Best Application Service Provider Email Message Campaign, Best B2b Email Message Campaign, Best Email Email Message Campaign, Best Of Show Email Message Campaign

VerticalResponse provides self-service online marketing solutions primarily to small businesses and non-profits. After a successful 2010 holiday season, we needed a promotion that would be compelling enough to motivate our audience of small business customers to act; many of them were just starting to re-gather their bearings after the holiday frenzy. An even greater challenge: We wanted to target customers that had signed up in the past two years but had never made the all-important first purchase with VerticalResponse.

On January 6, 2011, we launched our first “daily deal-styled” email campaign, with a creative concept and positioning that VerticalResponse had never done before. Our goal was to generate 250 first-time customers by January 31.

We created an eye-catching email that explained the daily deal-styled sale and a widget that clearly spelled out the price, percent discount and dollar savings.

The email led viewers to a splash page with more information about VerticalResponse and the offer. (Since accounts up to two years old were included in the mailing, we wanted to remind them about what we do.) The splash page also had a widget similar to the one that appeared in the email, along with a live countdown showing how much time – in days, hours, minutes and seconds – was left to redeem the offer.

The results: We far exceeded our goal of 250 first-time customers, bringing in 649 new paying accounts that generated $18,426.07 in revenue. On the last day of the sale, we brought in 126 first-time customers – the highest number of first-time customer conversions in a single day in the company’s 10-year history.

Contributors:

CEO/Founder:	Janine Popick
Vice President of Marketing:	John McNulty
Director of Marketing Communications:	Alf Brand
Director of Lifecycle Marketing:	Kim Stiglitz
Interactive Flash Designer:	James Hummel

VERTICALRESPONSE

Location: USA