Database Marketing Company Ruf Strategic Solutions Wins 2009 KCDMA AMBIT Award

OLATHE, KS--(Marketwire - March 26, 2009) - Ruf Strategic Solutions has been named the winner of a 2009 AMBIT Award for Excellence in Direct Marketing from the Kansas City Direct Marketing Association (KCDMA) for an email campaign. Their email campaign successfully filled two educational sessions at the 2008 Marketing Outlook Forum conference.

Kurtis Ruf, partner at Ruf Strategic Solutions, said, "It's a great compliment to be recognized by our peers in the direct marketing community."

Using an email list of the 250 attendees of the 2008 Marketing Outlook Forum conference, Ruf sent an initial html email message one week prior to the event outlining details of their seminar and a chance for attendees to win a GPS unit. A follow-up message was sent the day of the event. This second message reached attendees two hours before the seminar via their smartphones as they headed to lunch. The reminder email was a succinct, text-only message designed for optimal rendering on a smartphone screen.

SallyAnn Gray, marketing manager, said, "The goal was to reach attendees through their 'third screen' [smartphone] to drive traffic to our event. Both seminars were filled to capacity with over fourteen percent of the emailed attendees in the sessions. While other vendors presented to small numbers, we were the only company to fill each seminar to capacity."

Judging was based on strategy, creativity and execution along with response rate of the campaign. The Detroit Direct Marketing Association acted as the impartial, third-party judge with applicants name and company concealed during judging. Ruf Strategic Solutions will now automatically advance to Round Two of the International ECHO Awards.

About Ruf Strategic Solutions

Ruf Strategic Solutions delivers marketing intelligence solutions to help organizations acquire new customers, retain existing customers and develop one-to-one relationships to maximize profitability. Ruf's unique ability to integrate vast arrays of data, technology tools and more than 33 years of expertise, empowers organizations with truly actionable and measurable intelligence. For more information, visit www.ruf.com.

Contact Information: Contact: Valerie Jennings 816.221.1040 cali@jenningspr.net