ReturnPath announced today its acquisiton of Montreal-based Context.IO, a company that specializes in making email data available for synching and integration. ReturnPath hopes that the move will make it faster and easier for developers to integrate email data into their applications. 

A study by GetResponse that analyzed how time of day impacts engagement metrics discovered that most email (39%) is sent in the morning. Conventional wisdom often suggests that marketers should mail at other times in order to avoid inbox clutter, but the study also found that the highest open and click-through rates for emails in the study were at 8am and 9am, when the inbox volume was high. 

Subscribers to Hale and Hearty's email list received an unexpectedly vulgar email this morning when the popular New York soup chain included the c-word in an email promotion inviting them to a new location for a free cup of soup. The company was alerted to the situation through Facebook and Twitter and followed up with an immediate apology email from the company's CEO. The company reports that the crudeness was not a typo, but was the act of a rogue sender who somehow accessed the company's email application. 

A senor e-threat analyst at email security company Bitdefender analyzed over 260 billion spam emails sent daily, and found that 300 million of them - 1.14% - were carrying a malicious attachment. The firm forecasts an increase of email malware by 2% - 6% per year. 

Brushing up on the basic psychology of human decision-making may not seem as relevant to email marketers as A/B testing and deliverability audits, but it can have as profound an impact on email programs. Understanding what forges emotional connections and resonance allows email marketers to execute campaigns that honor the intellectional reasoning component of how people make decisions.  Read the full article at The eMail Guide. 

Email services provider TailoredMail announced the release of EmailApptimizer 6.0, including functionality that automatically converts email messages composed for a desktop environment into mobile-optimized messages that take on the appearance of rich touch-screen applications. The application also allows for the creation of mobile-specific landing pages and microsites. 

Integrating email and social can mean using your email program to promote your social channels. But it can also mean tapping the reach of vast social networks like Twitter to feed new subscribers into your email program. Linking your bio to an opt-in page, using Twitter Tools for a promotion and using "Click to Tweet" for your signup page are all ways to leverage Twitter's unique platform and tools to extend your reach in the inbox. Read the full article at Social Media Examiner. 

J.C. Penney's email program has undergone some changes recently, coincidental to the arrival of new CEO Ron Johnson, formerly of Apple. An email marketer analyzes one of the new emails, a message from the new CEO which courageously prefaces the call-to-action with nine paragraphs of copy.  

A new German academic paper points out a security lapse that is possibly leaking the passwords, email contents and other personal data of over 185 million Android users. At fault are 41 applications available through Google's Play Market which contain serious SSL flaws. 

A recent survey of email marketers by Strongmail and eMarketer shows that the timing of transactional and promotional messages is seen as highly important for success. 44% of marketers surveyed indicate that their goal is to have a transactional message delivered in less than one minute, while over two-thirds believe that keeping customers waiting even five minutes is unacceptable. Over half believe that sending well-timed promotional emails results in increased engagement (54.6%) and the ability to run more time sensitive promotions (52.4%). One in three believe well-timed promotional messages lift revenues.