CRM company Really Simple Systems has upgraded its email application to enable timed and triggered messages sent to individual contacts. The features allow for the deployment of messages based on a contact's action such as completing a form or subscribing to a list, and also a series of messages sent at pre-determined intervals. 

Experian has reported that new business for its CheetahMail email services grew 158% in Q4 2012 compared to the same period a year ago. 

Reamaze, a CRM service aimed at small and medium sized businesses, aggregates all a company's communication channels into a single interface to facilitate customer service and inquiries. The service currently pulls in email, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube streams, displaying all queries and conversations in an intuitive format that is organized by recency instead of channel. 

Send to Dropbox launched in 2010, aiming to meet the demand of Dropbox users for a means of sending large files to their accounts via email. The service has just been relaunched, free of bugs and with added features such as automatic re-writing of files. A premium service is also available for $3 per month with increased support, functionality and deliverability. 

A new study by Knotice finds that 41% of emails are now opened on mobile devices, up from 27% a year ago. The company forecasts that more than 50% of messages will be opened on mobile devices by the year's end. 

A new iOS app called Cloze aims to bring relevance to the iPhone inbox by combining email and social feeds and using a filter to show the most important to users. The filter emphasizes the sender over the channel and uses the filter to screen out messages from non-humans as well as people the user does not know well. 

Microsoft has stated on its official Outlook blog that all Hotmail accounts not yet migrated to Outlook.com will do so by this summer. The blog also notes that 80% of the messages in the Outlook.com services - comprised largely of former Hotmail accounts - are commercial emails.

58% of respondents in a new Marketing Sherpa survey say that the pervasiveness of smartphones and tablets will affect their email programs, followed closely by 57% who believe social media will have an impact. 75% of respondents said they have prepared their websites for the mobile onslaught, but only 42% are designing their emails to render differently on mobile devices.

Marketing solutions provider 89 Degrees has launched a new service called Email Capabilities and Health Optimization (ECHO), designed to help marketers analyze and optimize their email marketing programs. The agency's clients include hhgregg, Hyundai, Ikea and Crabtree & Evelyn. 

A new report by U.S. security firm Mandiant Corp. alleges that a group of hackers connected to the Chinese government have stolen sensitive data from over 100 U.S. companies and agencies, principally in aerospace and telecommunications. The hackers used spearphishing techiques - spoof emails designed to trick users into granting the hackers access to internal databases and networks.