Trying to stay on top of everything your rivals are doing with email can be very time-consuming. Instead, hit the highlights by looking at their preference centers, subject lines and frequency to have a good sense of competitors' content strategy, segmentation and even performance. 

A new guide from marketing automation company Marketo aims to help marketers integrate social media into their email and other campaigns. Ambitiously titled "The Definitive Guide to Social Marketing," it is available for free download at Marketo.com.

Facebook's product allowing marketers to upload email and phone lists for ad targeting on the site may be new to Facebook, but it is not a new concept at all. Known as "CRM Retargeting" it is offered by large portals such as AOL, Yahoo! and MSN. The difference that Facebook brings are much lower buy-in prices, user simplicity and mass market appeal - all of which will combine to accelerate the convergence of offline and online marketing.

Web forms with pre-checked opt-in buttons for receving email messages may help grow a brand's list more quickly, but that quantity comes as the expense of quality. At best, less interested consumers are receiving messages and suppressing increasingly important engagement metrics. At worst, recipients did not realize they had opted in at all and are likely to mark subsequent messages as spam.

Entries are now being accepted for the 2013 Effie Awards, the awards program developed by the American Marketing Association to recognize outstanding examples of marketing effectiveness. The On-Time Entry deadline is October 9, 2012. Extended deadlines are available until October 31, 2012.

Emailvision has acquired PredictiveIntent, a move which allows the email services company to roll out behavioral targeting and personalized experiences across email and websites. Emailvision has offices in 22 countries and lists Ikea, Club Med, Walmart and Staples among its clients.

JPMorgan Chase & Co, Bank of America Corp, Wells Fargo & Co and Citigroup are in talks to link up their digital payment systems in order to enable customers to transfer money to other customers of these banks via email. The network would combine the customers of clearXchange and Popmoney, both of which compete with PayPal.

Email Services Provider Informz has rolled out new features that allow marketers to post email campaigns to their social media channels, the company announced today at its user conference.

The 2012 Look Book, published by email services provider Responsys, showcases the best in email creative over the past year. Clever mobile execution, side-scrolling, engaging personalization and successful print emulations all feature in this year's edition.

Email security specialist Barracuda Networks has announced the formation of a new business unit targeting enterprise clients. The service is designed to protect the data centers and distributed IT infrastructure of large organizations from cyber threats. Heading up the unit is Mike Van Bruinisse, former CEO of Purewire, which was acquired by Barracuda Networks in 2009.