Remedy Health Media has launched Pathient Health Services (PHS), an email newsletter service that allows physicians to easily communicate with their patients via monthly newsletters. The program integrates with software used by physicians for patient records, and automatically populates newsletters with content relevant to a patient's condition. Remedy says that the program was born out of Obamacare, which requires doctors to install an in-office patient data management software platform to improve services and proactive care.

Inbox management company PhilterIt launched today a tool that reorganizes a consumer's inbox by sender, allowing visual scanning of messages not by subject line, but by the sender's icon or a brand logo. The service is aimed at helping consumers control "ham" - the opt-in messages from trusted brands that are not as urgent as personal or business messages. PhilterIt is currently available as a Chrome extension for Gmail. 

People search company Inteligator has added email addresses to its reverse lookup tool, allowing customers to search for email addresses using a person's name. The company reports it has over 1 billion records in its database, representing 90% of US citizens.

Email services company Mad Mimi has launched its integration with e-commerce site Etsy, allowing Etsy store owners to automatically sync their shops with the email service in order to drag and drop products directly into email messages. The new integration is part of the suite of services Mad Mimi offers to target small business. The company also integrates with Highrise, Freshbooks, SalesForce and SurveyMonkey.

53.3 million shoppers visited online retailers on Black Friday this year, an increase of 18% over last year according to comScore. ShopperTrak also reported a lift of 3.5% in in-store traffic. The increase may be attributable to search marketing (up 21% according to NetElixir) and email (up 18% as reported by Responsys).

Email volume for the 5-day Thanksgiving weekend from Thanksgiving day through Cyber Monday reached an all-time high this year, up 18% over the same period in 2011 according to data collected and published by Responsys. 93% of retailers sent Cyber Monday email promotions in 2012, up from 88% last year. Responsys expects the high volume to continue, as Cyber Monday promotions are stretching into "Cyber Week."

Experian Marketing Services has analyzed email campaigns that use Twitter-style hashtags in the subject line and found that while the hashtags lift open rates by 4.8%, click and transaction rates decline. The company says that the drop could be due to the action that the subject with a hashtag is asking the subscriber to take, which is not to click but to tweet.  

Unlikely allies Grover Norquist and ACLU chief Laura Murphy have written a joint op-ed on The Hill's Congress Blog, calling for congress to approve the modified Electronic Communications Privact Act legislation submitted by Senator Patrick Leahy. Leahy's bill calls for a police warrant before searching personal emails, giving them similar protection to physical mail. Currently law enforcement officers only need to swear that an email is relevant to an investigation to gain access. The bill goes to the Senate Judiciary Committee for mark up on Thursday of this week. 

Interactive email competitors PowerInbox and ActivePath have decided to merge instead of raising capital separately to compete against each other. Both companies offered email applications that make inbox content interactive, allowing consumers to view videos and comment on Facebook posts right from within the inbox. The combined company will be named PowerInbox and will be based in Cambridge, MA. 

According to the just-released "Email Intelligence Report" by Return Path, 70% of the email messages marked as spam are legitimate marketing emails. Consumers do not differentiate between unsolicited messages and those that they simply do not want to see in their inboxes, a situation that Return Path believes is contritubing to depressed deliverability.