The Veterans Administration has announced a $36 million deal that will move its 600,000 email accounts to Microsoft Office 365, following suit of the EPA, FAA, Agricultural Department and other government agencies that have moved to Microsoft's cloud email, calendar, web conferencing and instant messaging platform. 

Yahoo! may be set to relaunch Yahoo! Mail in order to keep step with Gmail's recent relaunch. According to sources close to the company, CEO Marissa Mayer believes Yahoo! Mail is a missed opportunity. The relaunch is expected in early December. It is not clear if it will be limited to design or if new functionality will be rolled out as well. 

Return Path announced today the launch of Outbound Abuse Manager and Global Trap Exchange, two new tools to protect and stop fraud originating from within customers' networks. The tools allow email administrators to quickly detect fake account and identify real ones that have been compromised.

Snail Mail My Email is a worldwide collaborative art project that turns emails into hand-written works of art before mailing them off to their intended recipients. Its purpose is to remind people of the power of personal connections in a digital world. Last year the initiative sent over 10,000 letters to 70 countries, many of which were featured in a book commemorating the event. This year's Snail Mail My Email runs from November 12 - 18.

With almost 15% of holiday shopping expected to be transacted online, and many offline retaielrs relying on email as well to drive store traffic, inbox activity is expected to reach new heights during the holiday season. Even if your brand isn't focused on the holidays, your email program nevertheless has to have a holiday strategy - if only to avoid the rush that could impact your own messages' results.  Read the full article on the Real Magnet blog. 

According to a new study from McAffee, 88% of of smartphone or tablet users will swap some of their personal info in exchange for offers or discounts, with email address on the table for 76% of them. Mobile users are less forthcoming with their name (62%), age (56%) and address or phone number (36%).

A study commissioned by ExactTarget and compiled by Forrester Research has surveyed 211 professionals on their attitudes about and readiness for cross-channel marketing. While over half of the participants believe that cross-channel marketing is important and 75% believe that they were well-prepared, the study revealed a slightly different story. Based on responses within the survey, only 5% were considered very well-prepared, 34% were adequately prepared, 37% somewhat prepared, and 24% less than somewhat prepared.

Email services provider Silverpop has announced the addition of 110 new clients in Q3 2012, a 39% increase over the previous year. The company also reports increased customer usage of several of its application features, including landing pages, web tracking and lead scoring.

Over the weekend, social media management company Hootsuite sent many of its free trial users an upsell offer to the paid premium service, but botched the send so that hundreds of addresses showed up visibly in the "To" field. In an email to the affected customers, Hootsuite explained that the error was due to its integration with one-time competitor Seesmic, which the company purchased in September. The affected customers (many of whom hoisted pitchforks on Twitter) were offered an apology and a product credit.

Russian email-to-social networking group Mail.Ru has sold off parts of its stakes in Facebook, Groupon and Zynga, raising $200 - $250 million from the sales. A spokesperson for the group commented, "We've always been very clear that Groupon, Zynga and Facebook, positioned inside of Mail, are financial assets, not strategic ones."