In March 2013, the US Army is finally moving to a global email system for all 1.4 million service personnel. Currently half a million Army users are not on a global account. The new system is forecast to save $100 million per year.

Both presidential candidates are working more email into their campaign communications, but with different strategies. The Obama campaign's most popular word in emails is "you" and the channel's principal objectives are to make supporters feel connected to the campaign and to raise money. The Romney strategy is to raise temperatures, not money. The most commonly word used is "Obama" and the content strategy is to stoke anger and outrage.

Yes, sharing your newsletter on Facebook and Twitter can boost its audience and bring in new readers. But it can also result in "engagement cannibalization," as your subscribers ignore it in the inbox and read it online instead. This depresses your engagement metrics and can compromise your sender reputation and deliverability.

After being dubbed at launch, "refreshingly difficult to game" in 2010, marketers have now spent enough time with Gmail Priority Inbox to accumulate some learning and best practices. Double opt-in, using effective keywords and varying the sender are all tactics that help marketers get past Gmail's velvet rope. 

A 52-week study comprised of 28 email messages conducted by Coast Digital has found that the messages remain highly productive for the intitial four weeks after sending, during which period 80% of the revenue coming from the email will be generated. Productivity then slows, reaching 90% of total revenues by weeks 10-11, and 97% by week 20. After 4 weeks of results, enough data exists to make a reliable forecast of the total sales coming from the email.  

The new IDG Global Mobile Users Survey has revealed that workers are relying on smartphones and tablets for more than just checking email outside of the office. Accessing technology information after business hours and watching product review and other job-related videos are cited as the top applications.

An outage earlier this week on Apple's iCloud service disabled the email accounts of 1,650,000 users for 30 hours. Marketers trying to reach accounts during this period may have experienced bounces. Apple has not explained the reason for the outage.

According to new research by Epsilon and the Direct Marketing Association's Email Experience Council, triggered email messages (often called drip campaigns or marketing automation) generate 122% more clicks than the average clicks for business as usual email. Only 2.6% of email volume comes from triggered messages, which indicates a clear pathway to improvement for email marketers. 

A new bill requiring law enforcement to obtain a warrant before accessing private online communications such as email or social networking interactions is expected to be introduced in the Senate Thursday. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, this legislation is an important step to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, originally passed in 1986 and in need of comtemporization.

Several of the banks underwriting the ExactTarget IPO have allowed early investors and company management to sell over seven million shares of the company's stock a week in advance of the expiration of the original lockup agreement.