A study conducted by ICF International and commissioned by McAfee to quantify the emissions generated by email messages has found that the average business user generates 131 kg of CO2 every year. Put another way, each person's inbox activity creates the same CO2 emissions as driving about 3 miles per day. 

The latest Jumptap MobileSTAT report measures iPhone and iPad usage by time of day, and finds that the phones are put to use all day long, while tablets are more of a leisure time device. Both devices showed below-hourly average use from 8am to noon, and both spike from 8pm to midnight. In general, the iPhone tracks closer to the hourly average throughout the day, while the iPad skews heavily toward the evening hours. 

Oakland California police chief Howard Jordan faces legal action that could remove him from office for ignoring emails relating to an internal investigation of police brutatlity in the wake of videos posted to YouTube during Occupy Oakland protests. Chief Jordan ordered his IT department to set up his spam filter to block all messages with the terms "Occupy Oakland" and "police brutality," and had therefore not seen any of the official and urgent messages about the case and pending lawsuits for over a year. 

22% of marketers polled in a recent Experian survey say that they use website popups for email acquisition. One retailer showed that the practice generated an 85% lift in valid email address acquisition. Success is a function of placement, functionality, content and measurement. Read the full article on the Experian ChetahMail Blog.

On its Analytics blog, Google has announced its new Cost Data Import Tool for calculating ROI from any digital source: email, social, paid search, organic search, display ads, and affiliate marketing. The tool allows users to import cost data for each of the channels measured through Google Analytics via a self-serve API or third party applications. Cost Data Import Tool is now in Public Beta. 

Hurricane Sandy took out many data centers and email servers across the east coast, taking many consumers' and businesses' email accounts down with them. Tech expert Shelly Palmer said that businesses should work with a could computing provider - or multiple providers, for redundancy - for greater reliability in the event of an emergency.

New data from ComScore confirms what Google has been claiming since the summer - that Gmail is now the world's largest email provider. The service has 425 million users worldwide, though it trails Yahoo! in the US.

Transactional emails sent to email subscribers following donations to the Romney and Obama presidential campaigns saw an enormous spike in read rate - an 832% increase for the Romney emails and a 464% lift for Obama. The Romney emails also showed a higher propensity for forwards than the messages that spurred the donation. But both candidates' campaigns are not fully leveraging the rich engagement of transactional emails, leaving out content addressing the critical issues of the campaign and failing to provide an easy way for recipients or referrals to click through for further action.

A novel by Will Ferguson entitled 419 and about one family's entanglement in a Nigerian email scam has been awarded the Scotiabank Giller Prize, one of Canada's most prestigious literary awards. The title refers to the article of the Nigerian Crimimal Code dealing with fraud. 

Yesterday's Email Marketing Daily mistakenly reported that American Eagle angered subscribers with a Hurricane Sandy Sale email. The email was sent by American Apparel, not American Eagle. The orignial article has been corrected on the MediaPost site.