22% of marketers polled in a recent Experian survey say that they use website popups for email acquisition. One retailer showed that the practice generated an 85% lift in valid email address acquisition. Success is a function of placement, functionality, content and measurement. Read the full article on the Experian ChetahMail Blog.

On its Analytics blog, Google has announced its new Cost Data Import Tool for calculating ROI from any digital source: email, social, paid search, organic search, display ads, and affiliate marketing. The tool allows users to import cost data for each of the channels measured through Google Analytics via a self-serve API or third party applications. Cost Data Import Tool is now in Public Beta. 

Hurricane Sandy took out many data centers and email servers across the east coast, taking many consumers' and businesses' email accounts down with them. Tech expert Shelly Palmer said that businesses should work with a could computing provider - or multiple providers, for redundancy - for greater reliability in the event of an emergency.

New data from ComScore confirms what Google has been claiming since the summer - that Gmail is now the world's largest email provider. The service has 425 million users worldwide, though it trails Yahoo! in the US.

Transactional emails sent to email subscribers following donations to the Romney and Obama presidential campaigns saw an enormous spike in read rate - an 832% increase for the Romney emails and a 464% lift for Obama. The Romney emails also showed a higher propensity for forwards than the messages that spurred the donation. But both candidates' campaigns are not fully leveraging the rich engagement of transactional emails, leaving out content addressing the critical issues of the campaign and failing to provide an easy way for recipients or referrals to click through for further action.

A novel by Will Ferguson entitled 419 and about one family's entanglement in a Nigerian email scam has been awarded the Scotiabank Giller Prize, one of Canada's most prestigious literary awards. The title refers to the article of the Nigerian Crimimal Code dealing with fraud. 

Yesterday's Email Marketing Daily mistakenly reported that American Eagle angered subscribers with a Hurricane Sandy Sale email. The email was sent by American Apparel, not American Eagle. The orignial article has been corrected on the MediaPost site. 

If you are planning on ramping up your email frequency for the holidays, know that sudden changes in your volume could lead ISPs to think you are a spammer and send more of your mail to the junk folder. The solution is IP Warming, or the gradual process (over a month or longer) of establishing a legitimate reputation in the eyes of the ISPs.  Read the full story at the Lyris blog. 

The laptop that belonged to President Bill Clinton and was used to exchange email with astronaut John Glenn while he was in outer space on board the space shuttle Discovery in 1998 is up for bid on eBay. The Toshiba laptop has a minimum bid of $125,000 and is in full working order, with both the original email from John Glenn and President Clinton's response stored on the hard disc. The reply from the President is also of historic significance in that it is the first email ever written and sent by a U.S. President. The laptop is the property …

An email sent from American Apparel to its subscribers in advance of Hurricane Sandy's landfall on the East Coast yesterday promoted a 20% discount over the next 36 hours for all customers in North Carlonia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts through the discount code "SANDYSALE". Subscribers voiced outrage via social media instantly, calling for a boycott of American Apparel stores and the head of its marketing director.