VerticalResponse Honors Top Small Businesses That Demonstrate Email Marketing Excellence

SAN FRANCISCO, July 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- VerticalResponse Inc., a leading provider of self-service email marketing, social media, online survey and direct mail marketing solutions for small businesses, announced the winners of its quarterly VR500 Awards for Email Marketing Excellence program. The 500 small businesses honored represent the top 2 percent of a qualified pool of approximately 21,000 companies. The winning businesses span a range of industries, from real estate and retail services to insurance and non-profits.

To qualify for the award, small businesses must demonstrate high engagement rates in their email marketing campaigns. Requirements include:

• Sent at least four email campaigns in the second quarter of 2011
• Have an opt-in subscriber list of between 100 and 500 recipients
• Achieve open rates averaging above 20 percent
• Achieve click-through rates averaging above 4 percent
• Be a VerticalResponse customer

"The VR500 awards highlight small businesses that have truly impressed us with how they've consistently kept their customers active and involved through creative email marketing," said Janine Popick, CEO of VerticalResponse. "These companies prove that email marketing makes a measurable, lasting impact on customer engagement and, in turn, the bottom line."

"Our email campaign has helped us improve our communication with our customer base and increase customer satisfaction," said Suzan Taylor, owner of Taylor Dance Center in McKinney, Texas, which ranked No. 6 on the VR500 list. "For us, it was a low-cost way to keep our customers happy and informed."

Reporting and Metrics Important to Small Businesses

For many VR500 winners, the easy-to-interpret tracking reports and data provided by their email marketing campaigns have been critical to their business.

"Email marketing is a key way I stay in touch with my clients and those interested in my services," said Terran Bayer, owner of Westway Studio, a San Diego, Calif.-based fine art pet photography and graphic design firm that ranked No. 10 on the list. "VerticalResponse allows me to easily reach out to them while providing comprehensive data that helps make my future campaigns stronger. My last campaign increased my blog traffic by over 4,300 percent – and I couldn't have done it without VerticalResponse."

"VerticalResponse was the perfect email newsletter solution for me as a small business," said Mary Frost, owner of The Gardening Tutor, which provides hands-on gardening instruction and consulting in Sonoma County, Calif. "I love being able to track and see how many – and when – people are opening my newsletters, and that type of data has helped me dial in on what day and time to launch my emails for the best results."

VerticalResponse will promote small business winners of the VR500 awards extensively through social media such as Twitter and Facebook. All winners receive an online badge to use on their website, blogs and Facebook pages.

Fore details and updates on the VR500 Awards for Email Marketing Excellence program, visit www.verticalresponse.com/vr500.

About VerticalResponse

VerticalResponse Inc. is a leading provider of self-service email marketing, social media, online surveys and direct mail services empowering small businesses and non-profit organizations to easily create, share and analyze their own marketing campaigns. Users can benefit from a wide variety of features including more than 700 free email marketing templates in a variety of categories; the ability to share their content over several social media networks; and tracking on everything from email marketing to social media responses so that they can understand campaign success. VerticalResponse offers customers an integrated Web-based marketing solution that's intuitive and affordable. VerticalResponse is headquartered in San Francisco, Calif. For additional information please visit www.verticalresponse.com, and connect with us on Twitter at @VR4SmallBiz and Facebook at www.facebook.com/verticalresponse.

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Janine Popick

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SOURCE VerticalResponse Inc.