However, rather than simply copying the masthead area of the web site, we designed a subtle sense of it for the e-mails to frame, rather than compete with, the meat of the message, which of course is the property listing and its relevant contact information.

Flexible template design.
In looking over old CBM property listing flyers, we saw that the amount of detail agents wanted to include varied widely from property to property. Sometimes only a few details (location, square footage, contact info) were included, while other flyers noted as well detail about the location and its surrounding area. So we designed a two-column text area: if there's little to say, only one column is used. In the sample at right, you see both columns in action.

Layperson implementation of subsequent ads.
CBM e-mails out roughly five property announcements a week. Though we could easily handle the volume and quick turn-around, CBM had people on salary with the time to coordinate things. So for the data entry person we created in CBM's account at bronto.com a simple question-and-answer form that drops formatted text into the template; no html knowledge is required. The data entry takes less than 10 minutes per ad. For the graphics person, who was familiar with Photoshop but by no means an expert, we created a master image file for each image that varies per ad (property photo, retailer logos, etc.). The master artwork has all airbrush, screening and other effects imbedded into it, so all the in-house person need do is drop in the relevant image, then resave it to the relevant flyer (again, via bronto.com). We tutored the in-house person regarding the master files and continue to review all flyers (we're on the e-mailing list) and offer suggestions and assistance when needed.

See also...
Pixel Relish also designed CBM's web site, cbm1.com, which you'll also find featured in our portfolio.

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