The six email-focused businesses included in the Inc. 5000 list of the nation's fastest-growing companies have created a total of 1,300 new jobs since 2009. The companies listed are BrightWave Marketing, Emailvision, ExactTarget, ClickMail Marketing, EmailDirect and Vertical Response. 

Email security company Total Defense, Inc. has is offering Google's disenfranchised Postini customers a free year of service when they purchase one year of the company's Cloud Web Security. After Google's announcement that it was shuttering Postini and rolling the features into Google Apps, many competing companies have queued up with offers to court Postini users with offers and streamlined migration paths. 

With many retailers already launching holiday promotions and email campaigns, 'tis the season to tune up your email program. Attention to your database, analytics, creative, merchandising and tone are all critical preparation in advance of a big 4th quarter.

55% of email marketers admit they are unable to perform any sort of customer segmentation, says a new study by The Relevancy Group and Return Path. The study also finds that one in five emails never reach the inbox, but most marketers do not know which ones those are.

Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes proposed today that soldiers registered to vote in Kentucky but stationed overseas should be able to cast their ballots via email. 24 states already allow absentee ballots by email, said Grimes. 

The success of the upcoming Windows 8 launch as a tablet operating system may hinge on the email client, which lacks a unified inbox, message threading, message flagging and smart inboxes. The lack of features may disqualify the operating system for enterprise use.

Researchers in Scotland have studied human subjects' email behavior and identified twelve distinct personalities, each of which matches up with the behavior of a bird. The boorish parrot sends abusive or inappropriate emails and fails to understand why others get upset; night owls send messages late at night and do not appreciate others' needs for some time off; and compulsive woodpeckers cannot resist the urge to check, check, check day and night. The research's conclusion is that email is a great source of stress to many people. 

Email service provider Silverpop announced new behavior-based capabilities for its Engage platform. The additions include dynamic content based on behavior and behavior-based lead scoring models.

68% of retailers send 10 or fewer emails to new subscribers within 30 days of signup, and 13% send none at all. Finding the right frequency for new opt-ins is a function of quality over quantity, and must align with the brand's strategic objectives.

A new survey of email marketers has found that 16% do not measure deliverability, and one in four do not know how to optimize their email program. Over the next twelve months, the top priorities for optimizing email include a greater reliance on analytics (37%) and social media integration (37%).