A recent Relevancy Group survey found that 19% of responding brands have been the victims of phishing attacks, with 31% of these being attacked on multiple occasions. The findings appear in an article by Return Path about the damage to an email program caused by phishing attacks and steps email marketers can take to protect their brands.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) has released its annual holiday shopping survey and forecast, which finds that over 40% of consumers will begin shopping by Halloween and only one in five waiting until December to start. 52% intend to shop online and the average consumer expects to complete 40% of his/her shopping online. Two-thirds of tablet owners will use their devices to either research or purchase for the holidays.

In an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night, President Barack Obama was pitched a question that likely never came up during his debate prep earlier in the week. At the conclusion of the interview Stewart said he had just one more thing to ask the President: "We have been speaking now for 12 to 14 minutes, and I am curious - how many emails during that time do you think your campaign has sent me?" Sounding like someone as versed in CRM as he is in public policy, the President quickly replied, "It depends on whether …

What may be holding back your email program could have nothing to do with deliverability, inactives or preference centers. Instead, it may well be your company - from meetings on how images look instead of testing them, to the senior executive who swoops in with more authority than experience, to rogue mailers who undermine the content strategy to fulfill their own objectives. Read the full article on Deliverability.com. 

In an article demonstrating the use of animated GIFs and Cinemagraphs in email, Experian reveals that 72% of its clients who use them see a lift in Transaction-to-Click rates. Animated GIFs are growing in popularity, not only as a main graphic but as a subtle inclusion to draw attention to a call-to-action. 

Silverpop CEO Bill Nussey weighed in on rival ESP ExactTarget's acquisition of marketing automation firm Pardot. Writing on his company's blog, Nussey lauded the move because of the "the renewed interest it brings to the need for truly integrated digital marketing platforms" and of the future such mergers bring of "delivering dynamically evolving campaigns to each person based on their individual behaviors across the Web."

Volvo relies heavily on data-enriched email marketing to sell excavators, pipelayers and other industrial equipment, sending newsletters assembled through dynamic content to over 90,000 subscribers. Millions of dollars of sales per year are attributed to the program.

Cloud messaging provider MessageBus has closed on a $11 million funding round led by North Bridge Venture Partners. MessageBus offers a "cloud native" approach to email, social and mobile messaging using a single platform. Jeremy LaTrasse, who was on the founding team at Twitter, is MessageBus' CEO and co-founder. 

ExactTarget's Connections conference kicked off yesterday in Indianapolis. Speakers from Gilt Group, Forrester Research and Nationwide Insurance discussed marketing with data. Actor Michael J. Fox closed day 1 by advising marketers, "Don't play the result," an acting rule that helps produce unexpected results even though the actors know how the scene ends.

Cinegif, a technology company known for its software for converting video clips and still images into animated GIFs, has partnered with email services company PulseConnect to deliver their rich images into the inbox.