Blue Kangaroo, a new service by startup ChoozOn, aims to clean up inboxes and increase the visibility of daily deal offers by removing the many tempting sale messages into their own space, out of the personal inbox. The service provides consumers with an easy way to scan offers from different deal sites, and also prioritizes the most relevant based on consumer interests. 

According to new research by Epsilon and the Direct Marketing Association's Email Experience Council, triggered email messages (often called drip campaigns or marketing automation) generate 122% more clicks than the average clicks for business as usual email. Only 2.6% of email volume comes from triggered messages, which indicates a clear pathway to improvement for email marketers. 

An outage earlier this week on Apple's iCloud service disabled the email accounts of 1,650,000 users for 30 hours. Marketers trying to reach accounts during this period may have experienced bounces. Apple has not explained the reason for the outage.

The new IDG Global Mobile Users Survey has revealed that workers are relying on smartphones and tablets for more than just checking email outside of the office. Accessing technology information after business hours and watching product review and other job-related videos are cited as the top applications.

A 52-week study comprised of 28 email messages conducted by Coast Digital has found that the messages remain highly productive for the intitial four weeks after sending, during which period 80% of the revenue coming from the email will be generated. Productivity then slows, reaching 90% of total revenues by weeks 10-11, and 97% by week 20. After 4 weeks of results, enough data exists to make a reliable forecast of the total sales coming from the email.  

After being dubbed at launch, "refreshingly difficult to game" in 2010, marketers have now spent enough time with Gmail Priority Inbox to accumulate some learning and best practices. Double opt-in, using effective keywords and varying the sender are all tactics that help marketers get past Gmail's velvet rope. 

Yes, sharing your newsletter on Facebook and Twitter can boost its audience and bring in new readers. But it can also result in "engagement cannibalization," as your subscribers ignore it in the inbox and read it online instead. This depresses your engagement metrics and can compromise your sender reputation and deliverability.

Emailvision has acquired PredictiveIntent, a move which allows the email services company to roll out behavioral targeting and personalized experiences across email and websites. Emailvision has offices in 22 countries and lists Ikea, Club Med, Walmart and Staples among its clients.

Entries are now being accepted for the 2013 Effie Awards, the awards program developed by the American Marketing Association to recognize outstanding examples of marketing effectiveness. The On-Time Entry deadline is October 9, 2012. Extended deadlines are available until October 31, 2012.

Web forms with pre-checked opt-in buttons for receving email messages may help grow a brand's list more quickly, but that quantity comes as the expense of quality. At best, less interested consumers are receiving messages and suppressing increasingly important engagement metrics. At worst, recipients did not realize they had opted in at all and are likely to mark subsequent messages as spam.