VerticalResponse Achieves 38% Revenue Boost In One Year

SAN FRANCISCO, April 19 /PRNewswire/ -- VerticalResponse, Inc. (http://www.verticalresponse.com), a leading provider of self-service email marketing, online survey and direct mail solutions for small businesses, today announced a year-over-year revenue growth of 38 percent from 2008 to 2009.  The company also achieved its fifth straight year of profitability in 2009. After a series of significant product developments, strategic partnerships and industry awards helped to grow its customer base, VerticalResponse has recently passed the 75,000 customer milestone.

VerticalResponse growth highlights include*:

• A 38% boost in revenue, year over year from 2008 to 2009.
• Annual customer base growth of approximately 40% to over 75,000 small businesses.
• Revenue growth of almost 400% since 2005. The company has been profitable since 2005.
• Year-over-year employee growth of 28% from 2008 to 2009.
• Doubled partner revenue from 2007 to 2009, with strategic partnerships formed in 2009 including Intuit's Partner Platform.

"The challenging economy means it's even more important for small businesses and non profits to use email marketing and survey tools to engage and connect with their customers and continue growing," said Janine Popick, CEO of VerticalResponse. "This year we're really focused on enhancing our email, survey and direct mail products; and making them even faster and easier for our customers to use."

Products & Services

In 2010, VerticalResponse is focused on major enhancements to its core email product, and actively solicits customer feedback when planning all product changes. Major product announced so far in 2010 include:

• The Email Creation Upgrade, a major product enhancement to VerticalResponse's award-winning email marketing application.  With this new release small business and non profit customers benefit from a host of new features and tools, including a streamlined email creation process, enabling them to easily create and send emails faster than ever.
• VerticalResponse for Google Apps, a self-service email marketing application which was added to the Google Apps Marketplace™, Google's recently launched online storefront for Google Apps™ products and services.
• Social media sharing functionality was launched within the VerticalResponse application which enables customers to easily share their email marketing content with popular social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.
• Released VerticalResponse Chamber and Association Program, to grant Business Associations and Chambers of Commerce 10,000 free emails per month, plus an additional 15% discount on online surveys and direct mail postcards.

Award-Winning Email Marketing

VerticalResponse's rapid growth, strong leadership, and commitment to customers and education also led to a series of prestigious awards and accolades in 2009 and 2010. These include:

• CEO Janine Popick named the 2010 'Small Business Person of the Year' in San Francisco by the Small Business Administration
• CEO Janine Popick named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2009 Award Finalist in Northern California
• VerticalResponse the U.S. Chamber of Commerce '2010 Blue Ribbon Small Business Award'
• Finalist in the 2010 Stevie® Awards for 'Sales and Customer Service'
• Finalist in the Stevie awards for Women in Business in 4 categories including 'Fastest-Growing Company of the Year,' 'Best Overall Company of the Year,' 'Website of the Year,' and 'Blog of the Year'
• Finalist in the 2009 San Francisco Chamber of Commerce Excellence in Business "Ebbies" Awards in the 'Emerging Growth' category
• Recipient of a 2009 Commendation of Merit in the Society for New Communications Research Awards program
• Ranked #244 Fastest Growing Company in America on Deloitte's 2009 'Technology Fast 500™'
• Ranked #52 on the 2009 San Francisco Business Times List of 'Top 100 Fastest-Growing Companies in the Bay Area'
• Won four WebAwards including 'Best Application Service Provider,' 'Blog Standard of Excellence,' 'Online Community Standard of Excellence' and 'Small Business Standard of Excellence'
• Ranked #1270 on the 2009 'Inc. 5000' list
• Named #23 of Bay Area's 'Best Places to Work' by The San Jose/Silicon Valley Business Journal, The San Francisco Business Times, and The East Bay Times

Looking Ahead: Future Plans for VerticalResponse

Since Janine began the business in 2001 after the challenging dot.com bust, VerticalResponse has been on a constant incline. To ensure further growth, despite a challenging economic environment, throughout 2010 Popick plans to:

• Continue driving her team to innovate with new products and integrations as the small business customers become more familiar with marketing tools, social media and best practices.
• Spend on marketing, encouraging users to test drive the VerticalResponse product. So far over 500,000 small businesses have taken the product test drive.
• Have the best customer service in the industry, helping small businesses look like giants!

*Based on unaudited financial statements

About VerticalResponse

VerticalResponse, Inc. is a leading provider of self-service email marketing, online surveys and direct mail services empowering small businesses to easily create, manage and analyze their own direct marketing campaigns. VerticalResponse bundles email, online surveys and postcards to offer customers an integrated Web-based direct marketing solution that's intuitive and affordable. VerticalResponse is headquartered in San Francisco, California. For additional information, please visit www.verticalresponse.com

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Janine Popick

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SOURCE VerticalResponse, Inc.