According to the McKinsey Global Institute, 28% of a knowledge worker's time is spent managing email, a figure that could be cut by almost a third with a change in tools and tactics. The number one recommendation for spending less time on email: unsubscribe. 

According to a recent report by Marketing Sherpa, 72% of email marketers test subject lines, though only 35% believe subject lines are "very effective" at driving results. The tactics considered most effective are target audience (42%) and landing page (41%), though these tactics are tested by fewer than 1 in 3 marketers. 

However relevant and targeted, most email messages are regarded as junk mail, even if they make it to the inbox and enjoy readership and clicks. Only if a message is perceived to be coming from someone the recipient knows and likes and wants to hear from does it transcent the junk mail moniker and come to be regarded more like a letter than a flyer.  Read the full article on Business 2 Community. 

Invariably, when a team is collaborating on a project, one member of the team has an email with some vital piece of information required to keep the project moving forward (for example, a client response sent to a single contact instead of the whole team). AffinityLive Sync is designed to aggregate all of the messages and threads relevant to a team (or an entire company) in a single place so that it is always available to everyone who might need to see it. 

Placing an email signup field visibly on each page of a website is no longer enough. In the current inbox environment, brands must make a clearer case for the value exchange that drives a new subscription, and then work creatively to place this argument in front of as many of the right people as possible. Content exchanges, endorsements and even advertising are some of the tactics to consider.  Read the full article at Duct Tape Marketing. 

A new survey of 2,000 U.S. and Canadian consumers by LoyaltyOne revealed attitudes that surely conflict with the rising trend of Big Data, marketing automation and microtargeting. While 42% trust businesses with their personal information, 78% do not see much value with the information shared. Of those who distrust marketers with their information, 87% are concerned about business sharing their information with other businesses and 85% are concerned with the tracking of their online behavior. 

TOS;DR (which stands for Terms of Service; Didn't Read) is an activitst-driven site that scours the privacy policies of websites, distills the abstruse language into an executive summary of key terms of agreement, and then rates the website from Class A (very good) to Class E (very bad) based on how well the site respects the personal privacy of its users, most of whom agree to the terms of service blindly without reading them. The attributes used for scoring include how the site uses personal info such as email address and other personal identifiers, copyright conditions, use of cookies and …

Writer, Actor and Director Ed Burns is an investor and editor of InsideHook, a new daily newsletter covering activities and products for hip middle-age men (admittedly a niche). Trigger Media financed the company, following similar newsletter ventures in Daily Candy, Thrillist and TastingTable. Trigger Media CEO Andy Russell reports that InsideHook is growing faster than any newsletter he has been involved with.

48% of employed Americans say they are allowed to use their own mobile phone, tablet or personal computer to perform work functions, according to a new report by the National Cyber Security Alliance and McAfee. 22% use their own devices for work email, while only 8% access work documents or databases. 

Email opens have climbed from 10% in 2011 to over 30% in 2012, and marketers are responding to the trend by increasingly designing emails that focus on the overall experience, respectful of all environments. To do this, design for your audience, touch, legibility, reality and longevity.  Read the full article on the ExactTarget Blog.