94% of organizations realize their marketing data is suspect, according to a new survey by Experian QAS. 65% of the time, data issues are blamed on human error. This is not surprising, since 66% of respondents say their organizations use some sort of manual process for managing data, and 23% report using only manual processes to assess data accuracy.

Mailbox, the heavily anticipated inbox management app for the iPhone, has announced a wait list to manage the "huge" demand. The company needs to manage the flow of new users carefully because one of the app's features is to compress emails so that they load more quickly on the phone, which tasks resources heavily. Founder Gentry Underwood explains of the cautious approach, "This is email, after all — it has to work reliably."

According to a WSL/Strategic Retail survey, family and friends remain the top source of advice for purchase decisions. 69% of consumers surveyed said that family and friends helped them decide what to buy in 2012, up from 61% last year. Manufacturer and retailer websites follow, each at 55%. At the bottom of the list is social media at 26%, just above emails from manufacturers and retailers, which is tied with sales associates at 32%. 

France is considering a range of creative taxation schemes on US based Internet companies — Google and Facebook in particular — in order to generate new revenues during a challenging economic climate. Tax rates would be assessed based on the number of internet users whose personal data a firm possesses and tracks.

ExactTarget's new report "Marketers From Mars" details some of the ways marketers and consumers are different in their use of email and social media. Marketers are more likely to follow the prompts sent by other marketers. They purchase from email and social messages more frequently, are more apt to follow brands on Facebook and Twitter, and are almost twice as likely to own a smartphone. 

Spam has reached a 5-year low, according to a security bulletin by Kapersky Lab. The percentage of email that was spam in 2012 was 72.1%, a drop of almost 8 percentage points from 2011. The drop is attributed to a heightened level of anti-spam protection, at both the personal and corporate level.

Infogroup Targeting Solutions and Yesmail Interactive surveyed over 700 marketers at recent DMA and Forrester marketing conferences and found that data-related spending is expected to rise in 2013. 20% of marketers plan to greatly increase their data-related investements this year, with another 48% planning slight increases. Only 3% of marketers surveyed plan to decrease data-related spending.

Email and marketing automation company Act-On Software reports that it has tripled revenues and double headcount in 2012. The company has also upgraded its platform capacity to 10 billion emails per year.

A new study by Emailvision Holdings finds that 28% of consumers would share their names with brands in exchange for "better targeted offers." Not surprisingly a higher percentage - 37% - would provide their gender for improved targeting, as gender is a better criteria for identifying product matches than a name. 8% of the respondents in the study would share their underwear size if it resulted in improved targeting.

A year ago a group of 15 ESPs, financial firms and message security companies founded DMARC.org, a working group to create standards to help prevent phishing and other email security threats. While the group announced in late in 2012 that a number of additional companies have adopted the DMARC standards - including Constant Contact and Outlook.com - adoption nevertheless remains slow. DMARC allows senders and recipients to exchange authentication information when transmitting messages in order to guarantee to the address owner that the message is safe. For example, messages sent to Outlook.com with the DMARC standard are now flagged in …