A single malicious email sent to workers at South Carolina's Department of Revenue enabled a hacker to gain access to the tax returns, social security numbers and bank account information of 3.8 million people. The attack, believed to have originated in Russia, began as a phishing scheme and successfully obtained an employee's user name and password. The hacker then leveraged the login info to gain access to the rest of the department's systems and begin copying large amounts of data onto the internet. South Carolina governor Nikki Haley has called the conditions that allowed the breach "a cocktail for an …

The keys to deliverability success during email's busiest season are leveraging subscriber data in its totality, and understanding the nuances involved in messaging across platforms and devices. For example, removing the least responsive 1% of your list can result in a 5% deliverability lift. Read the full article at the Message Bus blog.

A study by Forrester Research on behalf of Act-On has found that small and medium businesses (SMBs) are less likely to invest in email marketing than larger enterprises. Marketing budget does not appear to be the driver, however, as 61% of SMBs in the study report spending more on marketing than the average large business. 

While opening phyiscal retail stores on Thanksgiving is a contentious issue, many online retailers have already opened up their Black Friday specials and are using email to lure early shoppers. Home Depot, Dell, Walgreens, Kmart and others have all emailed their customers inviting them to shop Black Friday early online.

A new study by customer analytics company ClickFox has found that 60% of consumers surveyed intend to do the majority of their holiday shopping online. Three quarters of them indicate that the reason is the better customer service offered by online retailers.

Researchers at Concordia University's Institute of Information Systems Engineering are working on a new statistical framework for spam filtering that addresses the shortcomings of present systems. Most current approaches focus either on the text in messages or the image saturation, but rarely both text and image. The method proposed by researchers examines the image content along with the text, to thwart the image layering and other tactics used by spammers to sneak messages through filters. "Our new method for spam filtering is able to adapt to the dynamic nature of spam emails and accurately handle spammers' tricks by carefully identifying …

Retailers and other e-commerce businesses are combining email behavioral data with in-store, web browsing, demographic and other data to build narrower customer profiles for increased targeting and more sales opportunities. Williams-Sonoma, Major League Soccer, Expedia.com and Macys.com discuss how they integrate marketing, analytics and IT.

A new report by RSW/US that studies the communication channels preferred by B2B buyers has found that email remains the overwhelming favorite. 77% of survey respondents said email was their top choice for receiving contact from a prospective partner, more than twice as many as direct mail in second. Fewer than one in four preferred the phone or conferences as a way to find new partners. 

In an emergency, email is pressed into service because it is quick, efficient, robust and mobile-friendly. Brands should have an ad hoc template ready for when disaster strikes, with subtle and professional branding, customer service contact info and even the CEO's headshot and signature at the ready. Read the full article at the ExactTarget blog. 

Smartphones and tablets are now responsible for over 18% of traffic to e-commerce sites, according to a new study by Monetate. The share of traffic from mobile devices has more than doubled from a year ago, when it was 7.7%. PCs still lead in conversion at 3.28%. Tablets are not far behind at 3.12%, but smartphones lag at only 1.01%.