Email Marketing Firm Boomerang Invites Testing of its Beta Firefox Extension that Shortens URLs for Use in Micro Blogs and in Emails Themselves

Published 10th July 2009

(Palo Alto, Calif. - July 9, 2009 - Boomerang.com) Email marketing firm Boomerang.com has announced the availability of Boomerang Hotlink Manager, an add-on for Mozilla's Firefox that shortens URLs directly from the browser's address bar. The tool facilitates URL sharing on social media sites that limit the number of characters a user may type in one message and helps email marketers to embed shorter URLs in their messages—often a design imperative. Email marketing expert David Kearney, CEO of Boomerang, encouraged users of Firefox to install and rate this tool to shorten any URL and thereby help to vet the final beta version.

"A presence in social media can complement an email marketing program and has become the new necessity in marketing," said Kearney, who directed readers to a collection of videos about Boomerang, whose email marketing solutions is the award-winning email hosting tool BlastWizard, voted in 2008 as "Best Mass Email Tool" by users of salesforce.com. "But marketers who join Twitter, for instance, must build their reputation as sources of quality information by posting links that appeal to potential followers. With the limit on characters to just one hundred forty, their task is impossible without a reliable URL-shortening tool."

A veteran of MIPS Computer Systems and now CEO of Boomerang, Kearney has filled many roles in marketing and engineering for the high-tech industry. Before co-founding the award-winning email marketing firm Boomerang in 1991, he earned an MBA from Cornell University's S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management. Kearney's articles on email marketing have appeared in business periodicals such as DM News, and publications such as AllBusiness have quoted him on his email marketing expertise.

The Boomerang Hotlink Manager is an experimental add-on available to Firefox users, who may download the URL-shortening tool (free user name and password needed to complete download process) and thereby convert to a shorter URL any Web address directly from their address bar. The resulting URL always begins with email marketing firm Boomerang's own domain (e.g., http://boomerang.com/zwa). The tool, handy for micro bloggers and for email marketers who wish to insert shorter URLs in their messages, also functions with the user's installed email client (e.g., Mozilla Thunderbird).

"Social media marketers themselves have the best insight into the utility of a URL-shortening tool," said Kearney. "We therefore want users' feedback; with it, Boomerang will be able to incorporate the best possible functionality in this tool's final version, due for release soon."

In 2008, users of salesforce.com gave BlastWizard the most four-star and five-star ratings of any email hosting tool, qualifying Boomerang's product to receive that CRM provider's award of "Best Mass Email Tool." BlastWizard is available for a free email marketing trial. Several companies offer small business email campaign tools. Among them, however, Boomerang is alone in approaching email marketing for small business in a customized, tailored way to create individualized email campaigns for clients. Furthermore, Boomerang's consultants are able to draw on a legacy of experience that the company has with enterprise clients, whose needs for email marketing campaigns have imbued Boomerang with the kind of institutional knowledge that yields best practices.

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About David Kearney, Email Marketing Expert
A 25-year veteran of high-technology, Boomerang CEO David Kearney began his career at Digital Equipment Corporation and has since carried out myriad roles both in marketing and engineering for the high-tech industry. Before founding the award-winning email marketing firm Boomerang in 1991 with wife Elaine Kearney, he earned an MBA from Cornell University's S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management. A former engineer with the MIT-inspired high-tech firm Massachusetts Computer Corporation (MASSCOMP) before that company purchased and assumed the name of Concurrent Computer Corporation, Kearney later served as product line marketing manager for MIPS Computer Systems (now MIPS Technologies, Inc.). Kearney's articles on email marketing have appeared in business periodicals such as DM News, and publications such as AllBusiness have quoted him on his email marketing expertise. Readers are welcome to visit the Boomerang Email Marketing Blog.

About Boomerang
Boomerang helps email marketers get superior results from their email marketing campaigns. Unlike other email marketing campaign service providers, Boomerang draws on a wealth of ongoing experience in serving enterprise customers such as AT&T, Dell | ASAP Software, ADP and Time Warner Cable to help each of its small business clients individually develop the most effective campaign possible. Able to be integrated with Microsoft Outlook® and clients' various existing databases, Boomerang's BlastWizard for hosted email recently won the 2008 "Best Mass Email Tool" from the customer relationship management (CRM) tool salesforce.com. Customers can also create custom email applications using Boomerang's Application Programming Interface (API).

The media may contact either of the following individuals:

David Kearney
CEO of Boomerang
2450 Embarcadero Way
Palo Alto, CA 94303
dk AT boomerang DOT com
PHONE (direct): 650-798-1005
PHONE (main): 650-798-1000
FAX: 650-688-4303
http://www.boomerang.com
http://blogs.boomerang.com

Brent W. Skinner
President & CEO of STETrevisions
PHONE: 617-875-4859
FAX: 866-663-6557
BrentSkinner AT STETrevisions DOT com
http://www.STETrevisions.com
http://www.brentskinner.blogspot.com