San Francisco’s primo e-mail marketing and DM service provider, VerticalResponse, won Blog of the Year at the 2006 Stevie Awards for Women in Business, presented March 8 at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, NYC.

VR’s “Email Marketing Blog” is penned by CEO/Blog Babe Janine Popick. AND I WUZ HER DATE! Cuz hubbie John “Footloose” Hingley of Crush Direct took Stanley to Tahoe for some recuperative snowboarding. Dress code…me: Dolce suit, white-stitched YSL shit-kickers and bowtie. JP: resplendent as ever, in a matte-black pilgrim-belt-buckled Ted Baker number that could be the new uniform for Christmas elves…if they worked for Satan instead of Santa.

The Stevie Awards honor women executives, entrepreneurs, and the companies they run, worldwide, and have been hailed as “the business world’s own Oscars” (New York Post, April 27, 2005). Nicknamed the Stevies after the Greek for “crowned,” more than 180 nominated women executives and entrepreneurs from the U.S. and several other countries attended. Finalists were chosen by business professionals worldwide during preliminary judging last fall.

Winning the Stevie, Popick’s blog was included with “The Budget Fashionista” and “eMoms at Home.” Janine was also named a finalist in the “Entrepreneur of the Year” category, and VR was honored in two additional categories: the “Best Overall Company of the Year” and “Fastest-Growing Company.” The elegant Stevie trophy was designed by R. S. Owens, the same company that makes the Oscar and the Emmy. But I noted to Janine that it was rather flat-chested. No boobies on an accolade for females? What a bust.

“We’ve built VerticalResponse to help businesses communicate with their target audiences easily and effectively, from traditional direct mail to e-mail marketing,” said Popick. “Blogging is another step. Our newsletter has become the ‘teaser’ for our blog posts, letting our users know that we’ve updated the information on our blog.”

2006 was a good year for VR. They placed #402 on the Inc. 500 List, which ranks the fastest-growing private companies in the country, and came in #37 on the San Francisco Business Times List of “Top 100 Fastest-Growing Private Companies.”

Oh, and small world…found out that, growing up, Janine hung out in MY birth-town of Hamden, CT. Home of the Sleeping Giant. And Thorton Wilder. And the now-defunct-but-legendary Bimonte’s Pizza.

–DM News Associate Publisher/Bon Vivant/Raconteur/Ombudsman Robert DiGioia

Webloyalty.com, the online marketing services company, markets only through other web sites. But this hasn’t prevented the firm from continuing to grow at breakneck speed.

In a recent meeting at the company’s Norwalk, CT headquarters, our DM News contingent was provided a glimpse of why the company increased its sales by almost 50% in 2006.

As CEO Rick Fernandes put it, “You would imagine FTD.com sells its clients millions of bouquets of flowers per year. Well, they all see offers from Webloyalty” – which, by the way, has also learned their buying, retention and conversion factors.

But it’s not only on FTD.com’s site where Webloyalty.com induces customers to join its seven membership services. The company’s 130 partners include the likes of Priceline, Redcats USA and U.S. Air. Last year alone, 43 new e-commerce partners were signed up, according to Mark Negley, VP of Business Development (and once upon a time, a sales representative for DM News).

The key is Webloyalty.com’s marketing database, built on software algorithms, that markets online to consumers after they’ve completed a transaction. The software takes into account the general demographics of each site and what the customer bought, along with the customer’s buying history as stored in cookies.

Webloyalty.com now has over 2-million paying members in its membership clubs. The company launched in Canada in 2005 and also plans to launch this year in Europe.

In a new service, the company has been named the exclusive online marketer of the Official Nascar Membership Club (ONMC). This has been made possible by the growing recognition of Webloyalty’s expertise in direct marketing, membership management and technology development, including database management and fulfillment for online marketing.

According to Rick Fernandes, who is one of three founders of the company, there are two very distinct sides to the business – the product and content side, which brings compelling and valuable content to consumers, and the e-commerce revenue-generating partnerships.

It did not come as a surprise to us to learn that Webloyalty.com was selected by AlwaysOn Media in January, 2007 as one of their Top 100 private companies. Or that it was named as Connecticut’s fastest growing technology company in 2006.

–Posted by Adrian Courtenay

In 2006, DM News was pleased to sponsor Fast Forward, a one-day conference put together by leaders in the list community and scheduled the day before the DMA’s List Vision conference. The day was created to provide a forum for high level executives in list and related companies to focus on the changing nature of direct marketing and how list companies can continue to meet their clients’ needs in the Internet age.

“You gotta move forward quickly” is how American List Counsel’s Fran Green, a key organizer of the event, put it.

In 2007, the second Fast Forward will take place on July 31 at the Marriott Marquis in New York. Once again, a task force of top list executives has come together to start lining up speakers. The first point that has been agreed makes a lot of sense to me. It is that the whole event will be framed around the marketer’s perspective. Accordingly, a list of progressive companies has been formed as possible sources of speakers. These include Meredith, Williams-Sonoma, Vonage, Second Life, Time Inc, Career Builders and others.

One speaking candidate who was enthusiastically endorsed by the task force members was Amy Africa, publisher of EightbyEight.com, which provides tips on building effective web sites and optimizing online channels such as search marketing and email marketing. When it came to politically oriented candidates, however, such as Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post, or Joe Scarborough on the other side of the spectrum, it was a little more difficult for the group to reach a consensus.

Whichever way it goes, DM News will once again be a sponsor of Fast Forward.

–Posted by Adrian Courtenay