Contactually, the makers of a lightweight CRM application, has launched an end of the year "email report card," which grades email users on how effectively they communicate via email. By connecting to a user's Gmail, IMAP (such as Yahoo) or Outlook Exchange account, the service scans emails received, replied to, ignored and sent and then presents the user with a letter grade in several categories inclucing Average Response Time and Unresponded Emails. The service also scores sent emails based on mood, calculates the percentage sent day vs. night, lists popular words by month and many other metrics. 

TrustedWebmail, an initiative of digital community site DigitalTown, will open registration for its webmail service on December 28th. Users may choose from over 25,000 domains in seven broad categories: School Spirit, Education, Sports, Mascots, Professional/ Business, City/State and Status. Unlike the free email services offered by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, TrustedWebmail charges $5 per year and contains no advertisements.

The explosion of the daily deal ecommerce businesses that are reliant on anticipated emails helped reprove the viability of the email channel. Now that the daily deal sites are struggling, is it an indication that email's effectiveness is waning as well? A closer look reveals that the daily deal sites' models and email execution are likely more to blame for their ongoing challenges.  Read the full article on Deliverability.com.

A survey of CMOs by eCircle reveals that 40% believe email can generate a 10% lift in holiday sales this season. Respondents were bullish on email compared to all other digital channels, with 43% citing email as a "very important" channel for driving holiday sales. SEM and SEO followed at 33% each, with social media at 21% and display advertising at 20%.

Retailers are expected to increase their email volume by 19% this holiday season, and are investing in ROI-boosting technology allowing the delivery of more personalized and relevant messages. In contrast, the number of Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers who made a purchase after clicking through a link in a social network has declined 26% over the previous year, with socially-driven purchases comprising only 0.5% of online revenue during these two highly productive shopping days.

According to a joint survey by Sybase 365 and The Mobile Marketing Association, 87% of consumers' holiday purchase decisions will be impacted by mobile. Additionally, 50% of those surveyed said they intend to purchase directly through a mobile device for a holiday, using mobile websites, apps, a mobile POS system or SMS/text.

Online marketing firm Wpromote has added email marketing to its services, alongside the PPC and SEO offerings it is best known for. The email marketing service includes ESP migration and setup, custom copywriting and design, A/B testing and list growth and segmentation. 

Facebook has revamped its Messages feature to allow users to reach people who are not friends through the Facebook Email system. A new feature the company is testing charges senders a $1 fee for delivery of a message directly into the targeted users' Facebook inbox, skirting any filters the user has set up to send messages from unknown senders elsewhere.

Oracle has announced today that it is acquiring email and marketing automation company Eloqua for $871 million dollars, intending to make the Eloqua platform the centerpiece of its marketing cloud offering. The move strengthens the company's ability to integrate and act on Big Data in marketing campaigns. 

Email services provider Emma has awarded free lifetime email accounts to 25 non-profits as part of the company's annual Emma 25 Initiative. 2012 marks the ninth year of the program. Winners are selected from entries by the Emma staff.