Company: VerticalResponse
Company Description: VerticalResponse Inc. provides a full suite of self-service marketing solutions for small businesses including email marketing, social media marketing, event marketing, direct mail marketing and online surveys. Its mission is to empower small businesses and non-profit organizations to easily and affordably create, manage and analyze their own marketing campaigns.
Nomination Category: Company / Organization Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Company of the Year - Advertising, Marketing & Public Relations

Nomination Title: VerticalResponse Innovates Marketing Technology for Small Businesses

Tell the story about what this nominated organization achieved since January 1 2012 (up to 525 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

This year VerticalResponse celebrates 12 years of servicing small businesses and non-profits, helping them get up and running quickly and easily with their email and social media marketing campaigns. More than 8.4 billion emails were sent with our self-service platform in 2012.

We won a silver Stevie for Company of the Year at both the 2012 American Business Awards and 2012 Women in Business Awards, as well as a bronze Stevie in the same category at the 2012 International Business Awards. We were once again ranked on the Inc. 500|5000 list of fastest-growing companies, an honor we’ve achieved every year since 2006.

Key corporate achievements from January 1, 2012, to present include:

• In January 2012, launched the VerticalResponse Next Teen Tycoon Facebook video contest to support and encourage youth entrepreneurship. We gave away $10,000 in cash and prizes, including a free trip to attend the TEDxTeen conference, to the most promising teen-led businesses. Despite nearly no budget allocated for paid advertising or marketing, the contest earned both regional and national press coverage including several TV news segments and feature stories on FOX Business, Inc., the Huffington Post and more. The PR campaign also won two gold Stevies in 2012.

• In June 2012, launched VerticalResponse Social, which lets small businesses to schedule, manage and publish content to their social networks from one interface. The tool solves the nagging problem nearly all small business owners face when thinking about social media marketing: “What do I post and when do I post it?” A user can set the duration and content types (post, link, quote, etc.) for each campaign, up to a month in advance.

• In August 2012, added Coupons and Clipper. Industry surveys suggest up to 80 percent of Web users prefer to get coupons and discounts from companies via social media, so the Coupons tool lets businesses generate custom coupons that can be published as a Facebook tab on their Facebook page and/or as a standalone Web page. Clipper lets users save interesting Web pages to their VerticalResponse Social account whenever they’re browsing online; the “clipped” URLs will appear in their VerticalResponse Social content library for easy sharing when they’re ready to create a social media post or campaign.

• In November 2012, launched a newly redesigned marketing blog for small businesses, with more posts, more authors and greater variety of content. The new blog features 15 authors (versus 7 authors previously) and has attracted nearly double the number of unique visitors who spend more than double the amount of time on the site per visit to date, compared to the same time period a year ago. At a time when many readers are experiencing “content fatigue,” our blog metrics show people are reading and engaging with our content more than ever before.

• In February 2013, launched InstaEmail, a free online email template creation tool. Companies can use the tool to create a professional-looking email newsletter template in seconds. InstaEmail instantly detects the images and color scheme found on the company’s website, to ensure the newsletter matches the company’s brand. More than 10,000 email templates were created using InstaEmail since launch.

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Provide a brief (up to 125 words) biography about the leader of this nominated organization:

Janine Popick is the CEO and founder of VerticalResponse. She won a Stevie Award for Entrepreneur of the Year every year from 2008 to 2011 and Executive of the Year in 2012, and was an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist from 2006 to 2009. Janine also won the U.S. Small Business Administration award for Small Business Person of the Year and was named a Small Biz Influencer Champion by Small Biz Trends. Janine brings over 20 years of experience leading direct and Internet marketing programs for some of the biggest brands in technology and entertainment.