VerticalResponse Releases Email Creation Upgrade

SAN FRANCISCO, March 23 /PRNewswire/ -- VerticalResponse, Inc., www.verticalresponse.com today announced the Email Creation Upgrade [www.verticalresponse.com/email-marketing/email-creation/], a major product enhancement to its award-winning email marketing application.  With this new release small business customers will benefit from a host of new features and tools, including a streamlined email creation process, enabling them to easily create and send emails even faster. The company has planned several follow-up enhancements to its core product throughout 2010, and the Email Creation Upgrade lays the technical framework for these future releases.

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"VerticalResponse understands the needs of our small businesses customers, and the unique challenges they face when running their companies," said VerticalResponse's CEO Janine Popick. "Our product development has always been driven by customer feedback and requests--and this release represents another significant milestone in the affordable marketing tools we offer to the small business space."

Email Creation Upgrade: Key Features

The Email Creation Upgrade is filled with powerful, yet easy-to-use enhancements that will help small business customers save time on their email marketing. This upgrade benefits all VerticalResponse customers -- from non-technical users to those who are comfortable with designing advanced HTML. Among the most significant changes with this new release is the brand-new Email Wizard.

New "Email Wizard"

The new Email Wizard editor is designed to help non-technical customers design and send professional-looking emails in a matter of minutes. The new Email Wizard offers "drag & drop" formatting, inline editing and a formatting toolbar to easily change colors, fonts and styles.  It's ideal for customers who want complete control over the emails they're creating but may not have previous HTML coding experience or the budget to hire a web designer.

With the new Email Wizard customers will receive:

- Improved speed from start-to-finish for busy small business users who are managing multiple tasks within their day.

- The ability to easily assemble email content by dragging and dropping content blocks within a template.

- Simpler formatting options for email design using a feature-rich toolbar to change fonts, colors, text alignment and more!

- Full-page editing that allows the user to see the entire contents of their email within a single page. Users can toggle between editing modes to design with pre-built content blocks or "live edit" mode, which is similar to products like MS Word.

"I'm really impressed with the new workflow in the New Email Wizard, as it makes the process quicker and easier. The upgrade will provide a huge benefit for our business," said Frank Cowell, President & Founder, Elevator Marketing. "We're a full service agency, and we manage a lot of email campaigns on behalf of our clients, so this new Email Wizard will save us a lot of time while allowing us to be flexible."

More key Email Creation Upgrade features:

- New Templates: With this release VerticalResponse has added an additional 100 new email templates, to complement the existing gallery of over 500 high-quality templates. Users can select from a range of new customizable templates for newsletters, promotional emails, invitations and more, within the most popular industry categories.

- Marketing Tips & Advice: A new library of helpful marketing hints and best practices offers practical advice to small businesses as they create emails

- Integration With Google's Picnik Image Editor: This new integration will enable users to stay within the email creation steps when they are editing and resizing an image so they can create emails more quickly and efficiently. It allows users to upload an image from their computer, from a URL or select an image from the VerticalResponse image gallery.

- Enhanced Browser Support: VerticalResponse has added support for Chrome users, which is not currently offered as standard across all email providers. Customers can continue to use Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari to create their emails.

Customers Influence Product Development

Direct feedback from VerticalResponse customers played a major role in the design and testing of the Email Creation Upgrade. Over 1,300 customers were invited to test the beta version of the product and their valuable input was weaved into the final version of the release. As a customer-focused organization, VerticalResponse worked to ensure that the Email Creation Upgrade was built to meet the needs and exceed the expectations of small business customers. One beta participant is small business customer Sales Engagement Partners.

"After seeing the simpler formatting options and customization features in the new VerticalResponse email creation upgrade, we'll definitely use the product a lot more," said Bill McDonnell, President & CEO of Sales Engagement Partners. "I'd definitely recommend VerticalResponse to any small business that is concerned about ease of use for their email marketing!"

Pricing and Availability

The Email Creation Upgrade is available starting today to all VerticalResponse customers and there are no additional fees or costs associated with this release. As always, flexible payment options for VerticalResponse's core offering include a pay-as-you-go plan, a monthly subscription and a free offering for approved non-profits and Chambers of Commerce/ Associations.

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

Related Links:

Email Creation Upgrade Product Page

Press Release on Email Creation Upgrade

Screenshot of New Email Wizard tool

Screenshot of New Canvas tool

SOURCE VerticalResponse, Inc.