New data from Responsys reveals that promotional emails during October 2012 were up 22% of October 2011. However the number of messages referencing Breast Cancer Awareness Month dropped 33%, which Responsys attributes to the political scandal earlier in the year. 

Blue State Digital, a division of WPP Digital, powered the email, social and mobile messaging that contributed to 20 campaign wins in the just-completed election cycle, from the presidency to senate races to key ballot initiatives. Developed for the campaigning business during Howard Dean's historically digital 2004 run, the BSD technology platform is capable of sending 100 million messages per day and processes more online contributions than any other service. 

Epsilon, the marketing services division of Alliance Data Systems, has announced its acquisiton of Hyper Marketing Inc to add to its suite of direct-to-customer connections. Epsilon sends over 42 billion emails annually on behalf of clients such as Ford Motor Company, Best Buy, Walgreens and P&G. 

The NetProspex Data Enrichment Connector app now connects to Eloqua's marketing automation platform, allowing marketers to append data from NetProspex's database to their existing customer and prospect records. The contacts in the NetProspex database are crowd-sourced, provided by NetProspex customers in exchange for access to other contacts in a co-operative database model. 

Watchguard Technologies XCS (extensible content security) has been awarded the Frost & Sullivan 2012 North American Product Quality Leadership Award in Email Content Security, the company announced today. WatchGuard XCS is designed to protect enterprise networks from security threats including spam, malware, viruses and network attacks. 

Sendmail announced today the Sentrion Rogue Email Application Control (REAC) appliance designed to address the growing security, compliance and cloud migration threats posed by email-generating systems and applications in large and regulated organizations. With more than half of all messages from within an enterprise originating from a machine instead of a person, there is a growing danger of rogue and unmanaged email causing security risks, errant email storms and traffic spikes.

The Obama campaign relied heavily on email to motivate supporters, most notably to make contributions. At the heart of the campaign's operation was a team of analysts, researchers, technologists and marketers who worked in a windowless room called "the Cave" in the campaign's Chicago headquarters. If the 2008 campaign's advantage was its network of databases of donors and supporters, the secret weapon in 2012 was even richer data aggregated into a single database, out of which the team in the Cave created targeted programs like the Quick Donate program which allowed 1-click repeat donations, and tested senders and subject lines …

The Web Marketing Association opened the call for entries in its Internet Advertising Competition (IAC) Awards today. The awards accept entries from 86 industries across a range of categories, including Best Email Advertising Campaign. Advertisers, agencies or technology vendors can submit their best work at www.IACward.org before the deadline of January 31, 2013. Judging will take place in February and winners will be notified in mid-March, by email. 

Many companies work hard to generate leads through PPC, SEO and other channels, but the reality is that conversion is rarely a quick event, with nearly three quarters of leads not yet sales ready when they come in. Email, and drip nurturing in particular, helps develop leads into purchases, making investments in SEO and PPC pay off more frequently. Read the full article on Search Engine Watch.

"Cloud-native" email and messaging service provider Message Bus lauched its Global Delivery Network today, designed to enable enterprise companies, email service providers and developers to send large amounts of communications to their audience, while also ensuring that the trust between sender and recipient is maintained. The company claims that the service is the first to be 100% compliant with the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) standard.