VerticalResponse Ranks #22 on the 2007 San Francisco Business Times List of “Top 100 Fastest-Growing Companies in the Bay Area."

Bay Area’s Fastest Growing Email Marketing Service Provider also named as Finalist in Five Categories for the 4th Annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business

SAN FRANCISCO – October 22, 2007 –VerticalResponse, the leading provider of self-service email marketing and direct mail solutions, today announced it ranks #22 on the San Francisco Business Times annual listing of the Top 100 Fastest Growing Private Companies in the Bay Area, and was announced as finalist in five categories for the Stevie Awards for Women in Business. This is the third consecutive year VerticalResponse has achieved both honors as the company continues to grow its revenue, staff and services. More than 7,000 new customers signed on in the first three quarters of this year, bringing the total number of paying customers to 32,000. Revenue is likewise up, with nearly 36% increase over this time last year.

“We are excited to again be recognized as one of San Francisco’s fastest growing private companies.  We take pride in knowing that our growth means other small businesses across the country are also taking advantage of our service to grow as well,” said VerticalResponse CEO Janine Popick.  “The Stevie Awards for Women in Business are also a great honor, and we are particularly pleased to be recognized for our innovation as well as our dedication to the greater community.”

VerticalResponse’s success draws from its wide popularity among small businesses. Customers include many small businesses and emerging companies covering a broad range of industries, including ad agencies, wine, retailers, and many more.  In the past year, VerticalResponse has grown its user base with new integrations, partnerships and product upgrades, including:

• A List Segmentation tool that promises to greatly increase the efficacy of target marketing
• Google Analytics Integration, a new reporting solution to measure email campaign effectiveness
• The Email Canvas, which provides a WYSIWYG Editor and several pre-built layouts into which customers can simply add text and images
• The Media Library, granting 25 MB of free hosting for images that can be easily uploaded, and then categorized in folders and subfolders
• VerticalResponse for AppExchange 3.0, which includes both new custom reporting objects, and reports and dashboards. The upgrade also allows customers to access salesforce.com mail templates
• The VerticalResponse Application Programming Interface (API), which allows award-winning self-service email marketing software to be extended and integrated into other platforms
• Interactive Marketing Calendar (IMC), to break down the tasks to be accomplished prior to an email campaign launch date, keeping business owners on task and helps them capitalize on opportunities presented by holidays and other key dates
• Quick List Creation feature, designed as a campaign follow-up tool, to let users quickly create lists of recipients who opened, clicked, converted, purchased or performed no action for a given campaign
• Partnered with NetBooks, Inc. to provide robust email marketing to the True Small Business

With the support of Price Waterhouse Coopers, The San Francisco Business Times reviewed over 2,000 Bay Area companies to compile the final list. All companies had to have been headquartered in the Bay Area, privately held between 2004 and 2006 and revenues of over $200,000 in 2004. The average growth rate from 2004 to 2006 of the top 100 private companies was forty-seven percent.
The Stevie Awards for Women in Business is an international competition recognizing the accomplishments of outstanding women executives, business owners, and the companies they run.  The 2007 awards, presented by Infiniti, will be presented at a reception at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on Monday, November 12. More than 800 nominations were submitted for consideration in over 40 categories. VerticalResponse has been named a finalist in the following categories: Best Entrepreneur – Service Businesses - Up to 100 Employees; Best Overall Company of the Year – Service Businesses – up to 100 Employees; Blog of the Year; Community Involvement Program of the Year; Employer of the Year; Fastest-Growing Company of the Year; Most Innovative Company of the Year – Up to 100 Employees.
These latest recognitions join the growing list of VerticalResponse’s accomplishments over the past year, which have also included: 

• Best-in-Show at salesforce.com’s 2nd Annual Appy Awards
• Finalist for the 2007 ClickZ Marketing Excellence Awards for Innovation in Email for the past decade.
• Finalist in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year of Northern California Award.
• Recognized as winner for Best Overall Company by the American Business Awards, and nominated as finalist in five other categories.
• Ranked #4 on the 2007 San Francisco Business Times’ list of Best Places to Work in the Bay Area.
• Ranked #1113 on the 2007 Inc. 5000 List of Fastest Growing Companies.
• Winner of the Web Marketing Association 2007 award for outstanding achievement in website development.
• Janine Popick’s blog won Blog of the Year at the STEVIE’s for Women in Business.

Additionally, VerticalResponse for AppExchange is currently the most popular of hundreds of third –party applications now available on the salesforce.com AppExchange, the world’s first on-demand directory and sharing service, found at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange. 

About VerticalResponse

VerticalResponse, Inc. (http://www.verticalresponse.com) is a leading provider of self-service email marketing and direct mail services empowering businesses of all sizes to create, manage and analyze their own direct marketing campaigns. VerticalResponse’s flagship product, which allows customers to deliver sophisticated yet easily deployed email campaigns, is the most intuitive and affordable Web-based direct marketing solution available. VerticalResponse is headquartered in San Francisco, California. For additional information, please visit www.verticalresponse.com.